Bonanza

The Bonanza logo was superimposed upon a map of a wild west frontier area.

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Bonanza was an American western/cowboy television series which aired on NBC from September 12, 1959 through January 16, 1973. Bonanza was the first network television series to film all of its episodes in color. The main sponsor of Bonanza was Chevrolet and the stars appeared endorsing their vehicles.

From 1961 to 1972 it aired on Sunday nights. This timeslot was crucial to the success of the show: from 1964 until 1967, the show was #1 in the yearly Nielsen ratings. In terms of longevity, the show was the second-most popular western in the history of television, behind Gunsmoke.

Contents

1 The \"Bonanza\" name
2 Premise
3 The Cast
4 After cancellation
5 See also
6 External links

The \"Bonanza\" name

Bonanza got its name from the Comstock Lode which was "an exceptionally large and rich mineral deposit" of silver. Virginia City was founded directly over the lode and was mined for 19 years. Ponderosa was an alternative title of the series, often used for the broadcast of syndicated reruns in the 1970s and 1980s.

Premise

The show chronicled the weekly adventures of the Cartwright family, headed by widowed patriarch Ben Cartwright (played by Lorne Greene). He had three sons, each by a different wife: the oldest was Adam (Pernell Roberts); the second was Eric, better known to viewers by his nickname of "Hoss" (Dan Blocker); and the youngest was Joseph or "Little Joe" (Michael Landon). The family's cook was the Chinese immigrant Hop Sing (Victor Sen Yung). The family lived on a thousand-square-mile ranch called "The Ponderosa", on the shore of Lake Tahoe in Nevada; the name refers to the Ponderosa Pine, common in the West. The nearest town to the Ponderosa was Virginia City, where the Cartwrights would go to converse with Sheriff Roy Coffee (played by veteran actor Ray Teal). Greene, Roberts, Blocker, and Landon were equal stars. The opening credits rotated among four versions, with each of the four being shown first in one version (in the order above).

An accidental running gag, which also occurs in the TV western The Big Valley, was that every time one of the Cartwright sons became seriously involved with a woman, as soon as he was married, she was killed off or died gruesomely in the same episode. This also occurred in the case of the patriarch, Ben Cartwright, whose sons were each born to a different wife, and when shown in flashback episodes, each wife died in the same episode, except for the wife who gave birth to Hoss who lasted two episodes.

Bonanza's credits were names superimposed over charcoal drawings. This card was a rendition of creator/producer David Dortort, portrayed here as an overseer in mines.

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The Cast

The cast was very popular with viewers, and Lorne Greene recorded several record albums in character as Ben Cartwright, scoring a #1 hit with his dramatic spoken word performance of "Ringo".

Pernell Roberts left the series in 1965 after a dispute with the show's writers, which contributed to the series' future slide from the #1 spot in the Nielsen ratings. When the show's creator, David Dortort, named himself executive producer in 1967, handing production duties to Robert Blees and removing himself from the day-to-day running of the show in order to spend more time producing the series The High Chaparral, the show's popularity waned even more. In 1967, David Canary joined the cast as Candy Canaday, a drifting cowboy-turned-ranch foreman; a popular addition to the cast, he left in 1970 due to a contract dispute.

In 1970, 14-year-old Mitch Vogel joined the series as Jamie Hunter, the orphaned son of a rainmaker. Ben adopted Jamie in a 1971 episode, and once again Ben had three sons; this was not to last.

In 1972, after the sudden death of Dan Blocker, the show was moved to Tuesday nights. Both moves signaled the end of the program, and are often cited by fans as the moment the series "jumped the shark." Canary returned to his former role of Candy (to make up for Blocker's absence), and a new character named Griff King (played by Tim Matheson) was added. Griff was a one-time outlaw who was paroled into Ben's custody and got a job as a ranch hand; several episodes were built around his character, one Matheson never had a chance to fully develop before the show's sudden demise in January 1973.

During the latter years of the series, Michael Landon began writing and directing episodes of Bonanza.

After cancellation

For 14 years the Cartwrights were the premier western family on American television and are still immensely popular on networks such as TV Land and Hallmark.

Following the program's cancellation it was brought back as several made-for-television movies. These include Bonanza: The Movie (1988), Back to Bonanza (1993), Bonanza: The Return (1993), Bonanza: Under Attack (1995), and Bonanza: The Next Generation (1995).

In 2001 there was an attempt to revive the series' ideas with a prequel, Ponderosa, with a pilot directed by Kevin James Dobson and filmed in Australia. Covering the time when the Cartwrights first arrived at the Ponderosa, it lasted 20 episodes.

Bonanza also featured a memorable theme song that is often parodied. Lorne Greene and the cast recorded versions of the song with lyrics. Although the Bonanza theme is one of the best known pieces of made-for-television music, it was not used for the entire run of the series. A new theme song was written in 1970 and replaced the oft-remembered tune that fall.

The program's Nevada set, the Ponderosa Ranch, operated as an amusement park from 1967 until September 2004, remaining a popular attraction for a considerable period after the program's cancellation.

Famous director Robert Altman (Nashville (1975 film)) directed some episodes of the show.

Most early episodes of the series are in the public domain, and some TV showings of these episodes on low-budget stations and networks (and also on low-budget public domain DVDs and VHS tapes) substitute the familiar theme music for generic music.

In the 1980s, NBC sold the rights to the series to Republic Pictures (then part of the Spelling Entertainment organization). Aside from the public domain episodes still available on video, select episodes were officially released in 2003 on DVD via then-Republic video licensee Artisan Entertainment (which later became Lionsgate Home Entertainment). Republic still owns the series, and today is distributed via CBS Paramount Television.

External links

[Bonanza] at EPisodeWorld.com
[Encyclopedia of Television]
The dictionary definition of [Bonanza] at [m-w.com] that was cited above.
The [Bear Family] boxed set of the albums recorded by the cast of the show.
Bonanza at the oldest fan tribute website [Bonanza1.com]