Virgin River fans know Annette O’Toole as Hope, the gossipy but good-hearted town mayor. Her part in the popular Netflix series is just the latest in a long string of memorable roles for the Texas-born actor, who has been performing since she was a child. One of her first real jobs was on the iconic TV western Gunsmoke.
One of Annette O’Toole’s first acting jobs was on ‘Gunsmoke’
O’Toole, who was born in 1952 in Houston, started taking dance classes as a toddler at her mother’s school. When she was a teen, her family moved to Los Angeles so that she could pursue a career in Hollywood. At 16, she landed a role as a dancer on The Danny Kaye Show. She also appeared in episodes of My Three Sons and the anthology series This Is the Life. But O’Toole’s first grown-up acting job came a couple of years later when she landed a role on Gunsmoke.
O’Toole played a character named Edda Sprague in the season 16 episode “The Witness.” In the episode, Ira Pickett’s (Dack Rambo) father Osgood (Harry Morgan) holds a family hostage so that they can’t testify against his son.
Taking the Gunsmoke job was a tough decision for O’Toole. Around the same time, she’d also landed a part as a main dancer in the musical Promises, Promises. But she couldn’t do both because the schedules overlapped. In the end, she chose the TV show because she wasn’t confident she had what took to really excel as a dancer.
“I’m a good [dancer] but will never be a great one,” she told the Daily Planet. “So, I decided to do the guest appearance on Gunsmoke. I did hope to still do dancing and some singing down the road still, which I have. Looking back I think it was the right decision to make.”
The ‘Virgin River’ actor said her role on ‘Gunsmoke’ was ‘a joy’
While O’Toole only appeared in one episode of Gunsmoke, it was an experience she never forgot. She’s posted several times about her time on the show on social media. In August 2022, she shared a photo of her and Morgan in the episode. “My first ‘adult’ role on Gunsmoke. 1978. With the GREAT Harry Morgan,” she captioned the Instagram post.
In April 2023, she posted a behind-the-scenes photo of herself and several of her Gunsmoke co-stars. “My first real acting job,” she wrote. “Gunsmoke episode ‘The Witness’ with Barry Brown, Dack Rambo, and Tim O’Connor. A complete joy.”
Annette O’Toole has also appeared in ‘Smile ’ and ‘Smallville’
O’Toole’s role on Gunsmoke soon led to other, more substantial parts. In 1975, she starred in the beauty pageant satire Smile. She played country star Tammy Wynette in the 1981 TV movie Stand By Your Man and adult Beverly Marsh in the 1990 TV miniseries It. The same year, she was nominated for an Emmy for playing Rose Kennedy Fitzgerald in the miniseries The Kennedys of Massachusetts.
For two seasons, in the late 1990s O’Toole played the ex-wife of the title character (played by Don Johnson) in Nash Bridges. In 2001, she joined the cast of Smallville, where she played Clark Kent’s mother Martha Kent. It was O’Toole’s second Superman-related project. In 1983, she played Lana Lang in the movie Superman III. More recently, O’Toole has appeared in The Good Doctor, Search Party, and Kidding, in addition to Virgin River.
