Bonanza Classic Revived
Lawyer and Bonanza enthusiast Andrew Klyde shares the story behind the 50th anniversary DVD release.
By: Henry Cabot Beck 11/03/2009
Bonanza is so much a part of our cultural history and our TV past that its familiarity disguises the fact that the show is genuinely odd.
Of all the gun-toting lawman and loner shows that ate up the finite broadcast space of TV’s Golden Age, Bonanza drew upon standard TV Western motifs the least. In fact, the show, like actor Michael Landon’s later series, Little House on the Prairie, has more in common with the Family Saga genre than the Western.
The networks were looking for novel approaches to the Western, which, at the time, was its most successful genre. Yet the idea of fashioning a series about a Civil War-era land baron and three-time widower Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene) and his three greatly dissimilar sons, Hoss (Dan Blocker), Adam (Pernell Roberts) and Little Joe (Landon), set up high on the eastern reaches of Lake Tahoe, is a remarkably curious one.
In the same way that John Meston guided Gunsmoke, Herb Meadow and Sam Rolfe drove Have Gun, Will Travel and Gene Roddenberry fashioned Star Trek, Bonanza was the brainchild of David Dortort. While writing scripts for a variety of TV series during the early 1950s, Dortort was producing a half-hour, black-and-white Western, The Restless Gun, when he found out that NBC was looking to produce an hour-long Western. Dortort reached back into a place and time in American history that had once inspired another show he wrote, in 1953, called “Man of the Comstock,” for NBC’s Firestone Theatre. Through his connections, luck and spectacular timing, he managed to sell NBC on Bonanza.
To Dortort’s credit, Bonanza remained hugely popular throughout its 14-year run. The desertion of one of its four principles (Roberts) and the death of another (Blocker) finally closed down the shop.
One of the surprises that comes from viewing the early episodes of Bonanza is how progressive the show was. Talk, and there’s a lot of it, almost always took priority over action, as did reasoning over violence. The series most often was about avoiding and resolving conflict, although no Western could survive an entire hour without a donnybrook or two.
These early episodes make it clear that the most immediate concern of the Cartwright family was in keeping people, especially hustlers, entrepreneurs and assorted riffraff, off their propery. An interesting secondary concern was in maintaining a safe environment for the local Paiutes who were inclined to poke holes in folks when crossed. Trouble with the Paiutes actually did play a significant role in the Comstock Lode region of Virginia City, Nevada, during and after the Civil War.
The antagonism between the Cartwrights and the community was a story element that had to be corrected early on because it was counter-productive for the health of the show. Bonanza took a while to settle into its greatest strengths, but to the show and Dortort’s credit, it did exactly that.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bonanza, which aired on NBC from September 1959 to January 1973, the entire first season is available for the first time on DVD, either as two separate volumes or banded together into one. It’s a little silly that Paramount didn’t just pony up and put a handsome box together for the eight discs, but who can fathom marketing?
The quality of the picture and sound on these discs is just great—the studio outdid itself in that department. You’ll also find many extras, from interviews to photo galleries, in the collection.
Comments (2)
Great article!
The DVDs are fantastic and I can't wait for more to come out. Thanks to Andy Klyde for keeping the Bonanza flame burning.
Prof. F. Sheets, LI NY
I loved Henry Beck’s article on Bonanza. He wrote: “In the same way that John Meston guided Gunsmoke, Herb Meadow and Sam Rolfe drove Have Gun Will Travel, and Gene Roddenberry fashioned Star Trek...”
I found it interesting that he put Have Gun Will Travel and Star Trek together in the same sentence. Others have observed that Trek was really a western in Spandex clothing. If you have watched any of the Have Gun DVDs recently, you will find an eerie similarity between the preachy, moral lessons of Have Gun and those of Trek.
Read the credits. Many, perhaps most, of the Have Gun, Will Travel episodes were directed by, yup, you guessed it, Gene Roddenberry. It seems Paladin was unknowingly going where no man had ever gone...yet.
John Taylor
Show Low, AZ
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