September 12, 1959: "Bonanza" Premieres

House Cartwright: Left to right: Pernell Roberts as Adam,

Michael Landon as Joe, Lorne Greene as Ben and Dan Blocker as Hoss

September 12, 1959: Bonanza premieres on NBC. For 20 years, CBS had Gunsmoke, a candidate for the title of the greatest Western show in TV history. For 14 years, NBC had Bonanza, the other candidate -- and, in my opinion, the better candidate.

The series is set in Virginia City, Nevada, which really was one of the leading cities in the American West in the 19th Century, though it didn't last long as such in the 20th Century. A tombstone showing a death date of 1868 in a 1967 episode shows that the series takes place 99 years in the past.

Lorne Greene plays Ben Cartwright, a former ship captain and Army scout who went west and made a fortune in silver mining -- the titular bonanza -- which he parlayed into the Ponderosa, a huge cattle ranch and logging operation on the shore of Lake Tahoe. This made him possibly the richest man in the Nevada Territory, and, eventually, within the show's continuity, one of the founding fathers of the State of Nevada.

He married 3 times, to 3 different women, who gave him 3 different sons, and all 3 marriages ended in tragedy. His 1st wife, Elizabeth Stoddard (Geraldine Brooks), was the daughter of a sea captain under whom young Ben served. Given the state of medicine at the time, giving birth to Adam was too much for her, and she died.

His 2nd wife, Inger Stevenson, was a Swedish shopkeeper (played by Swedish actress Inga Swenson), who followed Ben west, giving birth to Hoss in the middle of a wagon train's journey. She was killed in an Indian attack. His 3rd wife, Marie De Marigny (Felicia Farr), was a New Orleans belle with a checkered past. Ben met her on a visit to the Crescent City, they fell for each other, and he married her and took her west. Some time after giving birth to Joe, she fell from a horse and died.

The show has the best opening in the history of TV, and I will knock anyone who wants to try it off this hill. With a stirring theme song, it shows a map of the Ponderosa, with a fire burning through it, and then Ben and his 3 sons come charging across the prairie on their horses. Then each is shown in turn, although not always in the same order: Sometimes it's by age, sometimes in alphabetical order, sometimes no discernable order. The opening closes with showing one or two guest stars for that episode. (The song did have words, and a cast album was made, with Greene, an Ottawa native and once a radio announcer known as The Voice of Canada, singing it.)

The eldest son, Adam, was the smartest and the most sensible, but also a bit moody. He was the only one of the Cartwrights who was mentioned as having attended college, studying architecture and engineering "back east," and designed the house on the Ponderosa. (Greene liked the house's exterior and its studio set so much that he had an exact replica built on his own land.)

By 1964, his portrayer, Pernell Roberts, wanted out, and so he was written out, having been said to have gone to Australia to make his own fortune as a sheep rancher.

The middle son was born with the name Eric, but was given the nickname "Hoss," a Scandinavian term for, as Inger put it, "a big, friendly fellow." And he was big: His portrayer, Dan Blocker, was 6-foot-4 and 320 pounds. Hoss wasn't very smart, and some men took advantage of his gullibility. But he was kindhearted, and usually figured out what the right thing to do was.

The youngest son was Joseph, and since he was so much younger and, at least at first, smaller than his brothers, especially Hoss, he was nicknamed Little Joe. Michael Landon played him, and he inherited his mother's Southern, Louisiana, New Orleans tempestuous nature.

In one early episode, taking place on the eve of the American Civil War, Joe took the secessionist side, and Adam, born in New England, took the Union side. Hoss, born in the Midwest, tried to make peace between them, and it didn't work. They came to blows, but Ben separated them before there could be a winner, and said, "Brother against brother? How dare you? Both of you?"

Ben, always called "Pa" by his sons, was strict. He frequently had to tell his sons, especially Joe, "Take your feet off the table." On the Ponderosa, and on missions like cattle drives and posses, his word was law. Still, he was a believer in American democracy, to the point that -- unusual for TV shows of that period, but then, this wasn't taking place in the present day, making it easier for the censors -- he stood up for black people, Mexicans, Asians and Native Americans. (The fact that a Native's arrow had killed his 2nd wife didn't matter: He built friendships with some nearby tribesmen.)

Despite already having white hair, Greene was just 44 years old when the show began. Roberts and Blocker were 31, too old to play his sons. Landon was almost 23, young enough to be Ben's son, but too old to be a teenager. By the time the show ended, Landon was 36, and already writing and directing episodes of the show.

Adam was effectively replaced by Candy Canaday, played by David Canary, a ranch hand who rose to the rank of Ben's foreman. Ben Johnson, noted for his Western roles, joined the cast as ranch hand Bronc Evans. By 1970, in order to keep the attention of younger viewers, who could no longer take Landon seriously as the youngest son, 14-year-old Mitch Vogel was brought in to play Jamie Hunter, an orphan that Ben soon adopts. The character, who predated The Brady Bunch's Cousin Oliver by 4 years, never caught on.

