Little House on the Prairie ran for nine seasons and 200 episodes on NBC, from September 11, 1974 to March 21, 1983, and it remains the most complete picture American television has made of small agrarian life in the late nineteenth century. The show is loosely based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s autobiographical books, and its best episodes do not need the books to stand up.
Trailer, via Little House on the Prairie.
A Farm on Plum Creek
The series centers on the Ingalls family on a small farm near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1870s and 1880s. Charles is a farmer and mill worker. Caroline keeps the house. Mary, Laura and Carrie grow up in it. Charles Ingalls was played by Michael Landon, Caroline by Karen Grassle, Laura by Melissa Gilbert, Mary by Melissa Sue Anderson, and Carrie by twins Lindsay and Sydney Greenbush, because Hollywood’s work rules for small children required twins for the part.
Landon directed the two-hour pilot, which first aired on March 30, 1974, on the condition that he could also play Charles. The rest of the regular series premiered on NBC on September 11, 1974.
Ed Friendly Buys the Books
In 1972, with the encouragement of his wife and daughter, the television producer and former NBC executive Ed Friendly acquired the film and television rights to Wilder’s novels from Roger Lea MacBride. He hired Blanche Hanalis to write the teleplay for the pilot.
Friendly then asked Landon to direct. Conflict between Friendly’s and Landon’s vision for the show ended with Friendly pushed out of the production, leaving complete creative control to Landon. That is the fact that shaped everything after it.
Forty-Seven Actresses for Caroline
Landon put real effort into casting, and the results are the show’s strongest asset. Forty-seven actresses were auditioned for Caroline Ingalls before he settled on Karen Grassle. Hersha Parady had been seriously considered.
Landon thought Grassle was perfect because she “looked like a pioneer woman”. Grassle had almost no television and no film acting experience. She was a theater actress with a university degree in theater and a run of repertory credits.
He did not want “professional daughters with stage mothers”.
That preference carried into the rest of the cast. Katherine MacGregor and Richard Bull came from theater backgrounds with minimal television exposure. For the children, Landon wanted “real little girls”. He picked Melissa Sue Anderson as Mary and Melissa Gilbert as Laura, and gave them the nicknames “Missy” and “Half Pint” so they could be told apart on set. Anderson had been working in television for less than a year. Gilbert, nine years old, had been working since she was three.
Mary Goes Blind, the Family Moves
The show’s willingness to let time pass is what separates it from most family drama of its era. At the end of season 4, Mary has gone blind and is sent to a school for the blind in Iowa. That introduces Adam Kendall, a teacher there who is also blind. In season 5, Adam and Mary start a new school for the blind in Winoka, Dakota, and the Ingalls move there after Walnut Grove’s economy sours. The Garveys and the Olesons follow.
An orphan in Winoka, Albert, becomes a recurring character, and the Ingalls take him with them when they move back to Walnut Grove. Season 6 brings the Wilders: Eliza Jane, who arrives to replace Alice Garvey as the town’s teacher, and her brother Almanzo. By the end of that season, Almanzo and Laura are engaged, agreeing to wait a year to marry.
A New Beginning Without Landon
In the ninth and final season, with Landon gone, the title changed to Little House: A New Beginning. Three post-series movies followed. The show ended on March 21, 1983.
The early seasons are the ones worth defending. The later ones lean on new characters and lose the plain texture of the farm. The pilot and the Mary story line are the high points, and neither depends on nostalgia to work.
What matters most is the casting. Landon’s instinct for untrained faces over polished ones gave the show a family that looks like it works for a living, and that choice holds up better than most of the plots built around it.
Key facts
– Network: NBC
– Run: September 11, 1974 – March 21, 1983
– Seasons: 9
– Episodes: 200
– Pilot aired: March 30, 1974
– Score: 8.0/10
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