MUSIC NOTESMUSIC NOTES
We all know about John, Paul, George and Ringo. Today, as another yet another celebrity death brings another era wistfully to its end, it seems appropriate to talk about another Fab Four.
That would be Ben, Adam, Hoss and Little Joe.
The passing last month of the incredibly underrated actor Pernell Roberts, the last surviving member of the cast of the long-running western “Bonanza,” triggers more fond memories of television viewing, and the indelible characters from those seminal shows in the Sixties.
Roberts, as just about everyone my age knows, played Adam Cartwright, the eldest of the three brothers, who also included the lovable Hoss (played by Dan Blocker) and the loved Little Joe (played by Michael Landon), to the widowed, yet always courageous and benevolent, land baron Ben Cartwright (played by Lorne Greene).
In many ways, for people of my generation, “Bonanza” was the special part of Sunday night television viewing. In those days, we only had the Big Three networks, NBC (which ran the show), CBS and ABC. That night was chocked full of televised entertainment, starting with the wondrous animal life depicted in “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom,” starring Marlin Perkins; the magic and imagination of “The Wonderful World of Disney,” and the variety of “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the last of which, you may recall, first exposed America to that other Fab Four, the Beatles.
What made “Bonanza” special for kids like me? A lot of things, but mostly the time it was on. In those days, like today, prime time shows started at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Sundays, as opposed to 8 p.m. the rest of the week, because then, as now, Sunday night was seen as “family night” for television. Because all the hugely popular shows mentioned above, other than “Bonanza” came on earlier in the evening, the western didn’t start until 9 p.m., the “outer limits” (pun intended) of school night viewing for kids like me.
But, if we’d all been good that day, most of our parents (read mothers) let us stay up and watch the travails of the Cartwright family, usually with our fathers, thereby creating a special bonding time.
And bond we did, for a very long time. Bonanza ran on NBC from September 12, 1959 to January 16, 1973, a period of 14 seasons, making it the second longest running western series, behind the likewise immortal Gunsmoke in television history. Thanks to the cable boom, not to mention the aging of the baby boom, the show has been running for far longer than that in syndication.
“Bonanza’s” basic premise was pretty simple, but quite unorthodox, for its time. The show chronicled the weekly adventures of the Cartwright family, headed by the thrice-widowed patriarch Ben, who had the three sons, each by a different wife (quite the coup in those simpler times, and not often mentioned in the story lines). Roberts’ character, Adam, the eldest, was the urbane architect who designed and built the family ranch house. The middle son was the warm and lovable Hoss, real name Eric (one of the earliest and most obscure answers to television trivia questions), and the youngest was the hotheaded and impetuous Joseph or “Little Joe.” Longtime fans will remember the family's cook was the Chinese immigrant “Hop Sing,” played by veteran character actor Victor Sen Yung. The family lived on a thousand-square mile ranch called the “Ponderosa,” on the shores of Lake Tahoe, near Virginia City, in Nevada.
At its heart, “Bonanza” was considered an atypical western for its time, as the core of the storylines dealt with Ben and his three dissimilar sons, how they cared for one another, their neighbors and their land, rather than the typical, for the time, clichéd and hackneyed Western TV stories lines that usually tried to pass the cowboys killing the Indians as a story line or plot. The show’s approach resonated with viewers, and it eventually reached number one by the mid-'60s. By 1970, it had become the first series to ever wind up in the Top Five for nine consecutive seasons (a record which would stand for decades) and thus established itself as the single biggest hit TV series of the 1960s. It remained high on the ratings until 1971, when it finally fell out of the top 10.
The show was moved to Tuesday nights in 1972, where, amid the ever changing times, it was trumped in the ratings by the sitcom “Maude.” Earlier that year, Blocker had passed away. Greene died in 1987, and Landon, who became an even bigger star, if that was possible, with the sort-of spinoff “Little House on the Prairie,” succumbed in 1991.
Yet, just like with the ongoing lives of Paul and Ringo, longtime fans of the show always felt its pulse so long as Roberts, who, ironically, was the first “son” to leave the series, was still alive. His death from cancer last month truly brings an end to an indelibly popular show that made its imprint on not just television, but American society.
I think I shall stay up past my bedtime for a few Sundays in its honor.
Comments to Mark T. Gould