(Ironically, when Battlestar Galactica, in which Greene later starred, was canceled by ABC, it was brought back as Galactica 1980, and the child genius character of Dr. Zee was played in the pilot by Robbie Rist, who had played Cousin Oliver. After the pilot, he was replaced by a British actor named Patrick Stuart. Not "Stewart.")

The show kept going and going. But on May 13, 1972, after the end of the 13th season, Blocker died from complications from gallbladder surgery. He was only 43 years old. When the 14th season began, it was mentioned, without specifics, that Hoss had died -- the 1st time in TV history that this had been said onscreen.

Another acknowledgement of this was an episode in which Joe marries a woman named Alice Harper, but she is murdered shortly thereafter. At the end of the episode, Joe stands over her grave, and says, "I love you." This wasn't just Joe saying it to Alice: It was also Landon saying it to Blocker.

This gave rise to the impression that, every time one of the Cartwright sons got married, the bride soon died. In fact, Joe was the only one ever shown to get married. This impression may have been confused by the fact that all of Ben's wives had died young, thus making the next wife possible. But although Ben did date after the show's opening, he never remarried.

But without Hoss, the show just wasn't the same, and the last episode aired on January 16, 1973. Just 20 months later, Landon began starring on Little House on the Prairie, also on NBC, also in the Wild West period, but not nearly as far west: The prairie was in Minnesota. He played Charles Ingalls, father of Laura Ingalls Wilder, on whose books the show was based. At long last, Landon was the one being called "Pa."

For a time, a Bonanza theme park opened outside the real Virginia City, but, as memories of the show at its peak (from the 1959 pilot until Roberts' 1965 departure) faded, the park lost money, and closed. This was also the case with the Bonanza and Ponderosa chains of casual-dining steakhouses, in which Blocker was an early investor.

NBC would produce sequel movies, after Greene died in 1987 and Landon followed in 1991. Taking place in 1905 and shortly thereafter, Michael Landon Jr. directed and starred as "Benj" Cartwright, the son of Little Joe and his 2nd wife, who was apparently also dead. Emily Warfield played Joe's sister, Sara. Alistair MacDougal, an Australian actor, played Adam's Australian-born son, Adam Cartwright Jr., a.k.a. A.C.

Brian Leckner, who bore a bit of resemblance to Blocker, played Joshua Overton, the son that Hoss never knew he had. Thereafter, the character was called Josh Cartwright. Dirk Blocker, Dan's son and (naturally) an even closer lookalike, appeared, but not as a Cartwright: He played Walter Fenster, a newspaper reporter. Ben Johnson returned as Bronc, now the ranch foreman, along with Shaft actor Richard Roundtree as his assistant, Jacob Briscoe.

The fates of the original Cartwrights were revealed: Hoss died in 1872, drowning while saving another man from the that fate, having no idea that his romance on a recent visit to St. Louis had produced a son; Little Joe, who would have been in his 50s at the time, died riding up San Juan Hill with Theodore Roosevelt in 1898; Ben died of old age the next year; and Adam was still alive and ranching in Australia, matching the fact that Roberts was the only one of the original four then still alive. Having gone on to star in Trapper John, M.D. from 1979 to 1986, Roberts died in 2010.

*

September 12, 1959 was a Saturday. It was the opening week of the college football season -- sort of. Only 2 games were played that day, both in a minor conference -- appropriately, out west. New Mexico State beat Northern Arizona, 35-0 at Aggie Memorial Stadium in Las Cruces, New Mexico. And North Dakota beat Montana, 27-19 at Dornblaser Field in Missoula, Montana.

These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Detroit Tigers, 4-0 at Yankee Stadium. Don Mossi pitched a 4-hit shutout to beat Whitey Ford. Al Kaline went 2-for-3 with 2 walks. Mickey Mantle went 0-for-4, and Yogi Berra did not play.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Kansas City Athletics, 4-3 at Fenway Park in Boston. Ted Williams did not play. Roger Maris appeared as a pinch-hitter for the A's, but did not reach base.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles, 6-1 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Brooks Robinson went 0-for-3 and was hit by a pitch.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Washington Senators, 7-2 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 6-4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Bob Gibson got the win. Ken Boyer hit a home run. Stan Musial did not play. Walt "Moose" Moryn hit a home run for the Cubs, but Ernie Banks did not play.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the Cincinnati Reds, 4-3 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Eddie Mathews hit a home run, and Hank Aaron went 2-for-4 with 2 RBIs. Frank Robinson went 0-for-4.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 9-1 at Seals Stadium in San Francisco. Orlando Cepeda hit a home run, and Willie Mays went 2-for-3 with 2 walks and 2 RBIs.

* Despite it being a Saturday, with a doubleheader between them at the Los Angeles Coliseum the day before and another game the following day, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Los Angeles Dodgers were not scheduled for this day.

Also, in English soccer, Arsenal beat Manchester City, 3-1 at Highbury in North London.