Little Quiz on the Prairie
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In the season one episode called Ma's holiday, Mr. Edwards accidentally nails what to the roof.
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Wait, I'd like to go back to the first question and add Mr. Edwards to my list of hotties on the prairie. Hello
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World. It's a song that we're singing.
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Come on, get
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happy bringing
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we'll make you happy.
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Welcome to the pop culture Preservation Society, the podcast for people born in the big wheel generation who scored tickets to the biggest concert of the Year by lining up at the local department store box office. We believe our Gen X childhoods gave us unforgettable songs, stories, characters and images, and if we don't talk about them, they'll disappear, like Marshall will and Holly on a routine expedition. And today, we'll be saving all the residents of Walnut Grove by testing our L hop IQ in a game show we're calling little quiz on the prairie. I'm Carolyn, I'm Kristin, and I'm Michelle, and we are your pop culture preservationists. You
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Oh, okay. First of all, you guys, I cannot believe that nobody has noticed that I'm dressed as Mrs. Garvey.
Unknown Speaker 1:34
Oh, I thought your shirt was cute and colorful. Thank you. Buttoned all the way to the top. There you go. That's the gift. Well, you kind of got Miss beetle glasses on. I've got my Miss beetle glasses and have my Mrs. Garvey hair. Yes, you definitely have Garvey hair. And I don't have any lipstick on because there's no lipstick on the prairie, no, but there is very pale nail polish. I remember seeing something,
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and it's like, kind of glossy pale pink, and you're like, wait what? Okay, so I think you guys today is gonna be fun, because we are going back to the prairie again, again, because I think we've proven that for people born between 1965 and like 1975
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there is no such thing as too much Little House on the Prairie. Am I right? Oh, absolutely, I think correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is our fifth episode devoted to the people of Walnut Grove, and it certainly will not be our last, our first, and again, I'll need help with this, but our first was a review of a web series called living on the prairie by actress slash prairie enthusiast Pamela Bob, who now co hosts the Little House at 50 podcast with Almanzo and Nellie Olsen, and then the second was our first celebrity interview with Karen Grassley, who played my Ingalls everybody's mom. We all wanted her to be a mom. She was. That was when she opened the door for her UPS delivery. She's so sweet. We actually had our very first little house prairie. Was just us talking about our memories and our favorite episodes. And we all were our bonnets, that's right. And we we, because this was, like, I want to say January or February of 2021,
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and so it was just us, and then we had Raven.
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That was little traumas on the prayer, yeah, little traumas with Raven, but, but the first one I really love, because that's the one where we all just got to kind of just talk about our love for it, and we each picked an episode that we loved. Yeah. That means this is our sixth little oh my god episode. So then that next one was little traumas on the prairie where we confessed which episode scarred us for life. Yes. And then there was the interview with half pint herself, Melissa Gilbert, about her life on the prairie and then life, her life that came after the prairie in her book, back to the prairie. Is that the right book, or was it okay? It is back to the prairie. And we're not done. We're not not even close, because this show was on for what was it? Nine years? I think it was nine seasons. That's our whole childhoods. That's the entirety of our childhoods. We grew up with those people, and we all wanted to be we all wanted PA to be our dad or our boyfriend, I guess, and we wanted PA to be our mom, and we wanted to wear little caps on our heads when we went to bed. Yeah, it was just kind of what was happening in our lives. So this is definitely not the end. And so today, we're in Walnut Grove again to test our knowledge of this show. We're testing our L hop IQ in a game we're calling little quiz on the prairie. So I am the quiz master, because I'm the one who bought the Little House on the Prairie trivia magazine for $12.99
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the grocery store checkout aisle. So to all of you grocery store merchandising people, that works, that works, just keep them right there in the grocery checkout aisle, because I don't have time to think and put it back, right. Okay, so Carolyn and Michelle are going to be the contestants because I'm the quiz master, and you will be working together so you can converse. You're not competing against each other. And.
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Matter how many points you get today, we're all winners
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are
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That's right, and like I said in our preview episode, this will be random and thoroughly educational, and I'll be asking about prairie facts, but I'll also be asking about behind the scenes stuff like back stories and secrets we never knew when we were watching the show. So just like we're all winners, there will also be no winners. We're all winners,
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and there are no winners, no winners. Love a show, and it could be the nearest, nearest thing to your heart. And that does not necessarily mean that you know all the little tidbits. Thank you. If we miss every single one, it is not reflective of our love for this amazing television show, right? And also it was on 50 years ago. So there's that, there's, yeah, there's that. And I'm hoping you're not going to ask a lot like post wedding to Almanzo, because that's kind of what I kind of tuned out a little bit. So yeah, I'm not going to know tough. There is a there is a there is a dividing line. When I was no longer watching so let's just see how we do. Shall we? Are we worthy of being full time residents of Walnut Grove, or are we just passing through town like wills from different strokes? Let's find out.
Unknown Speaker 6:14
Should have had my bonnet. Yeah, man, I put on my costume. I feel. I know I still have my prairie dress. We also wore prairie dresses when we interviewed Ma.
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Okay, so you're gonna hear me turning pages in my magazine here. So everybody just like, this is the real deal, right? Okay, question number one. Question number one. So when it first aired in 1974
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It is said that people turn to Little House in response to what current events
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they're attributing its success to the fact that this is what was happening in the world. Well, well, that's not a little house question. That's like a US History question. And I suck at US history or in history, Michelle, we can't complain. We can't whine about why. We can't answer leaving you put our heads together, like, why did we need stuff that sounds simple and pure? Well, because they're coming in a war.
Unknown Speaker 7:12
I mean, I'm thinking of like Vietnam. People needed a comfort, yes, much like people turned to little house in 2020 extra credit. Needing comfort from covid,
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exactly, you just got extra credit. Yeah, they were saying that the world was in such turmoil that Vietnam was still raging, that Watergate, our president has just, had just resigned. People were bad, like there were just bad people in the news all the time, and they just needed people they could depend on who lived simply, and they are crediting the success of Little House in the prairie to those world events. Because, truthfully, the critics were not kind, and they also were They were super mean. They were like, This is just the Waltons. Like, no, we're not. We're not the Waltons fight your Pamela. Have something to say about that? Yeah, Pamela Bob in her living on a prairie. She's like, No, not the Waltons, not the Waltons. But then, in the same way, when the pandemic came in, 2020, Little House on the Prairie had a huge surge in viewerships, viewerships, in viewership Yeah, and if you guys recall so we always say that Sean Cassidy is the godfather of our of our podcast, but if you think about it, it was kind of Little House on the Prairie, because I think it was that surge in viewership that started the question of, hey, are people watching shows from their childhood? And then that survey came out where 50% of the people admitted that they were watching shows from their childhood in order to comfort themselves during the pandemic. So I think we could kind of say that little house is one of our godfathers as well. Yeah, I'll do that.
Unknown Speaker 8:51
So first, yeah, first, you shame me for saying this is not a little house question, and then you get extra credit. Interesting, yay.
