Michael Landon had a very impressive TV run. For 30 consecutive years, his face was onscreen, reliably. From 1959 to 1989, Landon was consistently inescapable. First, there was Bonanza, where he played Little Joe Cartwright in one of the most successful TV westerns ever.
The year after Bonanza was canceled, Landon was back on television as Charles Ingalls, patriarch of Little House on the Prairie, a show he also wrote, directed, and produced. Little House lasted almost a decade, and then Landon was an angel named Jonathan Smith on Highway to Heaven for another five years.
Michael Landon had plenty of context for a well-informed opinion about TV and its place in the family.
When NBC executives asked for heavier action on Little House on the Prairie, Michael Landon allowed no such thing in the Ingalls homestead. “It was obvious I wasn’t going to do that kind of show,” Landon told the Associated Press in ’82. “Our characters are warm, feeling, and non-violent towards each other.”
As executive producer of Little House and its spinoff Father Murphy, Landon set the tone for each show. He approached both programs with a family-centered mindset.
“Families just don’t talk to each other enough anymore,” said Landon. Although he was separated from his wife, there was still plenty of conversation with seven kids at the dinner table. Landon felt deep conviction about what they should and shouldn’t watch.
“Unless there’s something very worthwhile, I won’t let them watch during the week. But they do have to watch Little House.”
Michael Landon made his children watch Little House on the Prairie. He also had firm views regarding Dallas, a program he admittedly wasn’t very familiar with. “I don’t watch it enough to know why people watch it. All I know is that they’re making a hero out of an evil guy.”