Have you read the book Pioneer Girl? https://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-Girl-Laura-Ingalls-Wilder/dp/0984504176 It fills in a lot of gaps left out of the books, and tells true background on characters and stories she fictionalized for the books.
Thanks, I have got to get to that book! I did manage to find this in the local library... they'd make a good pair. PBS did an 'American Masters' documentary on her once as well. A lot of basic provisions which people spent what little money they had on back then came in patterned fabric packaging that could be made into curtains and clothing, but I suspect Mary and Laura's semi-matching dresses would've come from the same length of fabric bought by their mother to sew multiple items from.
There was a book into tv series that is sort of a UK Little House... Lark Rise To Candleford, based on a book by Flora Thompson of her early life in rural England. The place names are fictionalized versions of the places she knew circa the late 1800s and her fictional self is named Laura (rhymes with Flora), although some characters in the book/tv series like Queenie were real historical individuals. Flora/Laura moved from a small farming village to a town for work at the Post Office once old enough to leave grammar school.
Carrie & Laura look a little odd & out of focus because exposures took longer back then, & if you moved even a little, or had to blink (or breathe!), you could end up looking a bit weird/blurry!
was there ever a printed book episode guide? I could swear I remember one from the 70's or 80's? IIRC,...saw it at the Strand Bookstore NYC.. I have not till this day ever found one...
The funny part is that, even though the real Mary Ingalls went blind and never married or became a teacher, they were going to have the TV character not go blind, become a teacher, and marry the actor who played the younger version of David Carradine's character in Kung Fu. But no one liked their chemistry, so he disappeared and she suddenly had scarlet fever at some indeterminate point in the past. And got married and became a teacher, of course. Real Laura and Carrie were close, but the TV Carries were not the greatest actors in the world, as that surreal dream episode shows. I can still hear her calling out, "Alyssa, Alyssa." Instead of focusing on Carrie more as the older children aged, they had to bring in fictional adopted children.
I know it will be scoffed at by some because of the obvious religious nature of it, but the ending of the "He was only Twelve" episode is pretty damn uplifting. The moment when James walks out and Caroline and Edwards see he has been healed is so good (when taking it is a bit of fiction and the storytelling aspect of it). The way Edwards face reacts and the way Caroline says his name when she sees him is a great bit of acting on both of their parts. I always remember that as being one of the great moments the show had.
One of the first episodes has Laura climb a mountain and talk to angel Ernest Borgnine. Michael Landon let everyone know where he was coming from right away.
Some of that falls into the John Fogerty "Don't You Wish It Were True" file for me. Lark Rise To Candleford had a ghost appear and interact in one story, and human blood come from a tree in another; maybe another similarity between the two. It was easier to believe in such things actually occurring a hundred plus years ago I'm sure. We had a local story of one undeveloped lot on an otherwise full and busy major street that you could cross over to an earlier time through... and getting lost in the tall grass on such a lot as a kid I could almost believe in it (almost being probably why I'm still here).
"Laura Ingalls" and "Willie Oleson" were siblings in real life -- Melissa and Jonathan Gilbert. A fact I was unaware of until much, much later, for some reason.
Sara Gilbert is their half sister through their mom. Sara is their mother’s daughter from her second marriage, but Sara took the Gilbert name for her acting career.
I've suggested for many years that Doc Baker was a substandard physician. It's classic that he would misdiagnose meningoencephalitis as scarlet fever. He made a career out if praying on the poor unknowing, trusting community of Walnut Grove. How come he never expanded his practice or left for a bigger city? How come he never kept an apprentice for more than a week or two? Why was he habitually late for emergency medical care? I'll tell you why. He was a chronic narcotics abuser. He always kept shady records and was careless about securing his drugs. This is exactly how a $hithead like Albert could so easily steal morphine from him. Why was his office unlocked and the drugs readily accessible? Because he was high as fahk passed out in his laughable one horse carriage. This is also why he never kept a woman for more than a month or two. He beat them when he was high.
Their blooper reel is on Youtube, and there’s a scene where Rev Alden says to Doc Baker (after a patient dies), “Well, you killed another one.”
I could never stand Little House On The Prairie. It was so unbelievably sugary, and I like Doris Day films! I always remember when Joan Rivers had her own UK chat show and one of the guests was the late comedian Bob Monkhouse. He asked her who her worst ever guest had been and she replied, "Michael Landon." "What, Little House On The Prairie?" "Little Mean, Vicious Bastard House On The Prairie!" I thought that was incredibly funny. I wonder what he did?
In one sense it was but it was but it could also be very dark, with lots of death, maiming, pestilence, abuse, etc.
In one Christmas episode you can see the fake snow steaming in the Simi Valley summer. In case no one has mentioned it in the thread yet, Allison Arngrim's biography "Tales of a Prairie B*" is excellent and shocking. Apparently she's had the mind of an adult since she was ten years old.
