TV actress Linda Kelsey

The comics had crusading reporter Brenda Starr, but television had Billie Newman, the intrepid reporter for the fictional Los Angeles Tribune on the newspaper drama "Lou Grant." And no actress was better suited to bring her to life then Linda Kelsey.

Linda Kelsey's success as a television actress was nothing short of serendipitous.  Born and raised in Minneapolis, she got her big break on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" - which itself was set in Minneapolis - playing an ambitious young woman out to get a starring role on the domestic-advice show at WJM-TV hosted by Sue Ann Nivens - played by Betty White.  That show also happened to star Ed Asner, who played WJM-TV news producer Lou Grant - before his character was spun off into the drama of that name in the 1977-78 television season.

However, Ms. Kelsey was not an original cast member of "Lou Grant."  She only joined the cast when it became obvious after the first three episodes into the first season that original cast member Rebecca Balding was too perky and bubbly to play a hard-nosed newspaper reporter.  Ms. Kelsey did not replace Ms. Balding as the same character; Billie Newman was to be a completely different character from Ms. Balding's Carla Mardigian (whose disappearance was never explained).  By 1977, Ms. Kelsey already had a strong résumé, having appeared in several television shows and even a miniseries about Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, "Eleanor and Franklin," playing FDR's mistress, Lucy Mercer.  (She reprised the role in a sequel that covered Roosevelt's Presidency.)

In her first "Lou Grant" episode, Billie is working for the arts and leisure section of the Los Angeles Tribune when she finds herself in New Mexico covering a mysterious death of an artist she's profiling.  Lou sends his top reporter Joe Rossi to cover the breaking news, much to Billie's chagrin, but by the time the death is solved, she has gained Lou's and Rossi's respect and is accepted as a member of the city-news department.

Ms. Kelsey was nominated five times for an Emmy for her role on "Lou Grant" but never actually won.  She stayed with the show until the end of its run in 1982.

In the late eighties, she played a mom running a day care center out of her house on the NBC sitcom "Day By Day," which lasted two seasons.  After appearing in a few more TV shows in the nineties, she returned to Minneapolis.

However, she didn't retire from acting.  Linda Kelsey remains active in local theater in Minneapolis, and she even took part in stagings of "Mary Tyler Moore Show" episodes, including the one she had appeared in - only this time she played Sue Ann Nivens.