Marion Ross

Marion Ross, born Marian Ellen Ross on October 25, 1928, in Watertown, Carver County, Minnesota, is a retired American actress whose career spanned stage, film, and television across more than six decades. The middle child of Gordon and Ellen Alicia Ross, she grew up with an elder sister, Alicia, and a younger brother, Gordon, living in Waconia and Willmar before the family settled in Albert Lea, Minnesota. At thirteen, she altered the spelling of her first name from "Marian" to "Marion," believing the revised form would appear more striking on theatrical programs and marquees. After her sophomore year of high school, she relocated to Minneapolis to study drama at the MacPhail Center for Music and attend Southwest High School, then moved with her family to San Diego, California at age sixteen. She graduated from Point Loma High School and subsequently earned an undergraduate degree from San Diego State University.

Ross launched her professional career in 1953, making her film debut in Forever Female alongside Ginger Rogers and William Holden, and simultaneously beginning television work that year on the series Life with Father, where she played the Irish maid for two seasons. Her film appearances through the 1950s included The Glenn Miller Story (1954), Sabrina (1954), Lust for Life (1956), Lizzie (1957), Teacher's Pet (1958), Some Came Running (1958), and Operation Petticoat (1959). On television, she appeared in 1954 as Ginny Thorpe on The Lone Ranger, and in the 1961–62 season played Gertrude Berg's daughter on the CBS sitcom Mrs. G. Goes to College. Her Broadway career ran from 1958 to 1986, during which she starred in Arsenic and Old Lace and appeared in the play Edwin Booth.

Ross is best known to television audiences for portraying Marion Cunningham, the matriarch of the Cunningham family, on the ABC sitcom Happy Days, which ran for eleven seasons from 1974 to 1984. She appeared in all but two episodes of the series and received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her performance in 1979 and 1984. She later reprised the character on the spin-off series Joanie Loves Chachi and on Family Guy. Between 1978 and 1986, she appeared in multiple roles on The Love Boat, becoming a series regular in the final 1986–87 season as Emily Haywood, the love interest of Captain Stubing, played by Gavin MacLeod.

Following Happy Days, Ross starred in the CBS comedy-drama Brooklyn Bridge, which ran from 1991 to 1993. The series won a Golden Globe Award and received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination after its first season, and Ross herself earned back-to-back Primetime Emmy nominations for her work on the show in 1992 and 1993. In 1996, she appeared opposite Shirley MacLaine in The Evening Star, a sequel to the 1983 film Terms of Endearment, playing housekeeper Rosie Dunlop. Her performance earned her a 1997 Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and a win at the 1997 Lone Star Film and Television Awards for Best Supporting Actress. She received a fifth Emmy nomination in 1999 for a two-episode appearance on the CBS drama Touched by an Angel.

Ross held recurring television roles as Drew Carey's mother on The Drew Carey Show, as grandmother Bernice Forman on That '70s Show, and as both Lorelai "Trix" Gilmore and Marilyn Gilmore on Gilmore Girls. In 2007 and 2010, she played Ida Holden on ABC's Brothers & Sisters. Her voice work included Grandma SquarePants on Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants and Mrs. Lopart on Handy Manny, among other animated series. In June 2008, the Albert Lea Civic Theater in Albert Lea, Minnesota — the city where Ross grew up — was renamed the Marion Ross Performing Arts Center in her honor. Ross retired from acting in 2021, though she continued to make occasional appearances in online projects, and in 2024 returned to SpongeBob SquarePants to reprise her role as Grandma SquarePants in the season fourteen episode "Don't Make Me Laugh."