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Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress - Drama Series
This is a list of winners of the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.
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Mama
Mama was a weekly Maxwell House-sponsored CBS television comedy-drama series which ran from July 1, 1949 until March 17, 1957.
Based on the Kathryn Forbes memoir Mama's Bank Account, which inspired the 1944 John Van Druten play and subsequent 1948...
Award Nominations:
Four Star Playhouse
Four Star Playhouse is a television anthology series that ran from 1952 to 1956. The original premise was that Charles Boyer, Ida Lupino, David Niven, and Dick Powell would take turns starring in episodes. However, several other performers took the...
Lassie
Lassie is an American television series that follows the adventures of a female rough collie named Lassie and her companions, human and animal. One of the longest running dramatic series on television, Lassie was broadcast by a television network...
The Thin Man
The Thin Man is a half-hour weekly television series based on the mystery novel The Thin Man (1933) by Dashiell Hammett. The 72 episodes were produced by MGM Television and shown on NBC for two seasons from 1957–1959 on Friday night.
The series...
Award Nominations:
The Barbara Stanwyck Show
The Barbara Stanwyck Show was a lavishly-produced anthology drama television series which ran on NBC in 1960 and 1961. Barbara Stanwyck served as hostess, and starred in all but four of the half-hour productions. The four she did not star in were...
Award Nominations:
The Loretta Young Show
Letter to Loretta (also known as The Loretta Young Show) is a 30-minute dramatic television anthology series telecast on NBC from 1953 to 1961 {Sundays, 10-10:30pm(et)} for a total of 165 episodes. The filmed show, originally sponsored by Procter &...
The Nurses
The Nurses is a serialized primetime medical drama which aired on CBS from September 27, 1962 to May 11, 1965. It was originally called The Nurses when it premiered in 1962; for the second season, the title was expanded to The Doctors and the Nurses...
Honey West
Honey West is an American crime drama television series produced by the ABC network. The series ran for 30 episodes during the 1965-1966 television season and starred Anne Francis as female private detective Honey West.
The Honey West character was...
Award Nominations:
Peyton Place
Peyton Place is an American prime time soap opera which aired on ABC in half-hour episodes from September 15, 1964 to June 2, 1969.
Based upon the 1956 novel of the same name by Grace Metalious, the series was preceded by a 1957 film adaptation. A...
The Avengers
The Avengers is a British television adventure series about secret agents in 1960s Britain. The programmes were made by TV company ABC Weekend Television (from July 1968 they were produced by Thames Television), and created by its Head of Drama...
The Big Valley
The Big Valley is an American television Western which ran on ABC from September 15, 1965 to May 19, 1969, which starred Barbara Stanwyck, as a California widowed mother. It was created by A.I. Bezzerides and Louis F. Edelman. The producer was Levy...
The Mod Squad
The Mod Squad is a television series that ran on ABC from September 24, 1968 until August 23, 1973. This series starred Michael Cole, Peggy Lipton, Clarence Williams III and Tige Andrews. The executive producers of the series were Aaron Spelling and...
Here Come the Brides
Here Come the Brides is a television series that aired on the ABC television network from September 25, 1968 to April 3, 1970. It was loosely based upon the Mercer Girls, Asa Mercer's efforts to bring civilization to old Seattle by importing...
The High Chaparral
The High Chaparral is a Western-themed television series which aired on NBC from 1967 to 1971. The show was created by David Dortort, who had previously created the hit Bonanza for the network. The theme song was also written and conducted by...
The Name of the Game
The Name of the Game is an American television series that ran from 1968 to 1971 on NBC, totaling 76 episodes of 90 minutes. The series rotated between three characters working at a large magazine company: a crusading reporter with People magazine ...
The First Churchills
The First Churchills was a BBC mini-series from 1969 about the life of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough and his wife, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. It starred John Neville as the duke and Susan Hampshire as the duchess, was written...
Award Nominations:
Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible is an American television series which was created and initially produced by Bruce Geller. It chronicled the missions of a team of secret American government agents known as the Impossible Missions Force (IMF). The leader of the...
Elizabeth R
Elizabeth R is a BBC television drama serial of six 85-minute plays starring Glenda Jackson in the title role. It was first broadcast on terrestrial channel BBC Two from February to March 1971, through the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in...
Ironside
Ironside (originally broadcast under the name A Man Called Ironside in the United Kingdom) is a Universal television series which ran on NBC from September 14, 1967 to February 6, 1975. The character's debut was in a TV-movie on March 28, 1967.
The...
A Case of Rape
A Case of Rape is a 1974 television movie. It premiered on NBC on February 20, 1974.
The film tells the story of a wife and mother who is raped twice by the same man and her ordeals dealing with the actual rape and her subsequent dealing with the...
Award Nominations:
Dirty Sally
Dirty Sally is a short-lived comedy-drama Western series which ran on CBS from January 11 and April 5, 1974. The program was a spin-off of CBS's Gunsmoke.
The series stars Jeanette Nolan as Sally Fergus, a cantankerous, tobacco-chewing, rough...
Award Nominations:
The Migrants
Award Nominations:
McMillan and Wife
McMillan & Wife is a lighthearted American crime drama series that aired on NBC from September 17, 1971 to April 24, 1977. Starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James in the title roles, the series premiered in the fall of 1971 in 90-minute episodes...
Upstairs, Downstairs
Upstairs, Downstairs is a BAFTA and Emmy award-winning British drama television series set in a large townhouse in Edwardian and Georgean London that depicted the lives of the servants "downstairs" and their masters "upstairs". It ran on ITV for...
