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Bonnie Gail Franklin (January 6, 1944 – March 1, 2013) was an American actress. She is best known for her leading role as Ann Romano in the television series One Day at a Time (1975–1984). She was nominated for Emmy, Tony, and Golden Globe Awards.
Early life
Franklin was born January 6, 1944, in Santa Monica, California, the daughter of Claire (née Hersch) (1911-2014) and Samuel Benjamin Franklin (1903-1997), an investment banker who founded the Beverly Hills, California chapter of B'nai B'rith. Her parents were both Jewish immigrants; her father from Russia and her mother from Romania; they married in Montreal before moving to the US.
Her family moved to Beverly Hills when she was 13 years old. She graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1961. She attended Smith College in Massachusetts, performing in an Amherst College production of Good News as a freshman, but she returned to California, enrolling at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and earning her bachelor's degree in English in 1966.
Career
Franklin first appeared on television at age 9 in The Colgate Comedy Hour.
thumb|Bonnie Franklin speaks to crowd at March For Women's Lives in 2004.
A Democrat, she supported Walter Mondale's campaign in the 1984 presidential election.
In 1988, Franklin appeared at the Bucks County Playhouse and at the Pocono Playhouse, both in Pennsylvania, in the title role of Annie Get Your Gun. Also in 1988, she appeared with Tony Musante at the Westside Arts Theatre (in Manhattan) in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune by Terrence McNally. She later performed in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Pittsburgh Public Theater (July 1998). In 1997, she appeared at Ford's Theatre, Washington, D.C., in All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (September 1999). In 2005, she appeared with Bruce Weitz at the New Theatre Restaurant in Overland Park, Kansas in 2 Across (August–September 2011). She played "Ouiser" in a production of Steel Magnolias at the Rubicon Theater, Ventura, California (October 4–14, 2011).
In the mid and late 2000s, Franklin appeared in nearly a dozen staged readings in the Greater Los Angeles area with Classic and Contemporary American Playwrights (CCAP), which she founded in 2001 with her sister Judy.
Franklin appeared in several episodes of the daytime drama The Young and the Restless. The episodes were broadcast in August 2012, and only a month later she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. The actress was cast as a nun, Sister Celeste, who came to the assistance of Victor Newman when he had amnesia while working at a shipping port in Los Angeles. In addition to her work in the theater and on television, Franklin performed in cabaret at various venues, including Le Mouches, Grand Finale, The Eighty-Eights, Triad, and The Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel—all in New York City—and at Odette's in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
She was scheduled to appear in Joan Didion's one-woman play The Year of Magical Thinking at the Ensemble Theatre Company of Santa Barbara in April 2013, but withdrew because of illness.
Personal life
Franklin was married twice, first to playwright Ronald Sossi from 1967 to 1970, and then to film producer Marvin Minoff for 29 years, from 1980 until his death on November 11, 2009. Minoff had been the executive producer of a television movie, Portrait of a Rebel: The Remarkable Mrs. Sanger, which starred Franklin as Margaret Sanger, before the couple married in 1980. She had two stepchildren, Jed and Julie Minoff. On March 1, 2013, at age 69, Franklin died at her home in Los Angeles.