If you watched Bonanza on Sunday evenings in the 1960s, you know this grizzly truth: women who caught the eye of one Pa, Adam, Hoss, or Little Joe suffered a fate worse than death. Not because those hardy Cartwright men were serial killers or members of a weird cult.
Television of that sort wasn’t allowed in the 1960s.
Every one of the little fillies (that’s what Hoss called the girls at Ponderosa hoe downs and barn dances) never lasted long. They either suffered a variety of maladies, like blindness or rabies, that felled them in a show or two. Or they stuck around for three shows, just long enough to reveal a major character flaw.
And break the heart of one of them strappin’ Cartwright fellas.
Well, last night PBS spilled the beans during the TV Westerns installment of their Pioneers in Television series. Apparently, one of the creators of the show, David Dortort, nixed the idea of marrying off the Cartwright men. He didn’t want to make them appear weak or beholden to women.
I guess we know who had issues with his mother, don’t we?
But – and this is purely conjecture on my part, not something stated during the documentary – Mr. Dortort thought it was perfectly okay for the Cartwright men to be beholden to Hop Sing. You remember him? The tiny Chinese cook who ran into the dining room brandishing an enormous butcher knife with frightening regularity.
Hop Sing aside, last night’s documentary finally laid to rest one of the last, unanswered questions from my childhood. Now I understand why Hollywood starlets didn’t hang their hopes on being cast as a Cartwright love interest. And I understand why my cousins and I argued continually about who got to be Little Joe when we played Bonanza together. In the absence of female roles to claim, Michael Landon was the prettiest person on the Ponderosa. So how did they always talk me into being Hoss?
I think I figured it was better than being Hop Sing.