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Okay. Question number two, Little House on the Prairie, of course, as we know, is based on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and those were published in the 1930s
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so think carefully, this is not a hard question. It's just never something we've said out loud before. Between what years did the books and the show take place. He didn't change it. They didn't change it for the show. It's the same took place in what time period? Well, it's in the 1800s
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I'm gonna say post
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Civil War, yeah. So if you think about like, Carolyn, we can talk this through, right? So, Carolyn, I know you and I both love like, Gilded Age, right? And so obviously, this is not the prairie, is not New York, but we know from watching Gilded Age. And I'm not kidding, I use gilded age now as my reference to a lot of stuff, like the 1890s right? Because I've learned about, you know, some of the mining in Colorado, and I'm like, oh, that's what was happening at the same time as Gilded Age. Now.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Know, on the prairie or even in Colorado looked lots different than it did in like New York. But I think for sure, we're going to say it's before that. It's before the 1890s because
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I don't remember episodes a lot where they were talking about, like, any type of railroad. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 10:21
yeah. That's why they were gonna blow up the town, because, okay, railroad wanted to go through, and there was railroad, but, you know, not the obnoxious guy. So I think maybe we should say like. I don't think we have to be specific dates. Can we say like, yeah, you can be 1850s 1880s Yeah, let's say 18 like 80s. That sounds good, too. Really, I don't think the books went quite as far. I don't think the show went as far as the books did, but it is generally between the 1870s and the 1890s so you're right. It's kind of like before the Gilded Age began. Okay, I think, and I think that you can do this straight Okay, so in the beginning, networks, when they're walking around with this pilot, they're trying to sell this pilot to people the networks weren't really sold on it the original pilot. They're like,
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whatever you guys and it and that pilot very closely mirrored the books. So Ed friendly, who created the show, is like, Okay, we got to do something different here. We got to pivot. So he recruited Michael Landon to do this show, to direct it, because of his work on what show.
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Well, that would be bonanza. But I feel like that's too easy.
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I'm like so skeptical
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for failure. So yes, Bonanza, finally, bonanza. Because, as he was, Little Joe from you guys, did you I knew it was on for a long time. Bonanza was on between 1959
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and 1973
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that's how long Bonanza was on. That's how long pa Ingles was Little Joe
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on bonanza. And Little Joe had directed some of those episodes. And so Ed friendly was like, Yeah, more like that. That's, that's what I want. So Michael Landon was like, Yeah, I really want to do this, but I'm going to be PA. And he was like, no, no, no, we're going to hire somebody's like, Nope, I'm going to direct it, and I'm going to be PA. He's like, all right, fine,
Unknown Speaker 12:19
okay. He had no idea, though, whose idea was it to say, Take your shirt off and just wear suspenders? Because that was the golden idea for many people watching. I mean, as a child, it wasn't for me, but probably for my mom. When she sat down to watch with me, she was probably
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like,
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knew him as Little Joe, so it was kind of fun to see him evolve as this patriarch of a family, even as a child, even though you're not like, Oh, yum, his shirt is off still. I'm like, his skin is very smooth and shiny. It's very shiny the shape of his shoulders.
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I don't think I got any of that firm, yeah, so I noticed. I noticed,
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yeah,
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okay, so now we're gonna start casting the show. So when casting Carrie Ingalls, Michael Landon cast four year old identical twins Lindsay and Sydney Greenbush. And we know that this was they did twins like this, because there were laws about how long children of a certain age could work, and it was, like, four hours at a time, and that was it. And so they often cast identical twins when they were very small, so they could swap them out, and they could get more air time with them. But do you remember seeing that on the screen? You're like, Oh, she has such a funny name, Lindsay, Sidney and Bush, Yep, yeah. And then when you found out they were twins, and you're like,
Unknown Speaker 13:44
Yeah, I totally do. So he cast those two girls based in part because of their they had already done tag teaming, acting, acting like this before, and what he had seen them in most recently was a super sad made for TV movie with a John Denver theme song. What is it? Oh, sunshine, right, I would say yes, yes. Sunshine, yeah. So Carrie Lindsey and Sydney Greenbush were played the three year old of the dying mom in sunshine.
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And I only know that answer because I listened to the pop culture Preservation Society, and I remember Carolyn talking about that movie back in the day and how heartbreaking it was. I don't remember watching it. I don't remember Yeah, but I just remember this theme, yeah. And I always thought, I think I say this too, that the sunshine family dolls, I just assumed, yeah. I just assumed, well, and that's a weird full circle, because the sunshine family, Mom and Dad, look, they are doppelgangers for Mary and Adam. Yes, yes. I have lots of terrible things I want to say right now, but I'm not going to do it. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 14:53
Okay, here's a here. We're going to, you can again, you can work together on this. Okay, but I need, we'll make a list.
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I need you to name all of the heartthrobs on the prairie.
Unknown Speaker 15:06
Oh, the heart throbs. Now, do we have an age because, like, that could be different if you're an adult, or if you're, like, some people might think, I mean, obviously, PA, okay. But some people might, and that's really like, yeah, that's super subjective, yeah. But you can just think about, you know, there are no wrong answers here. If somebody said that they really loved doc Baker, I'm not gonna say that. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah. I mean I would, are it would be more like Reverend Alden,
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yeah.
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Can we do
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Albert? Sure you can here's the thing was Albert and Tiger Beat. He sure, yes, yes. He was brother, like cast members, or do we talk about any, like guest people that came all of the above? Yeah, and you said, and you said, Albert's brother, his real life, brother, who played, what it who did? He was a guard. He was, he was,
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yeah, okay. Kid Garvey, I'm right, Matthew and
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Patrick, okay, yeah, okay. So we've got PA, we've got Albert, we've got kid Garvey, well, I guess we have to go with Dean. We have to go with almonds, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Wasn't for me, but I could see how people were and and we've got to do and I know Kristen just bite your tongue, but we have listeners
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who really loved Mary's husband. Oh, Adam was a big heartthrob. Those eyes hear you, yeah? Adam Kendall was Mary's husband. Yeah, people loved him.
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I'm not gonna say, I can't imagine anybody thought now Nels was a heart problem, so we're not gonna say him, right? Unless we hear it from you people. We're not, we're not writing down if you like, Nelson Willie, he was just such a Yeah, yeah. People were going, Yeah. He was a booger. That's a good name for it. He was not intended to be a heartthrob, no. And Jason Bateman, when he was on was too young, so he was too much of a little boy. I'm putting a check mark by it, because when he was that young, people definitely thought that's true. And I guess he was in the magazines when he was that young, because he was also on silver spoons. Good point. Yes, he was definitely Jason Bateman. He was probably not at McNichol for his one guest role. He had no we can do, yes, that's
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not sure, even adding lines in it. But is he a heartthrob? He
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is, in my eyes, back in, okay, I'm adding it.
