Barbara Bosson, who rose from a brief appearance as an anxious single mother on the popular station-house drama series “Hill Street Blues” to a recurring part as a police captain’s tough ex-wife, died Feb. 18 at a hospital in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 83 years old at the time.
Her son, Jesse Bochco, acknowledged her death but did not elaborate.
“Hill Street Blues,” co-created by Ms. Bosson’s then-husband, Steven Bochco, redefined the police show genre with cinéma vérité-style camera work and people with flaws, phobias, and contradictions on full display throughout its 1981-1987 run. Few characters were as emotionally charged as Ms. Bosson’s Fay Furillo.
In the first episode, Fay stormed into the station to confront her ex-husband. Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) bounced his child-support check. Fay isn’t afraid to yell at the captain in front of the other cops.
According to Steven Bochco, Ms. Bosson’s scene was intended to be a one-time cameo to avoid confrontations with network executives about nepotism. Viewers, on the other hand, spoke up. Fay was an instant hit and was quickly cast in the program.
Ms. Bosson received five Emmy nominations in five years for her supporting role as a character who reinvents herself to rescue crime victims and acquires a cheeky confidence with catchphrases like “Hey, buster.”
“I had a fan club,” Ms. Bosson admitted in 1987.
She claimed that women would write to her, expressing how much they identified with Fay’s challenges and saying, “you are me, and if you can do well, so can I.”
“I started to feel like I was representing some important people who aren’t represented on television,” Ms. Bosson remarked.
Steven Bochco left the show after the fourth season due to plot and budget conflicts with the show’s producers, MTM Enterprises. The show’s co-creator, Michael Kozoll, left during the second season.
Ms. Bosson departed the show after the fifth season, stating that the writers and producers were gradually erasing her character’s complexities.
“In some amusing ways, I’m like Fay,” she commented in 1983. “On occasion, I will feel so outraged by something that I will talk too loudly in public…” “Fay is a perpetual victim.”
Ms. Bosson frequently claimed that researching the real-life job of a victim advocate and convincing Bochco to include it in the growth of her “Hill Street Blues” character was one of her most fulfilling moments.
“These are brave folks doing this work,” she remarked. “So I examined what that profession was and went to my husband and said, ‘Come on, let’s make Fay — the perfect victim, for God’s sake — a victims’ advocate. It’s an amazing progression.’ He took a year to agree to my demands, but he did.”
The show acquired a passionate fan base who speculated on details such as the locale (an unknown gritty Northern city that Steven Bochco claimed was a hybrid of “Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, and Newark”). “Be careful out there!” exclaimed Sgt. Phil Esterhaus (Michael Conrad) at the conclusion of the morning briefing. For years, it was a common term in ordinary conversation.
Ms. Bosson later appeared in three ABC crime dramas: “Hooperman” (1987-1989) as a police captain opposite co-star John Ritter, “Cop Rock” (1990) as a mayor, and “Murder One” (1995-1997) as a deputy district attorney). For her work, she won her sixth Emmy nomination for supporting actress in a drama series.
Barbara Ann Bosson was born in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, on November 1, 1939, and spent her childhood in nearby Belle Vernon, south of Pittsburgh.
She was accepted to Carnegie Tech’s theater department (now Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh), but she couldn’t afford it.
She relocated to New York and worked in a variety of jobs, including television production assistant and hostess at Manhattan’s Playboy Club, all while studying acting.
In 1965, she was a 26-year-old freshman at Carnegie Tech. She met Bochco (they married in 1969) as well as two young performers, Bruce Weitz and Charles Haid, who would eventually collaborate with her on “Hill Street Blues.”
Ms. Bosson got a position with the Committee, a San Francisco-based improv organization, over her summer break. She never returned to Pittsburgh to finish her degree.
Ms. Bosson made her film debut as a nurse in “Bullitt,” a 1968 crime thriller starring Steve McQueen. She also appeared in the 1974 film adaptation of the Broadway musical “Mame,” which starred Lucille Ball, as well as the conspiracy thriller “Capricorn One” (1977).
Ms. Bosson’s marriage to Bochco was declared null and void. Melissa Bochco, her daughter, a sibling, and two grandkids survive her son.
Ms. Bosson was happy that her performance in “Hill Street Blues” struck a chord with the audience. She mentioned in an interview in 1983 that there were two types of fan mail.
“I get a lot of mail from men saying I despise you, and it’s evident that they think I’m their ex-wife,” she revealed. “But, the majority of my messages come from people who say, ‘Thank God, I saw some of my troubles on television.’”
