Gunsmoke or Bonanza...discuss

[ChiO]

The ouzo and feta, I buy. Spanikopita and baklava, Mrs. ChiO makes the best -- I'll try to find her recipes (to which she'll respond: "What recipes? You just do this and some of that...." Just like her Mother.) Dolmades? I only wish she made them. I love them! And they can only be home-made. My older daughter swears that one of favorite childhood memories is making dolmades with Mrs. ChiO -- but Mrs. ChiO & I have no memory of it.

My favorite feta story: About two years after buying our house (1987 or so), we had Mrs. ChiO's family over. The husband of one of her cousins, Mike, was sitting under our grape arbor (yes, we're stereotypes). Mike, who had been a Communist guerilla and was smuggled out of Greece, was sipping ouzo with his kalamata olives and feta. In Greek (he spoke no English) he asked Mrs. ChiO where she'd purchased the feta because it was the best he'd ever had. She asked me where I bought it. I told her that I got it at the local fruit market, but that -- gulp -- it wasn't Greek feta, it was Bulgarian. She laughed and told Mike. He smiled, leaning back, and said:

But, of course. Communist goats!

[Sue Sue Applegate]

I love dolmades!

There is a restaurant called (I think) the Crazy Greek somewhere between Las Vegas and Victorville that has a little bit of everything, and if you have ever made that drive, you need a great place to sit, eat, and rest a bit.

But the food is wonderful! All kinds of combination plates, FRESH baklava, and the iced tea is good, too!

But a communist goat? What a funny story, Chio!

Sounds like an episode of Get Smart! Quick, the cone of secrecy and silence, Chief! 99, you hold it's leash, and don't let him eat anymore furniture!

[MissGoddess]

I just noticed today on Bonanza that it's kind of funny how on the Ponderosa, which is the size of practically half of Nevada, they don't have any ranch hands. Whereas at seemingly smaller ranches like Shiloh (The Virginian)on The High Chapparal they have many. The Big Valley ranch had a few now and then but like Bonanza, seemed to run itself without a bunch of regular hands. Even on Wagon Train there are quite a few men on hand to help. I know ranches hired more during certain times of year but it just seemed funny to me that the Cartwrights are supposedly so rich and yet there's little Joe feeding the chickens himself.



Just idle thinking.

[movieman1957]

All the hands are always out on the range with the cattle or tending the lumber. Great way to have a lot of people around without having a lot of people around.

Their wardrobe (as well as other shows) didn't have a big budget either.

[MissGoddess]

All the hands are always out on the range with the cattle or tending the lumber. Great way to have a lot of people around without having a lot of people around.

Their wardrobe (as well as other shows) didn't have a big budget either.

Hee! I'm sure that's the logic of it. It just struck me today. And I guess if you've got three strapping sons you don't need a lot of other help.

The unvarying wardrobe, as many of us have often observed, is a source of regular amusement. Of course, then you have the opposite end of the spectrum with someone like Marlo Thomas on "That Girl" wearing a thousand outfits on the salary of waitressing and (very) intermittent acting jobs. I love television-land!

[klondike]

April, you aren't the only one to watch the seasons turn on "Bonanza", and say:
"Hey, wait a minute . . . "
I think some of the first-season writers cornered Dave Dortort about the Cartwright's "self-operating" mega-ranch, the upshot being that every eight or nine episodes, some effort was made to show ranch hands laboring on the Ponderosa.
Right off the top of my head, here are some eps that show something like an employee workforce:

The Gamble
The First Born
She Walks in Beauty
The Tin Badge
The Prime of Life
Time to Step Down
A House Divided
Desert Justice

[MissGoddess]

WOW! You know the titles of the episodes, that's terrific, Klon, thanks! I admit I seldom catch the credits so I never notice the episode titles on most of these shows, which means I often miss who directed as well. That's another thing that's great about these boards. I can fill in the many gaps.

Today on TVLand they had one of my favorites, and I'm sorry I don't know the title to it, either, lol. But it's one starring Aldo Ray as a surly rancher who's estranged wife, evidently a Quaker or something similar, comes back to him and turns his life upside down.

[movieman1957]

Talking about things being the same. Last night I was watching a disc of "Have Gun - Will Travel" and in two different episodes they used the same bridge that crosses a creek. Then in the cast they used David White (Larry Tate in "Bewitched") in two completely different episodes that apparently aired within two weeks of each other.

I always thought the clothes thing was so they could shoot some parts of episodes out of order and not worry about the continuity. But that is only a guess.

