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So I'm watching an old episode of Bonanza on Encore's western channel last night. The episode is from 1971. But the music is not from Bonanza. The main and end titles as well as the episode score have been replaced by what sounds like a variation on music from Little House on the Prairie.
Any theories?
Also the episode barely had the Cartrights in it and felt like it was being used as a pilot to set up a new series with Ben Johnson and Roger Davis leading a cattle drive. Anybody know anything about this?
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Well I don't know if this sheds any light on it, but I'm positive that on my first visit to Canada (from here in the UK), I remember the TV Guide used to bill what appeared to be episodes of Bonanza as 'Ponderosa'. Sorry if I'm mistaken.
On a more humorous note, though potentially disasterous , I remember as a kid watching tv at grandma's house. She had a habit of drawing her coal fire with a tin that made the flames go faster by use of draught after a new bucket of coal was put on. She would then use the suction to stick a sheet of newspaper on the tin to make it even faster, and leave it there while she went back in the kitchen!
Now we remember the Bonanza opening titles where that map is on fire? Well, at some point a brown spec would appear in the middle of the paper, and get bigger... Just like Bonanza!!
It never caught fire luckily, and she always returned to take the tin and paper down before a nasty accident occurred.
That's the memory evoked by those opening titles.
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Thanks, Jim. I hadn't realized they changed the theme toward the end of the series. I was worried there was a rights issue with the music or something and that they replaced it all. I just tuned into the "wrong" season.
Ben Johnson is a favorite of mine and I've been Tivo-ing episodes of shows he and certain other character actors are in to see them once. This was a great showcase for him.
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Posted: |
May 2, 2014 - 8:22 PM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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Appropo of nothing, was anyone else as bothered as I was by the terrible studio sets--and lighting--in Bonanza and Gunsmoke particularly? I always thought a couple of kids with crayons could have drawn better backgrounds, and the lighting was as flat as a pancake, to coin a phrase. At least The Virginian used an outdoor set, even if the surrounding countryside did seem suspiciously familiar.
Bothered? No, but those sets were a bit cardboardy, weren't they? At least Bonanza had the "excuse" to be exclusively filmed in color whereas Gunsmoke was B&W until, what, their ninth season? Bonanza *did* have more location shooting after the S6 departure of Pernell Roberts and many of the show's best episodes were from those latter seasons (seven to twelve).
As for sets, The Wild, Wild West sometimes found itself shooting on the Gunsmoke Dodge City-mountainous-Kansas-main street and the Barkleys of The Big Valley living room on a number of occasions. If Victoria only knew what Dr. Loveless was doing in her front parlor!
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It was of course composed by David Rose.