Actress, singer, and dancer Bonnie Franklin died today at home in Los Angeles of complications of pancreatic cancer. She was 69. She had been diagnosed with the cancer in September. Best-known for her portrayal of the pert, full-of-gumption divorced parent Ann Romano on the Norman Lear sitcom One Day at a Time that ran from December 1975 to May 1984 (ranked in the top 20 for eight of those seasons and in the top 10 for four), the five-foot-three redhead was also a stage and movie actress who spent years singing and dancing in a nightclub act. “I know it’s just a television show, and I don’t think that I am changing the way the world is structured,” she told the Washington Post in 1980 about her sitcom character wrestling with such issues as sexual harassment, rape, and menopause, “but sometimes we strike chords that do make people think a bit.” An excellent tap dancer by age nine, she danced on The Colgate Comedy Hour in 1953; the next year she played Susan Cratchit on A Christmas Carol on the CBS variety show Shower of Stars; and in 1956 she had a uncredited roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man and the comedy The Kettles in the Ozarks. She turned down an offer to be a Mouseketeer on The Mickey Mouse Club. After attending Smith College in Massachusetts, Franklin transferred to UCLA, where she graduated with a major in English in 1966. Her marriage to Ronald Sossi, a playwright, ended in divorce in 1970. She had her breakthrough as a performer that year, when she was nominated for a Tony for her 10-minute song-and-dance performance on Broadway as a chorus gypsy in Applause with Lauren Bacall. She met her future husband, movie producer Marvin Minoff, on the set of the made-for-TV biopic on Margaret Sanger, and they were married for 29 years. There were no children.