Unknown Speaker 17:37
Yeah, I know that there's a whole piece in this article, or in this magazine with there's an interview with Dean Butler, in which they asked him, so what was it like for you to be so many people's first crush? And like you said, it was not your cup of tea, but those prairie pants were tight, and people liked it. Oh, I I totally understand the appeal. We all have our type, though, and it just wasn't for me. Yeah, and also, like we've talked about with Melissa before, I was just, I was so attached to Laura. I just had a really hard time, I think, at the age I was and everything, buying into the that relationship. Yeah, it creeped me out a little bit. And we, as we know, from talking to her, creeped her out a little bit too. No, no shade to Dean Butler. She thought he was nice. It was no, not his fault at all. It was just, she was like, Well, you know, you're gonna have your love interest is coming in, you know, amanzo. Yeah. She's like, yay. Who is it? And then she was like, Oh, my God. He could be like, you know, he's like, a man. I'm like, 15 or 16. Think he was cute. I thought Almanzo was cute, but I did not have crushy feelings for him, and it's exactly because of what you're saying, Michelle, because I was not I was I couldn't go for what was happening. What if he was on a different show then, and the pants were just as you know, and he got to wear prairie pants and that show also, then maybe I could have crushy feelings, but no not happening. Do you remember what I just have to say? One more. Do you remember when Gil Gerard rip, by the way, didn't he just pass away? I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Yes, I think, like last week, or very recently, from when we're recording, it's because I'm not on my phone anymore. Yeah, but remember when he was on and, you know, ma was at the creek looking at him, yeah, and Pa was out of town. And excellent, good, excellent addition to the list. That is a great addition to the list. Gerard, we're adding it to the list. That's a heartthrob for sure. That's a heartthrob for sure. Okay, speaking of heartthrobs, so Michael Landon considered himself quite crushworthy, as you know, and he wasn't shy about going without this item of clothing. Can you name it? His shirt, yeah, his Henley, his like button, you know, the four button Henley or the button up shirt, yeah. So I'm gonna give it to you, not what I'm going for. I'm gonna give it because that is.
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Not wrong. And they always say that whenever pa got hurt, it was always in the ribs, so they had his shirt off. It was always Oh, my rib. Oh. It was never his ankle, ever his hat. What is the answer? It's I thought hat too. I was underwear. I was gonna say that to be funny. No, it's true. Yeah. What do you mean? He was quite he was quite open about the fact that it was too hot. He was just, you know, Simi Valley, where they it was just really hot out there, and he just didn't want to wear underwear. And this was notable because, again, the prairie pants are tight, and so it did not go unnoticed by all the people. And he'd be like, Haha, not wearing underwear. Itchy. Weren't they, like, made of like those prairie pants.
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So
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it was more Michael Landon didn't wear, and it wasn't, I thought she meant paw What? No article of clothing. Maybe there was no underwear on the prairie. We don't look could be like a George Lucas thing, where he was like Carrie Fisher, you can't wear a bra because there's no underwear in space.
Unknown Speaker 21:02
I don't know. Like, underwear is expensive. Well, you know, you do wear those long on the prairie, you did? Do you do that? Wear those long night shirts so you could just let everything hang free? Might not, yeah, oh yeah. They're everything when, like, you would tuck the night shirt into your pants, like, yeah. I thought he just wore, like, a long, almost like a, you know, like for the night before
Unknown Speaker 21:28
Christmas, put your little long cap. Yeah. Okay. So we have a lot of little factoids about Michael Landon here. He was such an interesting character, which makes sense. You know, he was a very charismatic man, and he made this show what it was. So of course, there's lots of interesting backstory on him. So I think we've talked about this before. Let's see if you can dig it up again. Michael Landon wore his hair famously long. That was not prairie hair. That was Michael Landon hair, that was pa Ingles hair. And there was nobody else on the prairie with hair like that. There was nobody else in the world of celebrity with hair like that. Why did he wear his hair long like that?
Unknown Speaker 22:09
I think Carolyn, she's looking smile, you look like you know, and I know if that's as an adult, why he wore his hair like that. But we have talked about when he was young, because we talked about the movie that he was in or he wasn't in, but that was based on his growing up, and he thought that his like, he was a great track runner, and he felt like his power on track came from his hair, kind of like a Samson and Goliath, right? Isn't Samson? Delilah, yeah, yeah. And so, yeah. So that's why he wanted his hair long when he was a child, and then bullies, like nailed him down in the locker room in that movie, and they cut all of his hair, and it was just awful. But I don't know if that as an adult, that wouldn't have necessarily it was. So it was a superstitious was he thought that's where his power came from. And he was very open about it. He was like, I was the number one javelin thrower. Yeah, the javelin, that's right, yeah. And I just never I realized that well, if this worked this time, I'm not going to cut my hair, and it'll get longer, and then we'll see how I do last next time. And he kept doing it better and better, like, I'm not cutting my hair, clearly, this is where my power comes from. And he just kept on doing it was such good hair. I'm glad you got that right, because my guess was going to be that he had a terrible case of, like, scalp psoriasis, and so he needed to grow hair long to cover it all up. But it is true. I mean, I think that's his trademark. I mean, the man was so handsome. And obviously we all know, you know, he had an amazing chest and biceps and all the shoulders, and, you know, keep going. But if you think Michael Landon, I bet the first you know, physical trait quality everyone's gonna think of is his hair. Is his hair beautiful? Yeah, but it's interesting. Little Joe didn't have long hair. I wonder if it was, if little Joe's hair was just coiffed, right, like with slicked back. Maybe that's a good point. I would have to look at images from all the years he was on Bonanza to see how it changed. And now, as he grew little else on the prairie, as you said in the beginning, he's kind of calling more of the shots, you know. Say, I can have my hair however I damn well want. And you know, he has some legs to stand on for that so, and I'm the number one javelin thrower in the nation, yeah, so my hair is going to be long, okay? Speaking of his hair, at what age did Michael Landon go gray? I was just, is that an actual question you're asking us? I was we can just, well, it was early. It was early. Let's just, okay, let's talk this through. I mean, it's just going to be a guess, right? So it early. Let's say 35 that's what I was going to say. 3535
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final answer. He went Gray, completely gray in his 20s.
Unknown Speaker 24:46
So he dyed his hair himself out of a bottle in the bathroom by himself. Yeah, wow. Until the day he died, and it was he, it was like, he even has revealed, like, what color it was. He didn't try to hide it. He was like, Yeah, my wife just was like, here. Try this.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
US, and it was ash brown. It was some kind of ash brown. He just did it himself in the dub. Wow. That whole time. Now, if you think about it, like everything we knew about pa Ingles that was not his hair color. I know, hey, everything you know about me hasn't been my hair color since my 20s, either.
Unknown Speaker 25:18
Good point. He's not the only one. Okay, why was Michael? We're almost done with Michael Landon, okay. Why was Michael Landon often filmed on a ladder
Unknown Speaker 25:29
because he was shorter. He was shorter than he wanted to be. That was like, five eight or something. Yeah, he was shorter than he wanted to be. Yeah. He often said he was 510 and people and then he'd be like, well, maybe I'm five nine. And then other people like, no, he's five eight, which means he was five seven. I
Unknown Speaker 25:46
was about to say, I got it right, right out of the gate. If I did, yeah, yeah. Often on a ladder. Or he would be on like, let's say he's coming out of the mercantile and he's on the steps and the people are on the ground, or he's on the wagon. He's on the way. He's on the wagon a lot, that's right. And if he had to stand next to people, he put four inch lifts in his shoes or on a on a fence, he was on a fence a lot. Yes, yeah. Gotta think about these things. So many of our handsome stars in Hollywood are not tall. Yeah. Robert Redford is really short. You guys, I don't care. I mean, obviously I don't care. I'm only five feet tall, but we don't care. We don't care you don't need to be tall. We love you. You're clearly beautiful. Just be beautiful and own it. Tom Cruise, yeah? Like Robert Redford. He was like, what? Five Seven, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 26:35
turning pages. You can hear me turning pages. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 26:40
so talking about Dean Butler again, so when Michael Landon left the show after season eight, he didn't leave it entirely. He was still behind the camera, but Paul was no longer in front of the camera in season eight, what very recognizable item did he gift to Dean Butler or Almanzo to wear on the show, but then dean Butler forgot it,
Unknown Speaker 27:03
like, forgot what? Like, forgot to wear it, or forgot it at home. Like, when you say just forgot it, like the show ended. I'm gonna guess it's his hat. I'm gonna guess it's his that very, that as well. That very, it doesn't look exactly like a cowboy hat. It almost has more of a rounded top right. That's what we're guessing. You're very good, you guys. That is correct. He gifted Almanzo his hat, and he was like, and now you, my friend, will wear this hat on the show from now on. And it even had, like, his initials in blue ink on the inside. It said, ml. I mean, think about that hat. It was the same hat the whole time. And he like, what an iconic piece of Americana. It's not just a random hat. He wears it in every show, and then he gives it to Almanzo. And then the show ends, and he left
Unknown Speaker 27:50
it. Left it. He's like, I forgot I forgot it.
