Here’s Why An Angry Michael Landon Blew Up Walnut Grove
Growing up, Michael Landon seemed to be on TV all the time. He was Little Joe on Bonanza, a show that many of us would watch after school during the weekdays. He was also on endless Kodak commercials, and, of course, he played the patriarch of the Ingalls family for nine wonderful seasons on Little House on the Prairie.
And truth be told, he was so much more. He was the driving force behind the show. Michael spent a great deal of time and energy helping to bring the world of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder to life. Clearly, this show was special to him, and he wanted it to be special for the viewers who tuned in each week.
I guess that’s why it’s so surprising that Michael chose to destroy the show’s set. It didn’t actually happen during the filming of the last episode. Instead, it was a Little House TV movie called The Last Farewell.
© NBC / Courtesy: Everett Collection
In case you’re asking yourself if they really blew up the entire set or if it was just some sort of special effects magic, they really did it. Well, at least most of it. So, what the heck happened? Why would Michael and the rest of the Little House team decide to blow up good old Walnut Grove?
Well, the answers are out there, but which answer you get really depends on who you ask. The story I remember hearing decades ago is that the show was obligated to restore the area where the set was located to its original condition. Blowing up the buildings, which were mostly just three-dimensional props anyway, was simply the easiest way to get the process started.
But there is another story floating around the internet that contends Michael was so upset about the cancellation of the show that he wanted to send the network a message, a big middle finger to the executives who decided to cancel the show.
That said, according to Melissa Gilbert, Michael’s anger was less about the actual cancellation of the show and more about the way it was communicated to him. Michael, who at the time was staunchly loyal to NBC, had expected that he would have gotten a call from the network’s head honcho at the time, Brandon Tartikoff. But that didn’t happen. Instead, he somehow heard about it secondhand from Half-Pint herself.
In an Archive of American Television interview that can be found on YouTube, Melissa provided another reason for Michael’s decision to destroy the show’s set. Melissa said: “They blew everything up. It was Michael’s way of saying no one else is going to shoot here.”
Remind And you know what? It makes sense. None of the cast really wanted to see Oleson’s Mercantile reused on another program. These buildings, the entire set, were special. It was on set, after all, where Melissa and the rest of the show’s young cast had grown up and experienced many of the special “first” moments in life that happen in the real world, all on a Hollywood production lot.
So, Michael decided that closure and a sense of finality needed to be provided to everyone who had ever worked on Little House. The plot of The Last Farewell involves a greedy land developer who has managed to acquire the deed to the entire township. That storyline gave the cast and crew a perfect opportunity to turn the page and move on to new projects.
© NBC / Courtesy: Everett Collection
After the end of Little House, Michael, along with his pal Victor French, helped bring to life another fantastic TV show, Highway to Heaven, which ran for five seasons on NBC. Not long after the cancellation of that show, Michael started to get migraines that were nearly unbearable. After a visit to the doctor and a host of tests, it was determined that he had developed a swift-moving, inoperable form of pancreatic cancer.
Just months later, on July 1, 1991, Michael would pass away. While he has left us, he’s not really gone. Every time I catch an episode of Little House, Bonanza, or Highway to Heaven, I am reminded of this man’s zest for life as well as what a tremendous force for good he truly was.
