Actor. He received fame as a 20th-century American actor of stage, screen, and television. Born in Waycross, Georgia, he began entertaining during his high school years, singing at area USO shows. He briefly attended Georgia Tech and the University of Maryland, without graduating, before serving in the United States Marine Corps. He first achieved notable acting recognition during the mid-1950s, appearing in a string of off-Broadway Shakespearean plays. He began with "Macbeth," receiving a Drama Desk Award in 1955, which followed with "Romeo and Juliet" and "The Taming of the Shrew." He made his Broadway debut in the short-lived play "Tonight in Samarkand" in 1955 and made the transition to the small screen with guest appearances on such programs as "Trackdown" and "Have-Gun-Will-Travel." It would be the role of "Adam Cartwright" in the popular long-running television western series "Bonanza," which made Roberts identifiable at that point in his career. He left the cast in 1965, remaining busy with guest appearances in a wide range of television programs throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including "Gunsmoke," "The Wild, Wild West," "Mission: Impossible," "Hawaii Five-O," "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "The Rockford Files." His second most identifiable part was the title role in the television medical drama from 1979 to 1986, "Trapper John, M.D.," which was a break-away from the successful series "M.A.S.H.," and for which he earned an Emmy Award nomination. In March of 1965, he joined with Martin Luther King, Jr. and marched the 50 miles from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in support of the Civil Rights movement. He died from pancreatic cancer. With his first wife, he had one son, who died in 1989 in a motorcycle accident.