Unknown Speaker 27:56
Where is it? Now, do we have any idea where this no no probably got blown up with
Unknown Speaker 28:04
that's got to hurt, that's gonna show we're smarter than we thought. Yeah, we are. We are. Yeah, it's all about guessing. You got to be a good guesser. We're not guessing. We are coming with full knowledge. Well, that one was a pretty easy guess, though, because other than a hat, really, he didn't wear, like a famous coat, or, you know, but it wouldn't occur to you until somebody puts it that way. You're like, Yeah, his hat is in every show. That's his hat. That's a big deal. I'm surprised you had the same hat through all those seasons, because especially how hot it did get in Simi Valley. Yeah, think how sweaty that hat band would have been on the outside. Nasty, not super breathable.
Unknown Speaker 28:43
Okay, we talked about this already, but I'm going to ask you anyway, because you'll get extra points. Why was Laura's first kiss something that should have been very sweet and memorable for all of us? So controversial? Well, it's just the age difference of them was icky, because when they first met, it was like she was truly still, you know, however many episodes before, she's still in her braids, with her little Calico dress and her little boots and and it's just he is a man. She literally in her book Beyond The Beyond the prairie. Is that? What is? Yeah, she says, you know, she when he walked in. She has a great quote in there, something about, here was this man walking in, and I hadn't even started shaving my legs yet, yeah, and you can tell. And she has said that was not just the first kiss between Laura and amanzo. That was her first kiss. Dean Butler looked like he was 25 or 26 when he first came on. Yeah, I almost felt sorry for him a little bit as I watched those episodes, like, yeah, oh, what did I sign on for? Like, it just I never bought it, and I felt bad for him, and I felt bad for Melissa. It just wasn't believable. And and I feel like, I'm not going to call it, they were jumping the shark, but it's like they tried to do so.
Unknown Speaker 30:00
So much like, hey, it's time for her to get married. Let's get a really cute guy. They just didn't think it all the way through. And the consequences of us going, ooh, this doesn't feel right, even if we couldn't articulate it, depending on our age, we just knew it didn't feel right. That's a good point, though. I would love to, and we've talked about having Dean and even Allison together, because they do such a great podcast right now, the little house 50
Unknown Speaker 30:26
having them on the on our podcast. But I would actually love to ask him that, because we've gotten Melissa's point of view. Oh, he is we know our point of view. But Carolyn, you bring up a really good a good question, like when he was filming those first scenes before the first kiss, one, when he first comes to Walnut Grove, and he knows this is we're supposed to be like, I'm supposed to be like, I like her. And you know they're in the mud him, you know Nelly, and you know all the, all the different scenes, and she's still being dressed like, yeah, she's 14. She's got the braids. Did he feel a little ick factor, too, and he said he's still grappling with it like he and he acknowledges it was a different time, so it wasn't like there was anything criminal taking place, because again,
Unknown Speaker 31:11
of course, but he just had ookie feelings about it, and he's still grappling with those ookie feelings. And you know, what didn't help is that Melissa Gilbert's mom cried on the set when it happened. She cried. Well, she was just probably so uncomfortable, like, yeah, because, and you always hear now, at least when I'm listening to podcasts or reading interviews, where to get a part, you have to, like, read with the other person that already has the role, and you have to see if there's chemistry. But it doesn't seem like that ever played a part in that they ever put those two in a room to, like, read through some scenes before then,
Unknown Speaker 31:48
if you then fast forward a year to where it's like those golden I'm thinking of the books the Happy Golden Years. Yeah, but, but, you know, if you watch the episodes when they have the baby and they have baby rose and all this stuff,
Unknown Speaker 32:02
they look way more like age mates because they didn't like it. Well, I wasn't, I was never a fan. And I had kind of trickled off watching, I think, because we were getting older, and we all identified to little girls, because we were little girls at the time. But you know, then all of a sudden, Laura, she like because this was how it was in the prairie. She jumps from being little girl to wife and mom in an episode two weeks. Yeah. And for all of us, that's not how our lives were progressing. So that is understandably why a lot of us, we kind of trickled off watching because we didn't have really anything we could connect to and identify with anymore, because all of a sudden, Laura, who we'd loved forever, was a wife and a teacher. And I was like, wait, I'm still in like, eighth grade, no longer identifiable. And so the question is, why didn't What is the reason for this? And wouldn't it have been a great moment to make it a relatable moment by giving her a cute little boy from Miss Beatles class to fumble through a first kiss with instead, it's possible that they were going for accuracy.
Unknown Speaker 33:06
That's all that I can figure out there. I mean, this has been talked about, but nobody has been definitive. Nobody has answered the question and said this is what it was. But Laura Ingalls and amanzo Wilder met when she was 15 and he was 25
Unknown Speaker 33:20
oh, yeah, so they probably were, my gosh, it's not like they cared about accuracy with anything else Exactly. Why wouldn't you go for the rating exactly and have it be a cute Tiger Beat guy, I will say, though that is 15 and 25 that's about exactly what I looked like, and he referred to her as like when they were friends to begin with, and he referred to her as his little friend, and then they were married by the time she was 18.
Unknown Speaker 33:49
Interesting. I mean, again, it was perfectly acceptable on the prairie,
Unknown Speaker 33:55
70s television, we were having a little bit of trouble. Okay, let's move on to a new character. How did Mary go blind?
Unknown Speaker 34:04
You go ahead, I felt like she, she just has, like, an illness. She it's just an illness, because it's, it's kind of slowly, well, it happens on the show in like two episodes, but it's like the doctor then comes and tells Ma and Pa that she's not going to see again, and they have to tell Mary. And that's a heartbreaking episode. I only watched it, like a year ago. I think smart. Did you have scarlet fever or something? Yes, she did. Oh, you went scar.
Unknown Speaker 34:35
That's my and I just did. Illness
Unknown Speaker 34:39
was a good, a good, all encompassing answer, because it was correct too, but yeah, and I remember that my mom would talk about the fact that they thought I had scarlet fever when I was a baby, or not a baby. Maybe I was like a toddler. It ended up being something else, obviously. But after she had Scarlet feat, you know that I was like, I could have gone blah.
