Peggy Rea

Character actress Peggy Rea's career started with a relatively minor recurring role on the classic sitcom "I Love Lucy." She landed the part while working as a secretary for CBS radio, setting the tone for the rest of her television career playing heavy-set, motherly, sometimes domineering parts. Before her television debut on "I Love Lucy," and after she quit her job at CBS to pursue acting, Rea appeared in the Cole Porter Broadway musical "Out of this World" and, along with actor Anthony Quinn, toured in a national road company production of "A Streetcar Named Desire." After making several one-off, recurring appearances on a variety of sitcoms throughout the 1960s and '70s, including three episodes of "All in the Family" as Cousin Bertha, she joined the cast of "The Waltons" as cousin Rose Burton, who moves in to take care of the Walton children after John-Boy joins the military and his wife Olivia subsequently volunteers at the VA hospital. A year after she stepped into that role, Rea joined the cast of "The Dukes of Hazzard" as patriarch Boss Hogg's wife, Lulu, a food enthusiast who often challenged her husband's authority. In the 1990s, Rea had two major recurring roles on family-based sitcoms that would be the last ones in her career. The first was on "Step by Step" as the no-nonsense mother of Suzanne Somers's character, and the second was as the ex-mother-in-law of Brett Butler's character on "Grace Under Fire."