NEWSMAKERS

NEWSMAKERS

‘Little House’ actress MacGregor dies at 93

LOS ANGELES

Katherine MacGregor, who played petty, gossiping mother Harriet Oleson on TV’s “Little House on the Prairie,” has died, a representative said Wednesday. She was 93.

MacGregor died Tuesday at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement community in Los Angeles, said Tony Sears, who is acting as her attorney.

While her onscreen nasty daughter Nellie Oleson was the character viewers most loved to hate on the NBC series that ran from 1974 to 1983, her cruel, greedy mother, Harriet Oleson, was just as awful, never missing a chance at small-town social climbing or petty backbiting.

They stood in contrast to the warm, loving members of the Ingalls family, who were the show’s focus and often the Olesons’ targets.

William Shatner on Twitter called MacGregor “deliciously wicked” on the show.

Marie Antoinette pearl reaps record $36M

GENEVA

A large, drop-shaped natural pearl pendant sold for more than $36 million Wednesday at a rare auction of jewelry that once belonged to French Queen Marie Antoinette, which Sotheby’s is calling a record price for a pearl at auction.

The “Queen Marie Antoinette’s Pearl,” a diamond-and-pearl pendant, was among the highlight offerings on the block at the Sotheby’s sale of jewelry from the Bourbon-Parma dynasty in Geneva.

Associated Press