Unknown Speaker 35:00
He
Unknown Speaker 35:03
my grandma had scarlet fever. And I remember thinking the same exact thing, Oh, my God, you could have gone. My mom had scarlet fever really badly when she was, like four, and they thought she was going to die. And turns out that's what the heart condition she had that did end up being one of the things that killed her. She it was like eight years ago when they discovered she had, like, mitral valve prolapse, and the valve in her heart, this one big valve, was completely damaged. And one of the first things the doctor asked her at the time, she was like, 7574
Unknown Speaker 35:35
the first thing the doctor asked is, did you have scarlet fever as a child? And she said, yeah, really badly. And he said, that's, that's what it is. Oh, wow. This is why we have vaccinations. People, okay, well, this is very interesting, because in the books, it is attributed to scarlet fever. In the show, I can't remember if they say scarlet fever or not, but I always thought it was scarlet fever. And, you know, the books in the show, they blended together. And we read the books and we watched this so and she so I don't know if I got scarlet fever from the show or from the books put them together. I don't know. But anyway, the common wisdom is that it was scarlet fever. But it's not true. You still get the point, because that's what everybody thought, and that's what they said. But apparently, I'm going to read this straight from the magazine. So author Laura Ingalls Wilder blamed her sister Mary's blindness on scarlet fever, an explanation that carried over to the TV series. Okay, there's my answer, but researchers say that scarlet fever DOESN'T cause blindness. Here's a whole generation of people who have grown up thinking that scarlet fever causes blindness because of moral angles. Although Laura's sister did have scarlet fever at a young age, she had recovered. The blindness came much later when Mary suffered severe headaches, paralysis of the face, and what Laura called spinal sickness, all signs of viral help me with this now viral. Meningo encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain membrane that can also inflame the optic nerve,
Unknown Speaker 37:01
just blew up everyone's day. Well, I can't say that other one either. It's too hard to say that that's caused it. I prefer Scarlet, yeah, wow. It's go back and watch that episode, though, because it there's so many things that are almost like comical, because you're like, how are you not going to tell her? And then they just, like, blurted out. And Melissa Sue Anderson is so good, though, the way she reacts is heartbreaking. Like you want to cry so hard just watching her hear that from mom, Pa and Ma and Pa are so good too, like before they tell her, grappling with their sadness and everything, it was really emotional and well done. Yeah, good on you. Melissa Sue Anderson, yeah, good on you. Okay, so while Melissa Sue Anderson was still on Little House on the Prairie, what movie role did she turn down because she had a morals clause in her lot, in her little house contract, and she was not comfortable with the nudity. Okay? We just, we talked about this, like, last year, okay, I'm gonna think movie, movie, oh, because I was thinking, I was like, we know we saw her on Lance. We know that Melissa Sue Anderson was on the lance. Lost his virginity for 16 or 17.
Unknown Speaker 38:18
No, that wasn't because we don't have to correct you. Yeah, no, you can correct the Swedish Yes, you're right. She was in like that pilot episode, yeah, yeah. She moved away, right? She moved away. He moved away. And Michelle, cut it all out. Cut it all out. I'm gonna say it's gonna be an episode while she's still on it. And then nudity, I'm gonna guess something like little darlings. Carolyn, any thoughts, you know, I'm thinking of one of those or Blue Lagoon type things.
Unknown Speaker 38:50
Anderson, yeah, but it was still that same, yeah. Little House is still going into the 80s. All right, I'm new to say this would be, I don't I think it's pretty big. Oh, no, yeah, I don't think it's blue lagoon, because I think they wanted Brooke shows from the beginning for that. So I'm saying little darlings, but I think that's wrong, because I think in our little darlings episode, we talk about wanting those two I think Jodie Foster might have been a but was, we don't know it's blue lagoon. Ah, it's blue lagoon. And I thought they wanted Brooke Shields from the beginning, they went to Brooke Shields when Melissa Sue Anderson turned it down. So basically, Melissa Sue Anderson is responsible for Brooke Shields his career, because think of how Brooke Shields his career blew up after that. Yes, yeah, whoa. Thank you, listeners. You, I bet you didn't know that. I'm sorry, but I would never have gone for that. She didn't even have to be nude. We learned from our Blue Lagoon research that Brooke's Bubbies are really are, oh yeah, her Bubbies, her Bubbies, Bubbies, Bubbies. Her puppies aren't really hers. Yeah, in the movie, yeah, and I'm sorry, but the.
Unknown Speaker 40:00
Public, the viewing public would never have allowed it to happen, right? It would just the cognitive dissonance would have been too much. I mean, think about with Karen Grassley, when she wrote her book about her real life, and people were mad because she wasn't Carolyn Ingalls in real life, in real life. Yeah, like they're so upset that Karen Grassley not mount angles, but Karen Grassley had sex with men. What? That would not have gone over. Well that. So they dodged a bullet on that one, I think. And she was on, this is really, this is really interesting. So Melissa Sue Anderson was on Love Boat quite a bit. And she was lucky in love on Love Boat. Oh, more than once, her first time on Love Boat. What I'm going to help you with this one, because this is hard. What son of a crooner, did Melissa Sue Anderson start dating after they appeared together on The Love Boat? Son in real life. In real life, they start together on Love Boat, and then in real life, they started of a crooner, son of a crooner.
Unknown Speaker 41:09
I know Dean Martin had a son who was really, yeah, I was thinking the Sinatra thinking,
Unknown Speaker 41:14
and he was friends with everybody. So crooner would be like, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin
Unknown Speaker 41:20
is it? Does Sinatra have a not that I know of. He had a daughter. Does he earnest, made for walking? Walkings,
Unknown Speaker 41:29
yeah,
Unknown Speaker 41:31
Desi Ernest Jr was a lot. He was, that's true. He was on, but that's but was Desi Arnaz isn't really, no,
Unknown Speaker 41:40
I'm gonna go theme Martin only because I don't know any other crooners, you mean, or Crosby's like, you know, remember, he got remarried to that old rabbit hole, to the woman who was a Miss America, and then he had a bunch of the young kids and Kristen Shepherd, or whatever, the shooter from Dallas is his daughter from the second Marriage. That's right. I think everybody, if, if this
Unknown Speaker 42:02
scintillating
Unknown Speaker 42:04
thought, thought, you know, are trying to being out loud, yeah, people are still listening. They're shouting right now at their devices. I'm gonna go, I don't know. Let's just say, Wait, your first instinct was correct. It is Frank Sinatra, and she was 16, and he was 33 Well, no wonder we didn't wait. What's his name? Frank Sinatra Jr. I mean, oh, wait, sorry, Frank's not your junior, yes. Junior is important. Frank Sinatra Junior, yeah. Frank Sinatra Jr, he's 33 he was 33 Yeah. She also started dating Lorenzo Lamas after being on The Love Boat with him. I don't know how much older he was than her, maybe they're about the same. That's not so much. That's not such a big deal. Isn't his mom a crooner? Arlene Dahl, oh yeah. Was his mom who I might be related to, but I don't know how
Unknown Speaker 42:53
listeners, do you not love this? You come for the Little House on the Prairie scoop, but you leave with so much more. Yeah, well, let's talk about her little house husband, yeah, Adam Kendall played by Linwood, Boomer. Many
Unknown Speaker 43:10
people change their names, Linwood, Boomer. Linwood. Come on, Linwood.
