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
The name Bonanza had a kind of double meaning for David Dortort—because he used the common definition of bonanza to describe the riches below ground—the Comstock Lode, the silver and gold in the area they discovered there at the time—but it also refers to the riches of the land itself, the trees and the water and the livestock. That was a sort of bonanza for the Cartwrights, who were more environmentally conscious. Ecology and conservation and preservation is a theme that’s prevalent throughout the whole history of the series.
The Ponderosa was like the fifth character in the series.
The Ponderosa, the Ponderous Pine trees—. David Dortort originally envisioned the Cartwright ranch as having the name the Panamint.
Which comes from where?
It’s in the area, Panamint, and it comes from, well, you “pan all day, and you make a mint.” But that [title] didn’t really grab him or anybody else. So he was up in one of his late night writing sessions because he wrote the pilot under terrible, arduous conditions—.
Why is that?
In late 1958 NBC executives had decided that they were ready to produce something in-house, feeling they could do as good a job as an outside provider. It was the tradition at the time to get programming from outside, like Warner Brothers or Universal. But CBS had had some success with Perry Mason, which was produced in-house. So the NBC executives felt they should be allowed to try the same thing. They finally received permission from their superiors on the East Coast, and their instruction was, develop a one-hour program, and make it a Western; a Western, obviously, because it was the most popular genre, and one hour because the one-hour format was becoming increasingly popular. The half-hour program had been dominant for most of the decade, The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy and the most successful Westerns, Gunsmoke, Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Rifleman. But Wagon Train and Maverick were one-hour shows that were doing well, so they decided to put together a one-hour show and started soliciting ideas.
A fellow named Alan Livingstone was the head of the programming department. That’s a name that should be much better known than it is because he was responsible for what I like to call the “three B’s [Bozo, Beatles, Bonanza].” He created the iconic children’s clown character Bozo. After he left NBC, he became president of Capitol Records and agreed to pick up the Beatles, over the protests of his staff. But he also was the guy who said yes to David Dortort when he came in to make a pitch for a one-hour Western that told the story of three brothers and their father who owned and operated a cattle and timber ranch near Virginia City in the time period just before the Civil War and the [1859] discovery of the Comstock Lode.
But Livingstone’s associate was a fellow named Fred Hamilton, and it was really Fred who was David Dortort’s champion. The problem was, although they very much liked his concept, Dortort was under contract to do The Restless Gun for Review, the television arm of MCA and Universal. So he couldn’t actively produce the new project, but he could write it. So he would produce The Restless Gun during the day, and write what became the pilot for Bonanza in longhand at night in the office of Fenton Coe, NBC’s head of production on the West Coast.
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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