Les Jones

A&E > The French Love Jerry Lewis and Nellie Oleson

My boyhood crush was on Laura Ingalls, but I'm starting to really like actress Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie. In another interview I read she said she couldn't buy a date in high school. Guys either wouldn't ask her out because she had been Nellie Oleson, or they wanted to date Nellie Oleson and it creeped her out. Here's the new interview. Interesting excerpt:

Do you think Nellie, ultimately, just needed the right person to love her? Because it seems like the episodes when a boy showed some intense interest in her that she really did become a very likeable nice person.

Well you have the whole Percival and "The Taming of The Shrew" thing…

Sure, someone that could stand up to her and still say that she was pretty.

Of course, that's what the French think, the French think that Nellie is just misunderstood. Nellie is loved in France because they don't think she's mean, they think she's French.

Yeah, "She's the most personable woman we've ever seen!"

"Yes, a lovely girl!", and they don't think there's anything wrong with her. They had a whole discussion when I was in Paris people were saying, "She's misunderstood, and she's unloved…the poor thing, don’t you see she’s just jealous of Laura!" So the French feel it was all just a crime of passion.

Hi, Steve!