Unknown Speaker 43:18
Oh, I'll tell you. I'm gonna ask you. You're gonna tell me so Adam Kendall was Mary's equally blind husband, played by Linwood Boomer, and he would go on to even greater success, bigger than Little House on the Prairie, as the creator of a mid 2000 sitcom based on his own childhood. Can you name it? Mid 2000s
Unknown Speaker 43:42
that can't be that. Was it on, like, was it on like, primetime, or was it on, like, a Disney Channel type, prime time? Okay,
Unknown Speaker 43:51
fresh off the boat.
Unknown Speaker 43:53
It can't be that. Whatever that little
Unknown Speaker 43:57
mid 2000 so we're talking like 2005
Unknown Speaker 44:00
what was I watching in 2005 I'm right about that. I guessed I should actually look it up and find out that's on his life. That's about his childhood. Yep, it was about his childhood. Oh, yeah. Oh. Two early. 2000s even. Is it like? Is it like?
Unknown Speaker 44:17
Malcolm in the Middle, bing, bing, bing, bing, that's it. What they're having Malcolm in the Middle too. Yes,
Unknown Speaker 44:25
he is. Yes, he's involved. He is Malcolm. Nomer is Malcolm. He's in the middle, like finding out that West fire did dragon tales, yes. Oh, my God, he is Malcolm. I watched it a few times, and it was, it was funny, it was very cute. It was a big show for Liam
Unknown Speaker 44:46
and so yeah, they're the revival is going to be all the kids coming home to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Jane Kaczmarek and Brian Cranston, who played the parents, yeah and and all those kids are coming back for the revival. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 44:59
the boss.
Unknown Speaker 45:00
To me.
Unknown Speaker 45:09
Now. Okay, moving on in the season one episode called Ma's holiday, Mr. Edwards accidentally nails what to the roof.
Unknown Speaker 45:20
Wait, I'd like to go back to the first question and add Mr. Edwards to my list of hotties.
Unknown Speaker 45:28
Sweet Merlin. Yeah, I love heart actually, the heart throbs list, but actually Mr. Garvey for sure. Okay, he nailed what he nailed. He nailed what to the roof. Didn't mean now, like his
Unknown Speaker 45:42
it's like his pants or something. Yeah, very close. You're very you're on the right track. It has to do with clothing, his suspenders, his hat, his glove. No, no. Guess his pants or his underwear? I don't know. I know. Oh, he wasn't wearing underwear. Oh, no. I'm just gonna tell you, because you're going down, you're getting colder. Oh, okay, he nailed Carrie to the roof. Oh, can I just take a moment to stand up for a standing ovation Mr. Edwards for doing that. And he did that on purpose, right? Because he was watching her. Oh, is that how it
Unknown Speaker 46:16
went away from him all the time, and he had to keep her in one place while he was doing, oh yeah, he anchored, whose character Isaiah Edwards was babysitting Carrie, and he anchored the dress to the roof while fixing some shingles. Yeah, I totally remember that, yeah. And so either Lindsay or Sydney Greenbush says, I remember them putting a safety belt underneath my dress and then pulling my dress out all around. And then, of course, Victor made it fun, so he was never scary in any way. It was one of my favorite experiences. Oh, that's super cute. That's super cute. That is cute. Okay, here's here's an we're gonna make another list. Can you name all of the adopted children on the prairie?
Unknown Speaker 46:57
Well, we've got Jason Bateman and his sister with the braids and the big smile, sister,
Unknown Speaker 47:05
Albert, Cassandra, Sandra. And then you've got Shannon Doherty. Doherty, she's Dean, she's the niece issues, and she Dean Butler's niece. And then Albert, obviously, Mr. Edwards adopts those kids. Oh, that's right. So John, John Jr, that's not his biological child, yeah, yeah. So he like adopts them as I'm adding their fathers, all right?
Unknown Speaker 47:33
And there was, there were other kids in that family too, but I can't remember all who they were.
Unknown Speaker 47:43
Oh, my God. Oh Nancy. Nancy, who replaced Nellie, essentially, because Nell was all growing up and married, and they're like, is gonna be the bitch on the prairie, right? Yeah, and they wanted her to look just like her, yeah? So they adopted did not like her, yeah. There's like, I didn't like Nelly, but I love Nelly like i Yes, I loved to hate ally because, but Nancy, I just did not like, No, she did not have any redeeming qualities whatsoever. No, okay, there's one more that's obvious. No, there's one that is not obvious at all. In fact, I didn't know it until I read this magazine.
Unknown Speaker 48:18
Did you guys know that Willie Olson was adopted. No, I did not either. Apparently, he's adopted. When do we find that out? Give me an episode, because I want to go fact check that. Yeah. I mean, at least according to Little House on the Prairie trivia magazine, he was adopted. That could be a typo, and somebody was getting overeager, so we'll definitely have to do some fact checking on that one. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 48:43
So of all these, these adopted children,
Unknown Speaker 48:49
Michelle,
Unknown Speaker 48:51
fact check, it says no. The answer. Willie Olson, played by Jonathan Gilbert, was not adopted in the TV show Little House on the Prairie. He was the biological son. Now, this is AI, so I'm just biological son of Nelson Harriet, though he had adopted sister on the show, Nancy. However, the actor who played Willie, Jonathan Gilbert, was adopted in real life by the parents of Melissa Gilbert, who played Laura Ingalls, making them adopted siblings in real life. Well, I think who did that magazine? I think we need to write into them. We might have to write into Little House on the Prairie trivia magazine, because they could be wrong. Yeah, right. Now, let's just say we're 5050, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 49:26
okay, but those adopted children, there were so many of them, and they went through a lot of trauma. There was a lot of difficulties. So how many tragedies can you name that befell these adopted children on the prairie? Oh, just the adopted children. Just the adapt, yep, just, we're gonna focus. We're just, I can, I don't know if I can think of any Sure. You can think of Albert when he OD on, well, sure. And then Albert bean, he was a man Albert set the fire. You know, Mrs. Garvey died. Fire starter. Fire starter. Yeah, well, yeah, for sure. And then you.
Unknown Speaker 50:03
Bateman was on them. Well, let me just tell you what happened to Jesus. Let's just guess. We could just start guessing things like near drowning, kidnapped and thrown in a you know,
Unknown Speaker 50:16
they're so plausible, I'm checking my list to see if, well, Albert and I mean, Albert was the adopted one, and Albert's girlfriend was raped by a clown, and then girlfriend raped. I'm adding it to the list, okay? GF raped.
Unknown Speaker 50:32
Well, Nancy, I can't think of any tragedies. I didn't really watch it then because she bugged me so much, so I wouldn't really watch it at the end of the show. So we all think that he died, or did not die of his morphine addiction when he Oded on morphine, but the truth is, after he recovered from his overdose, Albert got leukemia. That's right, he got leukemia. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. Jason Bateman, he got caught in a bear trap, of course, that was tough sledding, right there. He also got shot by a bank robber.
