Bonanza Days

This morning’s paper brought news of the death of Pernell Roberts, a/k/a, Adam Cartwright of Bonanza fame. Roberts’ first name is so unusual that I can’t think of anyone else who has it. As I recall, his cowboy character wore black, similar to another of my childhood heroes, Richard Boone’s Paladin.

Bonanza was on the air from 1959 to 1973 and along with pizza, was a Sunday night staple in my home. It was one of the first shows to be filmed in color and had a famous opening scene and theme music as the four main characters rode horses behind a flaming map of their ranch, the Ponderosa.

The show was very popular, perhaps because of the limited number of choices available in those days. I don’t know anyone who was around then who would not recognize the theme music today. I remember a high school classmate depicting the 13 original states on the east coast of an outline of a map of the United States he drew on a blackboard. He then moved his chalk to the center of the map and said, “and this is the Ponderosa,” as he filled in the blank space with white chalk while humming the theme music. It is still funny as I think back on it today.

I was pretty much beyond my cowboy years by the time Bonanza aired. But the western drama still holds a significant spot in my memory of the early days of television.

Dan Blocker, who played Hoss Cartwright, was the first cast member to die in 1972. It seemed quite a shock at the time because he was younger than all but one of the others. One of the funniest things I ever read was an interview of him in National Lampoon’s parody of a Playboy interview in a periodical they called “Playdead” magazine. The interview consisted of a series of questions being asked of Dan Blocker, each followed by a blank space (since he was dead at the time of the interview). I am still laughing as I think of it now.

Interestingly, each of the four main characters on the show died in a different decade: Dan Blocker in 1972; Lorne Greene in 1987; Michael Landon in 1991 and Pernell Roberts in 2010.

They are all riding on that great Ponderosa in the sky now.