Photo: Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty
Beloved 1980s primetime star Barbara Bosson has died at age 83.
Bosson’s son Jesse Bochco confirmed the news on his Instagram Sunday.
FROM THE PEOPLE ARCHIVE:Hill Streetto Easy Street? Eight Emmys Clear the Way for Bochco & Bosson
Ron Galella Collection via Getty
Before they divorced in 1997 after 27 years of marriage, Bosson worked with her husband on multiple series, most notably the 1970sRockford Filesspin-offRichie Brockelman, Private Eye, the late ’80s dramedyHoopermanoppositeJohn Ritter, and the infamous ’90s procedural-musical hybridCop Rock.
Steven — whodiedin 2018 at age 74 — joked with PEOPLE in 1981 that his then-wife’s name was spelled “B-O-S-S-O-N, with an ‘n’ as in ‘nepotism.'” He went on to say, in earnest: “The only rule I have about working with friends and loved ones is that I’m not going to penalize them for it, but if they’re not better than the next person on the list, I’m not going to hire them, either. I’ve never been very sensitive about charges of nepotism because I’ve turned Barbara down for parts before. We’ve had a few words about that.”
For her part, Bosson said they mostly managed to keep the peace while intermingling their professional and personal lives. “The only thing I have trouble with — and I can handle it — is that Steven is so used to being an executive,” she told PEOPLE. “I bristle at having someone else in charge. I have to get aggressive, and say, ‘Look, this is the way it will be’—and he backs down immediately.”
Barbara Bosson and the cast ofHill Street Blues.Getty Images
Bosson was born on Nov. 1, 1939, in the Pittsburgh suburb of Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Doris and John Bosson, a tennis coach who moonlighted as a milkman.
“I saw him suffer silently — he hated being a milkman — and that’s why I was determined not to compromise,” she told PEOPLE in 1981, shortly afterHill Street Blueswon a then-record-setting eight Emmys for its second season on NBC.
She decided to be an actress at age 3 and traveled to New York City after high school to seek a stage career. “It was like going to Paris or London for me, I’d been so sheltered at home,” she recalled. She tackled summer stock roles and served Playboy Club patrons as a Bunny before enrolling in a drama course at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon) in 1965.
There she met her future husband, though the relationship was a non-starter at that time because Steven was married. The actress left school after her sophomore year and headed to the West Coast, where she scored an early role in the 1968 crime filmBullittstarringSteve McQueen.
While working with the improv group the Committee in L.A., Bosson was reintroduced to a then-divorced Bochco. They married in 1970, the same year they welcomed their daughter Melissa. Five years after that, the Bochcos became a family of four with the addition of Jesse in March 1975.
FROM THE PEOPLE ARCHIVES:In the Market for Bitter Fruit?Hooperman’s Barbara Bosson Seems Always to Harvest a Bumper Crop
Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty
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source: people.com