Unknown Speaker 51:07
Tough life. I would also, I would also, accept life as a thief, because Albert, he started on the show as a thief, and that's right, yeah, that's right, he was a little thief. And of course, Shannon Doherty's parents died, so that's traumatic. That's why she has to live with Laura and Almanzo. Yeah, she was so cute. Jenny, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 51:28
But Matthew Labrador actually was on the show before he was Albert. He was in the first two episodes of Little House. Do you know what role he played? I
Unknown Speaker 51:40
didn't even know he was, hang on, hang on, hang on. So the first two, do you mean the pilot, or like country girls? I think like country girls, they didn't, I don't think it's the pilot. I think it's the first two show, Willie.
Unknown Speaker 51:53
I think he was Willie. I think he was, I think he was, I'm gonna say Willie, Willie. Okay, that's a good guess. It's not right, but it's a good guess. Okay, thank you. Actually, he appeared as Charles Ingalls in flashbacks to his childhood.
Unknown Speaker 52:08
I think I vaguely remember that little factoid.
Unknown Speaker 52:13
Okay, good, okay, yeah, okay, let's move on to Nellie Olson. So Alison arngrim Is the actress who played Nellie Olson, and she became deeply involved in AIDS activism after the show, and she did this in part due to her relationship with which little house star, well, her husband. And what was his real name? I want to say Lynwood Boomer, because it sounds kind of like that, but I know it's not Percival. Is her? Is his answer? Yeah, Percival. Percival, right? And then I would know his name if you told me. But Steve Tracy know that. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 52:48
apparently. So Percival, played by Steve Tracy, was Natalie Olsen's eventual husband on the show. We talked about their wedding in our weddings episode last season, and apparently they were so close on the set that people assumed that they were having an affair, but the truth is they were not having an affair. It's just that Steve Tracy had confessed to Alison arngrim that he was gay and he was not out of the closet. He was very much in the closet, and she was the only person that he had told and so they become fast friends
Unknown Speaker 53:22
during and after the show as well. They're very, very close. And then, unfortunately, he gets sick and he dies of AIDS related causes. And this inspires her to be an activist, and it continues to be something that she works on today that's amazing, isn't that amazing? What a beautiful relationship Yes, to come from something like that, right?
Unknown Speaker 53:45
Okay, what role did Melissa Gilbert's real life brother play?
Unknown Speaker 53:51
He was Willie
Unknown Speaker 53:53
Willie Olson.
Unknown Speaker 53:57
Oh my gosh. And I put here in my notes, I put
Unknown Speaker 54:01
Willie Nelson. Mystery is solved. It's that Willie Nelson. I'm like, was Willie Nelson on the show? What? Johnny Cash?
Unknown Speaker 54:10
Oh, yeah, that's right, Johnny was Johnny and June. That's right. So Willie Olson, not Willie Nelson, after the show ended, as we've heard this story before. He kind of disappeared, and nobody knows where he went. And then, okay, so I'm just going to read this from the magazine. Right? So why did Jonathan His name is Jonathan Gilbert. It's Melissa Gilbert's real life brother played Willie Olson. Why did Jonathan disappear when he turned 18, Jonathan gave up acting and moved away from California for years. Melissa said he had no relationship with her, and she never figured out why he drifted away. And he says, I had a whole spiritual journey for maybe 20 years. I've worked in finance and Wall Street. Lived in Manhattan for a long time, and then Willie Olson slash Jonathan Gilbert surprises the entire cast by.
Unknown Speaker 55:00
Showing up at the 50th Anniversary Celebration last year, and I'm going to read this part to you too, because it's so interesting. At first, fans and even some cast members did not recognize the long haired man who showed up to the little house reunion in Simi Valley, California in April of 2024 but sure enough, that was the 56 year old Jonathan who made a surprise return for decades after leaving the show, it was complete insanity, sobbing hysteria. Allison arngrim, who played his sister, told us I had not laid eyes on him since 1983
Unknown Speaker 55:33
he comes in looking absolutely stunning. Melissa starts crying, starts hugging him, and I lost it completely. There was so much crying. I love I love that I do too. And I remember watching and he was so well spoken because he did a little Q and A with audience members. And I remember seeing some of that video. And Wow, just wow, yeah, yeah, that spiritual journey was not for nothing, right? But you know what, Carolyn I do get a little whiff of James Vincent McNichol on him. Like, when you say whiff, do you make actual
Unknown Speaker 56:09
surrounds James Vincent McNichol? Like, these two are definitely friends. They get their hair cut at the same place. They don't wash their hair at the same place. They smoke the same thing. And, you know, more power to them. It seems like they're both really happy. But I definitely that that feeling that we got when, when James Vincent McNichol walked into our teen idol dinner, and he is, like, surfer dude times 10.
Unknown Speaker 56:32
Jonathan Gilbert is the same, same thing, but also with James Vincent McNichol just so funny. Like, I always say it was like, you know, spikoly coming out of the van and his friends coming out of the van on fast times those doors opened, and I smelled them before I saw him. And then you turn and it's like you could just almost see the smoke coming in with
Unknown Speaker 56:53
them. And he just and, hey, hey, knock yourself out. No judgment at all, believe me, I live in Colorado. No judgment here. But it was just funny. It was just, it was just kind of in character, almost, and it's his actual person, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 57:08
Okay, so now this is in, this is in honor of my, I was gonna say my namesake, but my costume sake, the person I'm dressed as today. Can you guys tell me, how did Mrs. Garvey die? I can't, because it's too hard much. It's too much. Because why did they make us Why did, why did as viewers, because Mary couldn't see her, but why did, as viewers, we have to watch her holding that baby at the window. Landon he as the flames are behind her, like he loved that's that drama and that extra like, I don't know what you would even call it, but I feel like he was the one who said, we're gonna show the fire behind her and her banging on the window. That
Unknown Speaker 57:49
could possibly happen a baby dying in a fire. Yeah? But you guys, it wasn't. It wasn't just drama. It was, I mean, that is trouble, tragedy, it is trauma, yeah? Drama with it, art, yeah, trauma, T, R, A, M, a, yeah. Actually, let's come up with a new term, trauma to be more explicit. There's a fire set by Albert in the basement at the blind school and, well, he doesn't know. It's because he left his pipe there. Yeah, that he was testing Bad Boy contraband. It wasn't cigars. I thought maybe it was cigars, but you're right, it was a pipe. It was a pipe. Yeah, it wasn't morphine. We don't know what they were smoking, but it was something. And Mary and Adam managed to escape, and somehow, oops, we forgot our baby. And so Mrs. Garvey runs back into the burning building to get the baby and but there's no escaping, and so she's gonna try and escape out the window. She's trying to break the window with her arm, and their flames are, like, it was horrible, horrible. And in most times you would, like, they'd be saved. Oh, thank God, they're saved. Nope, dead, yep, dead. And
Unknown Speaker 58:55
apparently that's when I stopped watching, yeah. Like, I don't have, I can't do that. Like, shows that are that, like, I remember the episode that I stopped watching,
Unknown Speaker 59:06
like, er, way back in the day, you know, a child, and I just couldn't do it. Yeah, this is great, though, because I think we've all, we all wondered this when we watched the episode. This is an actual headline in the Little House on the Prairie trivia magazine. Wait, did she use the baby as a battering ram?
