What Happened On ‘Little House on the Prairie’s First Episode?
Few TV series have stood the test of time like NBC’s Little House on the Prairie. Premiering on March 30, 1974, the pilot episode was a 90-minute made-for-TV movie that laid the foundation for one of television’s most beloved family dramas. The show made an even bigger star of Bonanza‘s Michael Landon, who agreed to direct the pilot if he could also play Charles Ingalls, and introduced the world to Karen Grassle, who played Caroline “Ma” Ingalls, the spunky Melissa Gilbert as Laura, Melissa Sue Anderson as Mary and tumbling twins Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush as little Carrie.
The series is based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s treasured books the same name, but the first episode skips over the Big Woods stories, plunging viewers into the Ingalls family’s hardscrabble but wholesome world as they build a new life in “Indian Country.”
Here’s what happened in the action-packed pilot of Little House of the Prairie.
The Journey Begins
As a nod to Wilder’s books, the pilot opens with a voiceover from Laura wishing she had a “remembrance book” to record their happy time in the Big Woods. Though Caroline is distraught about leaving their cozy home and nearby family, Charles says the woods have become too crowded to hunt and it’s time to pack the covered wagon and go west.
Spirited Laura is tickled, saying she “thought it a fine thing to go where there had never been a road before … for this was a fair land and I rejoiced that I would see it.” And so they bundle up a comically grinning Carrie, Pa’s fiddle (which makes a “joysome” sound) and off to Kansas they go.
Per Ma’s prediction, the tribulations come fast and furious — wind, rainstorms, tired horses, wild rivers to cross and wolf packs. But, Pa’s pioneering spirit and Ma’s faith and loyalty help them persevere.
Staking Their Claim
Everett Collection
The Ingalls family makes it to Kansas, stopping for a rest in a lush and rolling prairie.
Ma believes they are headed back to civilization via the town of Independence. Not quite what Pa had in mind, as he tells his wife that he plans to claim the 160 acres the government promised him, grow his own crops and “live free and clear, owing no man.”
Getting down to the business of being the family Ingalls, they begin working together to build a log cabin and a stable for their new ponies, Pat (Pet in the book) and Patty, and set up the necessities for day-to-day life. Plus, they get a little help.
To Ma’s chagrin, Pa finds himself a helper in homesteader Mr. Edwards (a scene-stealing Victor French). Edwards is an amiable feller who’s just a tad — or a ton — too coarse for Ma’s liking. Edwards dances like a wild man, tells it like it is, and, in one memorable scene, teaches an enthusiastic Laura to muster up a mouthful of saliva and spit for distance.
Everett Collection
Behind the camera, Landon and the show’s creator and lead screenwriter, Blanche Hanalis, do an admirable job of portraying Charles Ingalls as a trial-and-error settler whose dreams don’t always sync up with reality. Pa’s determination often puts his family in genuine peril, leaving Ma to hold down the little log fort. But those scenes also serve to add a feisty edge to the refined Caroline. She helps chop wood and set walls, drives the team of horses through churning water, and, in another of the pilot’s pivotal scenes, holds firm when a pair of Osage warriors visit the cabin.
Hanalis’ writing doesn’t gloss over the tensions that existed during America’s westward expansion, but tempers them with Laura’s genuine curiosity about her new neighbors. While Ma takes no comfort in one’s childlike delight in feather pillows and offers them Pa’s tobacco stash to skedaddle, Laura offers them something more valuable: respect. Though she’s heard scary stories about the tribes, they give her no reason to be afraid. One visitor, who turns out to be the tribal chief, offers Laura a bear paw amulet to keep her safe.
When a prairie fire threatens to wipe out the family’s progress, Ma still says the Osage are trying to burn them out. But when the chief returns later, this time with a translator, to wish them well as the tribe is forced further west, she changes her mind.
A Bittersweet Goodbye
As the pilot wraps up, the Ingalls family enjoys a fine run of luck. Charles trades furs for seeds and a plow. The crops thrive. The family enjoys their first Christmas on the prairie, complete with Edwards’ snow-covered trek to Independence to make sure the Ingalls girls have gifts to open.
Just as all is going smoothly, the same government folks that forced the Ingalls’ Osage friends from their land do the same to them. Seems the family set up house on the wrong side of the settleable land and everything they’ve worked for is, once again, for naught. They repack the wagon, bid Edwards farewell (if not for long) and roll away — to the banks of Plum Creek, as Laura Ingalls devotees know, and to a nine-season run that would add history, adventure, faith and family centered values and a whole lot of fun to family friendly TV. The pilot went to series, which debuted Sept. 11, 1974.
Life After Little House
Everett Collection
Though Little House on the Prairie enjoyed solid ratings for its entire run, critics remained unmoved. Anderson was the only cast member to earn an Emmy nomination, while the rest of the nominations — and the show’s four wins — went to its production team. Cinematographer Ted Voightlander was a standout, earning six nominations for his immersive visual representations of settler life. Landon frequently took it on the chin for his unapologetically faith-infused storytelling — and also for his frequent shirtless scenes, fluffy locks, and clean, close shave. But viewers loved having a sure bet for wholesome, morally-centered family viewing.
And they especially loved watching the toothy, pigtailed Gilbert as Laura growing up and growing wiser, but no less feisty, before their eyes each week.
Though Landon, with French in tow, would leave the prairie for the equally beloved Highway to Heaven, many of his castmates — Gilbert included — found themselves struggling to shake their Little House characters.
“When the series was over, the first scripts that were sent to my agent all had a bun,” Grassle told Showbiz CheatSheet. “My life changed over time, so I became less concerned with whether Hollywood was typecasting me and more concerned with having my own family, so that was the shift.”
Gilbert’s activity on the social scene and sexy, star-studded love life — even as the show was still on-air — helped some to shed her Little House image. But her career has since focused on guest roles, TV movies and a run as president of the Screen Actors Guild. And Anderson chose a particularly pointed way to leave the saintly Mary Ingalls behind — she played a killer coed in the 1981 slasher film Happy Birthday to Me.
The pilot episode of Little House of the Prairie is available to stream on Peacock and Amazon Prime.
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1974 (50 Years Ago)
January 2024
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