Posted on 02/11/2008 1:44:17 PM PST by JSDude1
Mary, before she went blind, saw them making out in the barn. Or maybe that's why she went blind.
I'm really not making this up, though nobody remembers that episode but me.
you might want to read this: http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2005/005/17.52.html
Never watched the show, but my wife is reading the books to the kids (and me) on cold winter nights. Love the stories, Laura Ingalls Wilder was quite the picturesque writer.
Before Little House, Michael Landon tried to sell the network on a show called Little Werewolf on the Prairie. The pilot episode was about the teenage werewolf’s bed-wetting problem.
I never knew Little Joe's real name.
from this link - Michael Landon, Jr.: The Son Also Rises
He’s following in his famous father’s footsteps. But he’s determined to avoid his father’s sins.
But that perfect image was shattered one afternoon when Michael came home from high school. He was met at the door by an uncle, who had clearly been crying. The uncle sat Michael and his sister Leslie down on the couch and broke the news.
“Your dad has left,” he said. “Your mother is upstairs. She’s a wreck, and she needs you to comfort her.”
Today, Landon says he was blindsided by the news. He later learned that his father had been having an affair with someone who worked behind the scenes of Little House, and that unfaithfulness led to his parents’ divorce.
The unimaginable had happened: Pa Ingalls, a promise keeper long before Promise Keepers was cool, had had a tryst and split from his wife. A Hollywood scandal indeed.
“My world was completely shattered,” says Landon, who was 15 at the time.
That shattered world would soon spin out of control.
Tough years
“After my father left,” says Landon, “I went through a few really tough years. I went from being an honor roll student to just barely getting by. I started experimenting with pot and alcohol. All these things came into my life and started to destroy it.”
His self-destructive behavior continued through high school and on into his freshman year at the University of Southern California.
Meanwhile, his mother, who had also been shattered by the divorce, had found a sensitive listener in her manicurist, a Christian woman named Louise. As she shared her painful story with Louise, Louise in turn shared her faith.
“And then,” Landon says, “she took my mother to church. And then my mother got saved.”
Landon, then 18, was still playing the role of party animal, “absolutely raising hell,” as he puts it. “My mom started asking me if I wanted to go to church with her. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”
But his mom persisted, and Michael finally relented, “just to get her off my back.”
And then God got on his back—in the persistent, persuasive way that only God can do.
“I couldn’t tell you what the pastor was talking about that day,” Landon says. “But it impacted me.”
Still, Landon returned to Southern Cal and his partying ways, despite the nagging sense that God was trying to break through.
“I fought it,” says Landon, now 41. “I got kicked out of USC, because of my academics. I didn’t bother to go to class. It was that bad.
“I finally went back to church again, resisted some more, went back again, resisted again. And then finally I stopped fighting and gave my life to Christ, just before I turned 19.”
He was Jewish, not not practicing.
His son (M.L., Jr.) became a born-again Christian as an adult, after his mom took him to an evangelical church. The movies he makes are great. A biography was made of his life, and it detailed his dad’s affair with a makeup artist on Little House set, which broke up his parents’ marriage.
Standard fare on Ponderosa was which brother would fall in love, get close to marrying and then have everything fall apart at the last minute.
My friends and I used to love watching Bonanza, and joked that the show should have been called “Cherchez la femme!”
Just about every single episode involved the arrival of a woman who messed up the chemistry and caused one of the men to do something stupid. In the end, he’d realize he was being led astray and ditch the bitch.
How many times was this guy married? My college roomate’s cousin was married to him and he cheated on her. Maybe she was wife #1?
Always interesting to see old clips or old shows and see some of the then "unknowns" on the screen.
Little House was the only TV show a babe in a neighboring office was allowed to watch growing up. We’ve developed a nice relationship with me keeping her abreast of the daily situation in Walnut Grove via instant messenger as I have the show on every morning for background noise while I work.
One of these days I’ll send her a bottle of Lemon Verbena perfume.
Here’s one of his shows that i enjoyed as a kid....still think about that show at times..... http://imdb.com/title/tt0074814/
I am afraid that you are confusing Charles Ingalls, a real person, with the actor Michael Landon who portrayed him. Perhaps this is a testimony to Mr. Landon’s acting abilities.
My wife and I are reading Little House on the Prarie to our daughter.
Charles Ingalls (Laura’s dad) would think that Michael Landon was a total wuss.
And then there was time his wife, Caroline, slapped the bear...
There just ain’t a lot of people like that any more.
I Love the books! Read them in the late 60’s/early 70’s, and have a full set that I reread every year now. I guess I am a purist....hated the TV show as it strayed too far (for me) from the books. Once Michael Landon had “Charles Ingalls” cry, that was it. But, I did like Michael Landon—more for his “Little Joe” character than anything.
Absolutely. Well, he'd think Michael Landon's "Charles Ingalls" was a total wuss.
Twilight Zone must have had more future stars or at least future well known actors than any show ever.
I love those movies! At times the acting is bad and it can get a little corny (especially the newer movies) but I can watch them over and over.
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