Unknown Speaker 59:27
Oh,
Unknown Speaker 59:29
land, yeah, yeah, it looked like she was using the baby to break the window. So during the chaos, this is again, I'm reading from the magazine, during the chaos caused by the fire, Alice Garvey, looking to escape, tried to break through an upstairs window using what looked to many viewers like the baby, well, a doll stand in for the infant. The actress did not dispute this, telling the Little House on the Prairie tribute website that the special effects department failed to make the window break easily enough. She said, I went out with a roar.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
Not a whimper.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:02
What's the actress's name? Because she just passed away. And she is so sweet. It's a real Oh, Hersha parody, that's right. So she was in a lot of these little house reunion things. You know, the Zoom calls you could, you remember in like 2020 and early 21 all these casts were getting back together to raise money for different charities, and especially covid related things. And I remember the first one we got on with her or something, when, when they introduced her, she's sitting there, and she just holds up from like the bottom of the screen this baby doll. And she was like, We're fine. We're fine.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:39
She was like, really present at all of those reunions, and sadly, she just died last, like last fall. Sad. Yeah, talk about a legendary moment on TV, film, right? And memorable, right? Oh, my God, scarred by it. Okay, we're coming to the end. We're coming to the close. Two more, two more questions. Already. Yeah, I know
Unknown Speaker 1:01:00
soon, but this one's gonna be, we're gonna make a list again, and you're gonna see if we can take turns. We'll go, Michelle Carolyn. Michelle Carolyn. Michelle Carolyn, okay, name as many characters from Walnut Grove as you can in one minute. Oh, in one minute, in one way. Starts it. I gotta start it. Okay, and we're gonna go, we're gonna go, Carolyn first All right, okay, okay. So when I go, when I say go, Carolyn, you're gonna say, All right, okay, on your oops, wait. Can I just say first name, or do I have to say first and last name, whatever, whatever, just whatever you got both. Say both. If you can't, if you don't, then we'll figure it out. Okay, you're ready? Yes, on your mark. Get set. Go. Carolyn Ingalls, Pa Ingles, Mary Ingalls, Laura Albert Carrie, Mrs. Beetle, Miss Beadle,
Unknown Speaker 1:01:48
Harriet Olson, Nellie Olsen,
Unknown Speaker 1:01:51
Nelson Willie Olson,
Unknown Speaker 1:01:56
Reverend Alden Doug Baker, Oh, good one.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:00
Almanza Wilder, Mr. Edwards, Oh, Mr. Garvey. Mrs. Garvey.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:06
Nancy Olson, John Jr. Edwards, okay, the man who ran the Oh, shit, I forgot his name. The man who ran the water well, the mill. Who was that? Mr. Hansen. Mr. Hansen, thank you. I'm giving it to you. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 1:02:26
Hattie is her name? Hattie,
Unknown Speaker 1:02:29
no, Hester, Sue, Hester, I'm giving it to you. Oh yeah, Hester, Sue is a good one. Jenny Almanzo, and time, okay, oh, nice job, you guys, nice job. You can people. You got 510, 1520, you got 22 characters, and you guys were probably halfway there. Well, one minute was hard, yeah, if I had more time and I could sit there and think of someone good one for me. Yeah, anything, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:02:59
paralysis, yes. So that was pretty amazing that I even got those. We could have said Percival, yeah, there's bunny. Yeah, bunny, bunny,
Unknown Speaker 1:03:08
the horse, the horse. Oh, they're more trauma, trauma on the prairie. Okay, here's our very last question, okay, and we've already, we've already referenced it already. So no, you're gonna get it right. How did the show end. What happened in the final episode?
Unknown Speaker 1:03:23
The town was blown up by the residents, where they put dynamite because of the mean like railroad magnet guy who was going to come and take their land from them, and they said, You're not going to get the buildings done. And they blew it up.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:39
Ding, ding, ding, ding. And I didn't, I think I watched that episode, just because it was so be, you know,
Unknown Speaker 1:03:46
but I hadn't really watched the build up to that episode or anything. Because what year would that have been? Kristen? Was it 1983 would that be 83 I believe it was 1983
Unknown Speaker 1:03:57
and yes, you're right. It was a robber baron who's going to come take over Walnut Grove, and they weren't having it and but the truth is, Michael Landon did it very much on purpose, and I'm going to read from this magazine again. The headline says, Michael Landon blew his top and then blew up the set. The mercurial Landon was so furious that he had to find out secondhand that the show was canceled, instead of getting the news directly from the network that he announced he was going to this is a quote blow the whole fucking thing up, according to Melissa Gilbert and he did writing a storyline for the final movie Oh, 1984 1984 is the last farewell that saw the destruction of all the buildings in Walnut Creek. Why not? I think is that a typo, or did they change the name? We weren't watching it then, so we don't know. We're gonna say that's a typo, because they also
Unknown Speaker 1:04:47
about the legitimacy of this $12.99 cent magazine. Don't, don't Google any of this. Don't Google any of it, because this episode was adopted. Okay, so that so they saw the.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
That episode saw the destruction of all the buildings in Walnut Grove, which had the added effect of denying their use for any potential future Little House Project. As Gilbert told the Television Academy Foundation in a video interview, it was Michael's way of saying, no one else is going to shoot here. This was mine.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:20
Well done. Michael, well done. Well done makes me want we that's an episode we should actually recap the last farewell.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:35
So after this very rigorous testing, I have calculated that our collective l hop IQ is well above average. You guys, like, like, serious mental levels worried. I really, Wow, you are
Unknown Speaker 1:05:48
gifted and talented. They're gonna pull you out of class for special, accelerated
Unknown Speaker 1:05:54
enrichment. It's good. I mean, even almost all of them you probably thought you didn't know, and you got almost all of them did. We did, yeah, because you have enough, you have enough foundational learning, that you are able to make an educated guess. Guessing is not nothing. Guessing comes from something, and it comes from your foundational knowledge. Oh, I might have to write that down. That's, that's right,
Unknown Speaker 1:06:16
everybody. That was just a fraction of the factoids that I found in this dubious l hop grocery store checkout magazine. So we will probably do this again, and you can play along at home. Thank you so much everybody for listening, and we will see you next time. And to everyone supporting us on Patreon, thank you. Your generosity keeps the lights on and the memories rolling. Because of you, we get to keep revisiting the songs, movies and cultural touchstones that helped raise us. It means more than we can say that you choose to spend your time and just a tiny bit of your money keeping this Gen X conversation alive. We are genuinely grateful, and today we're giving a special shout out to these patrons, Tam, Lisa, Kieran, Carolyn, Diane, Jill, Terry with an A, T, A, R, I, Theresa, s, j, s, Karen, Jennifer, Liz, Greta and Kim. Thank you, everybody. You everybody. In the meantime, let's raise our glasses for a toast, courtesy of the cast of Three's Company, two good times, two happy days.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:25
You got so excited.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:30
Okay, ready? I'm gonna count it down. Carolyn, ready? 321, little
Unknown Speaker 1:07:38
house.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:40
Oh, just you
Unknown Speaker 1:07:42
Little House on the Prairie.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:47
I think we just did
Unknown Speaker 1:07:49
Cheers everyone,
Unknown Speaker 1:07:52
the information, opinions and comments expressed on the pop culture Preservation Society podcast belongs solely to Carolyn the crushologist and hello Newman, and are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates. And though we truly believe we are always right, there is always a first time the PCPs is written, produced and recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional wjm studios and our beloved Mary Richards. Nanu. Nanu, keep on truckin, and May the Force Be With You.