Richard Bull is an American film actor, stage actor and television actor.

He is best known for his performance as Nels Oleson, the kindly proprietor of Oleson's Mercantile and the long suffering husband of his wife Harriet on the NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 TV series Little House on the Prairie

Little House on the Prairie (TV series)

Little House on the Prairie is an American Western drama television series, starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert, about a family living on a farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1870s and 1880s. The show was an adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder's best-selling series of Little House books...

which aired from 1974 to 1983 and "Doc" on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is an American science fiction film, produced and directed by Irwin Allen, released by 20th Century Fox in 1961. The story was written by Irwin Allen and Charles Bennett. Walter Pidgeon starred as Admiral Harriman Nelson, with Robert Sterling as Captain Lee Crane...

.

Bull began his stage career at the famous Goodman Theatre

Goodman Theatre

The Goodman Theatre is a professional theater company located in Chicago's Loop. A major part of Chicago theatre, it is the city's oldest currently active nonprofit theater organization...

 in Chicago, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

. He left Los Angeles in 1994 with his wife Barbara "Bobbi" Collentine to live in Chicago.

Career

Bull has made nearly 100 film and TV appearances including:

• In television:
• Harrigan and Son
  Harrigan and Son
  Harrigan and Son is an ABC sitcom about a father-and-son team of lawyers, played by Pat O'Brien and Roger Perry as Jim Harrigan, Sr., and Jim, Jr. In supporting roles, as secretaries, are Georgine Darcy as Gypsy and Helen Kleeb as Miss Claridge. The series aired 34 episodes at 8 p.m. Eastern Time...
  
  (1961) as Lawson in "They Were All in Step But Jim"
• The Eleventh Hour
  The Eleventh Hour (1962 TV series)
  The Eleventh Hour is an American medical drama about psychiatry starring Wendell Corey, Jack Ging, and Ralph Bellamy, which aired sixty-two new episodes plus selected rebroadcasts on NBC from October 3, 1962, to September 9, 1964.-Series premise:...
  
  (1964) as Phil Whitman in "Sunday Father"
• Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
  Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
  Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is an American science fiction film, produced and directed by Irwin Allen, released by 20th Century Fox in 1961. The story was written by Irwin Allen and Charles Bennett. Walter Pidgeon starred as Admiral Harriman Nelson, with Robert Sterling as Captain Lee Crane...
  
  (1964-1968 TV Series) as The Doctor, various episodes
• Kentucky Jones
  Kentucky Jones
  Kentucky Jones is a half-hour comedy/drama starring Dennis Weaver as Kenneth Yarborough "K.Y. or Kentucky" Jones, D.V.M., a recently widowed former horse trainer and active rancher, who becomes the guardian of Dwight Eisenhower "Ike" "Wong, a 10-year-old Chinese orphan, played by Ricky Der...
  
  (1965) as Harold Erkel in episodes "The Victim" and "The Return of Wong Lee"
• Mission: Impossible
  Mission: Impossible
  Mission: Impossible is an American television series which was created and initially produced by Bruce Geller. It chronicled the missions of a team of secret American government agents known as the Impossible Missions Force . The leader of the team was Jim Phelps, played by Peter Graves, except in...
  
  - (1966) as an agent for the Impossible Missions Force
• Mannix
  Mannix
  Mannix is an American television detective series that ran from 1967 through 1975 on CBS. Created by Richard Levinson and William Link and developed by executive producer Bruce Geller, the title character, Joe Mannix, is a private investigator. He is played by Mike Connors...
  
  - (1968-1974) 7 episodes as 4 different characters
• Bonanza
  Bonanza
  Bonanza is an American western television series that both ran on and was a production of NBC from September 12, 1959 to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 430 episodes, it ranks as the second longest running western series and still continues to air in syndication. It centers on the...
  
  - (1969-1972) as Jess Hill (2 episodes)
• The Streets of San Francisco
  The Streets of San Francisco
  The Streets of San Francisco is a 1970s television police drama filmed on location in San Francisco, California, and produced by Quinn Martin Productions, with the first season produced in association with Warner Bros...
  
  - (1973-1974) as the coroner
• Barnaby Jones
  Barnaby Jones
  Barnaby Jones is a television detective series starring Buddy Ebsen and Lee Meriwether as father- and daughter-in-law who run a private detective firm in Los Angeles. A spin-off from Cannon, the show ran on CBS from January 28, 1973 to April 3, 1980, beginning as a midseason replacement...
  
  - (1973-1976) 4 episodes as J.I. Fletcher
• Little House on the Prairie
  Little House on the Prairie (TV series)
  Little House on the Prairie is an American Western drama television series, starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert, about a family living on a farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1870s and 1880s. The show was an adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder's best-selling series of Little House books...
  
  - (1974-1983) as Nels Oleson
• Wipeout (1976) as Sheriff Safian
• Dead Man's Run as Mr. Moore
• Blind Terror (1973) as Mr. Strather
• Perchance to Kill (1973) as J.I. Fletcher
• Hill Street Blues
  Hill Street Blues
  Hill Street Blues is an American serial police drama that was first aired on NBC in 1981 and ran for 146 episodes on primetime into 1987. Chronicling the lives of the staff of a single police precinct in an unnamed American city, the show received critical acclaim and its production innovations ...
  
  - (1985) as Capt. Furillo's father
• Highway to Heaven
  Highway to Heaven
  Highway to Heaven is an American television drama series which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989.- Season 1 :- Season 2 :- Season 3 :- Season 4 :- Season 5 :...
  
   - (1985) as the doctor (2 episodes)
• Designing Women
  Designing Women
  Designing Women is an American television sitcom that centered on the working and personal lives of four Southern women and one man in an interior design firm in Atlanta, Georgia. It aired on the CBS television network from September 29, 1986 until May 24, 1993. The show was created by head writer...
  
  - (1988) as Everett
• In film:
• Witless Protection
  Witless Protection
  Witless Protection is a 2008 comedy film from Lionsgate, starring Daniel Lawrence Whitney, better known as Larry the Cable Guy and Jenny McCarthy written and directed by Chicago native Charles Robert Carner. Whitney plays "Larry", a small-town deputy in Mississippi...
  
  - (2008) as Sheriff Smoot
• The Parallax View
  The Parallax View
  The Parallax View is a 1974 American thriller film directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Warren Beatty, Paula Prentiss, Hume Cronyn and William Daniels. The film was adapted by David Giler, Lorenzo Semple Jr and an uncredited Robert Towne from the 1970 novel by Loren Singer...
  
   - (1974) as a Parallax Goon
• High Plains Drifter
  High Plains Drifter
  High Plains Drifter is a 1973 American Western film, with a hint of the supernatural, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood and produced by Robert Daley for The Malpaso Company and Universal Pictures. Eastwood plays a mysterious gunfighter hired by the residents of a corrupt frontier mining town...
  
  - (1973) as Asa Goodwin
• Executive Action - (1973) as a gunman on "Team A"
• The Andromeda Strain
  The Andromeda Strain (film)
  The Andromeda Strain is a 1971 American science-fiction film, based on the novel published in 1969 by Michael Crichton. The film is about a team of scientists who investigate a deadly organism of extraterrestrial origin that causes rapid, fatal blood clotting. Directed by Robert Wise, the film...
  
  - (1971) as an Air Force major
• The Stalking Moon - (1968) as the doctor
• Moonfire - (1970) as Leslie Russell
• The Satan Bug - (1965) As Federal Agent

External links