[klondike]

April, that would be "The Wild One"; I well remember a beaming Hoss remarking eagerly to the petulant, estranged husband: "You heard her - she made cobbler - let's go wash up!"

[MissGoddess]

Chris, that sounds like a very logical 'splanation. I was surprised to see David White in a western milieu, he's always and forever associated with "Larry Tate" to me.

Klon,
Cobbler would make me run in too, I love cobbler. I like it better than pie.

[movieman1957]

I think "Bonanza" gave me my first disillusionment in episodic television. I remember an episode that I saw when I was young where Ben somehow cut his leg up with an ax. He was by himself when it happened and the worry was he might lose his leg. Of course, next week everything was back to normal. I thought there is no way he can heal that quickly. But in TVland you can do anything,

[mrsl]

.
I love this conversation about the ' unmanned' Ponderosa, and Big Valley. I agree I choked when I saw Little Joe feeding the chickens! Puhleeze! And I cannot think of any fully grown man allowing himself to be called 'little' except in the case of a huge man who might be referred to as Tiny. But I still like the show.

Miss Goddess:

If you have either a cable or satellite hookup, when you look at your cable guide, the title of the episode is always the first line in the explanation of the story. I watched for years before someone brought it to my attention.

.

[moira finnie]

All the hands are always out on the range with the cattle or tending the lumber. Great way to have a lot of people around without having a lot of people around.

Their wardrobe (as well as other shows) didn't have a big budget either.

Hee! I'm sure that's the logic of it. It just struck me today. And I guess if you've got three strapping sons you don't need a lot of other help.

The unvarying wardrobe, as many of us have often observed, is a source of regular amusement. Of course, then you have the opposite end of the spectrum with someone like Marlo Thomas on "That Girl" wearing a thousand outfits on the salary of waitressing and (very) intermittent acting jobs. I love television-land!

Speaking of Marlo Thomas, I saw a few minutes of a Bonanza episode last week on which she was a mail order Chinese bride for Hoss (don't ask how, please...it was really dumb).

Marlo playing in yellow face, portrayed a Chinese girl, but she was not the demure Oriental cliche usually seen in Westerns introducing Asian characters. She was feisty as hell, and spouted the sayings of a Chinese woman revolutionary who had taught her all about labor vs. management, social justice, fair wages and the like, (I suspect that the woman who educated Marlo's character may have been Mao's fictitious but dialectically enlightened grandmama). While being generally annoying yet cute, Marlo's character set herself up as the spokeswoman for the ranch hands on the Ponderosa. There was actually a scene set in the bunkhouse with ranch hands all over the place. I was shocked since I'd never seen any ranch hands on the spread before. It was really quite a novelty, but apparently the writers of the show stuck to the family more than the extended one to include others. There must have been a "bible" for Bonanza at some point, though this episode seems to have been an experiment to see if the core focus of the story should be expanded.

The episode was called A Pink Cloud Comes from Old Cathay and was broadcast on April 12, 1964, two years before the stylishly dressed That Girl emerged from the closet. I saw this episode of Bonanza on TVLand, so that means that this will definitely be repeated someday.

[MissGoddess]

Oh, I forgot about that one where the future fashionista converged with the simple world of the ponderosa. I thought she was annoying yet cute, especially in how she bossed Hoss around.
Accent or no accent, that voice was unmistakable.

[Rita Hayworth]

Gunsmoke or Bonanza

When I was a kid - I had difficult time getting a general feel of Bonanza because of the story lines and the general makeup of this great series - I learned to like it when i was 16-21 when its on late Saturday Afternoon right before my family had dinner together.

When I was a kid - I love Gunsmoke because of the pairing of James Arness and Ken Curtis - I watched it faithfully from 1967 to the very end of 1975. I cried when its was taken off the air and when CBS started to go to a different directions - namely COPS and ROBBERS and SITCOMS - I didn't see it again until one of the local channels decided to run the series again in 1980 and they ran it every single day and I miss about 5 of them - and when I got old - I got tired of it.

When I was in my 30's and 40's - I realized that my preference of old Western TV Shows started to lose interests and shift watching movies instead. But, my heart still belongs to Gunsmoke because of the Arness/Curtis pairing - I'm not much of a Bonanza fan because it was not my cup of tea - I love Micheal Landon as an Actor - but, I find Bonanza too simplistic for my taste of Western TV. In speaking of Landon - I love him in Little House of the Parries - He was dynamite.

They are good TV Westerns - but I prefer Gunsmoke over Bonanza anyday of the week.

I guess I'm a Gunsmoke fan here.