Sara (1976)
Award Nominations:
Kate McShane
Award Nominations:
The Bionic Woman
The Bionic Woman is an American television series which spun off from The Six Million Dollar Man. It starred Lindsay Wagner as Jaime Sommers, a tennis professional who was nearly killed in a skydiving accident, and was rebuilt by Oscar Goldman ...
The Waltons
The Waltons is an American television series created by Earl Hamner, Jr., based on his book Spencer's Mountain, and a 1963 film of the same name, starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara. The show centered on the titular family growing up in a rural...
Charlie's Angels
Charlie's Angels is a television series about three women who work for a private investigation agency, and is one of the first shows to showcase women in roles traditionally reserved for men. The series was broadcast in the USA on the ABC Television...
Little House on the Prairie
Little House on the Prairie is an American one-hour dramatic television program, starring Michael Landon, about a family living on a farm in Minnesota in the 1870s and 1880s. The show was a loose adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s best-selling...
Family
Family is a television drama series that aired on ABC from 1976 to 1980. Creative control of the show was split between executive producers Leonard Goldberg, Aaron Spelling and Mike Nichols. A total of 86 episodes were produced.
The show featured...
Police Woman
Police Woman is an American television police drama starring Angie Dickinson that ran from September 13, 1974 to March 29, 1978 on NBC.
The show revolved around Sgt. Leann "Pepper" Anderson (Angie Dickinson), an undercover agent working for the...
How the West Was Won
How the West Was Won is an American western television series starring James Arness, Fionnula Flanagan, and Bruce Boxleitner. A spin-off of the 1962 Cinerama film, it aired as a mini-series in 1977, and as a regular series in 1978 and 1979, preceded...
Having Babies
Award Nominations:
The Incredible Hulk
The Incredible Hulk is an American television series based on the Marvel comic book character of the same name. The pilot episodes were a pair of TV movies on the CBS network beginning on November 4, 1977; the series soon followed, airing from March...
Award Nominations:
The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files is an American detective (private investigator) television drama originally aired on the NBC television network between September 13, 1974 and January 10, 1980; it has remained in constant syndication to the present day. The show...
Fame
Fame is a 1980 American musical film conceived and produced by David De Silva, directed by Alan Parker, and written by Christopher Gore. The film follows a group of students through their studies at the New York High School of Performing Arts (which...
Dallas
Dallas is an American prime-time television soap opera that originally ran from 1978 to 1991. It revolved around the Ewings, a wealthy Texas family in the oil and cattle-ranching industries. The show debuted in April 1978 as a five-part miniseries...
Knots Landing
Knots Landing is an American primetime television soap opera that was screened from December 27 1979 to May 13 1993 on CBS. Set in a fictitious coastal suburb of Los Angeles in California, the show centered on the lives of four married couples...
Hart to Hart
Hart to Hart is an American television series starring Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers. The series was created by writer Sidney Sheldon and produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg. It ran from 1979 to 1984 on the ABC Television Network....
Dynasty
Dynasty is an American prime time television soap opera that aired on ABC from January 12, 1981 to May 11, 1989. It was created by Richard and Esther Shapiro and produced by Aaron Spelling, and revolved around the Carringtons, a wealthy oil family...
Murder, She Wrote
Murder, She Wrote is an American television mystery series starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. The series aired for twelve seasons from 1984 to 1996 on the CBS network. It was followed by four TV films...
Hill Street Blues
Hill Street Blues is a serial police drama that was first aired on NBC in 1981 and ran for 146 episodes on primetime into 1987. Reruns are currently being aired on AmericanLife TV Network on weekday nights in the United States, and on weekday...
Moonlighting
Moonlighting was an American television series that first aired on ABC from March 3, 1985 to May 14, 1989 with a total of 67 episodes. The show starred Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd as private detectives and was a mixture of drama, comedy and...
St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere is a U.S. drama television series that originally ran on NBC from October 26, 1982 to May 25, 1988. The series is set at St. Eligius, a decaying urban teaching hospital in Boston's South End neighborhood. The hospital's nickname, "St....
Cagney & Lacey
Cagney & Lacey is an American television series that first aired on the CBS television network for seven seasons from March 25, 1982 to May 16, 1988. It is considered to be American television's first serious drama series with two female leads. A...
Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast is an American television series which first aired on CBS in 1987. Creator Ron Koslow's updated version of the fairy tale has a double focus: the relationship between Vincent (Ron Perlman), a mythic, noble man-beast, and his...
L.A. Law
L.A. Law is an American television legal drama that ran from 1986 to 1994. L.A. Law reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early 1990s and many of the cases on the show dealt with hot topic issues such as abortion, racism, gay...
Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks is an American television serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The series follows the investigation, headed by Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), of the brutal murder of a popular teenager and homecoming queen,...
Thirtysomething
Thirtysomething is an American television drama about a group of baby boomers in their thirties. It was created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick for United Artists Television and Bedford Falls Productions, and distributed for ABC by MGM/UA...
Road to Avonlea
Road to Avonlea is a Emmy Award Winning television series which was first broadcast in Canada, Saudi Arabia and the United States between 1990 and 1996. It was created by Kevin Sullivan and produced by Sullivan Films (later Sullivan Entertainment)...
China Beach
China Beach is an American dramatic television series set at an evacuation hospital during the Vietnam War. The title refers to a beach in the city of Da Nang, Vietnam, that was nicknamed China Beach by unknown foreigners. The ABC TV drama aired for...
The Trials of Rosie O'Neill
The Trials of Rosie O'Neill was an American television drama series, which aired on CBS from 1990 to 1992. The show starred Sharon Gless as Fiona Rose "Rosie" O'Neill, a lawyer working in the public defender's office for the City of Los Angeles. The...
