She was pert.
She was red-headed.
She was funny and surprising and straightforward.
And she wasn't like any other mom that had been see on any TV show before One Day At A Time. That's because she wasn't perfect. Which means, she was more like the typical mom.
But there was one big difference - she was divorced.
She was often frazzled and at wits end but the Norman Lear sitcom in which she starred was real. It was genuine.
She was Bonnie Franklin and she has died of pancreatic cancer at age 69.
Millions came to identify with for her role as uncoupled mom Ann Romano in One Day At A Time.
On her own in Indianapolis, Ann Romano was raising two teenage girls — played by Mackenzie Phillips, already famous for the film "American Graffiti," and a previously unknown Valeria Bertinelli. "One Day At a Time" ran on CBS until 1984, by which time both daughters had grown and married, while Romano had remarried and become a grandmother. During the first seven of its nine seasons on the air, the show was a Top 20 hit.
Franklin's family announced in September that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was undergoing treatment.
The 5-foot-3 performer also was a versatile cabaret performer and veteran of the stage who collected a Tony Award nomination in 1970 for her role as a gypsy in the original production of the Betty Comden-Adolph Green musical Applause. That made her one of the youngest performers to ever receive the honor.
Franklin’s many credits also included recurring roles on the 1960s sitcoms Gidget and Please Don’t Eat the Daisies and guest turns on such shows as The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Munsters, The Love Boatand Touched by an Angel. She reunited with Bertinelli for a 2011 episode of Hot in Cleveland and appeared on the daytime soap The Young and the Restless in 2012.
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