The Tragedy That Inspired Michael Landon to Create ‘Highway to Heaven’
Just a few years after AC/DC had a hit singing about the “Highway to Hell,” Michael Landon was headed the other direction: after wrapping his run on Little House on the Prairie, the actor-turned-producer created the NBC drama Highway to Heaven. He also took the leading role, playing Jonathan Smith, an angel on probation, who enlists the help of an ex-cop, played by Landon’s former Little House costar Victor French, to help mortals in need. Landon didn’t just create the show as part of his next professional act; it was deeply personal, inspired by a tragic car accident that nearly took his daughter’s life.
Highway to Heaven, which debuted on September 19, 1984, wasn’t a show that NBC was particularly jazzed about — as you’ll see below. But the network put it on the schedule anyway. And by the time it was done, Landon had been on the network for 30 years between his time on Bonanza, Little House, and Highway to Heaven. Here’s how his final TV series came together…
Landon created the show after a making a deal with God during his daughter’s coma
In a 1985 interview with People, Landon described nearly losing his daughter Cheryl in a car crash. “She was coming home from a fraternity-sorority gathering with four friends in a little Volkswagen, and they were struck by a Ford going in excess of 80 miles an hour,” he said. “It killed everyone but her, and it broke everything in her — all her ribs, her neck, you name it.”
Though Cheryl survived the wreck, she was in a coma for three days. And as Marsha Daly reports in Michael Landon: A Biography, the actor made a pact with God. He vowed that if Cheryl recovered, he would do his best “to make a product to help people,” he told People. And that product, ultimately, was Highway to Heaven.
He came up with Highway to Heaven while driving
True to the show’s title, the idea for Highway to Heaven came to Landon while he was behind the wheel, as he explained to the Los Angeles Times in 1988. “I was driving through Beverly Hills to pick up my kids on a Friday night, and people were honking at each other. There is no worse place for that than Beverly Hills; I think when people have a little bit more money, they really believe that the Red Sea will part and their car will go forward. And I thought, ‘Why is everybody so angry? If they would just spend that same time being nice. … It’s obvious the flow of traffic is going to go much better if everybody has his opportunity.’”
Despite the gridlock and the road rage, Landon believed that “man really has the opportunity to be quite wonderful,” he said. One might even say angelic …
NBC executives didn’t know if Landon’s idea was so heavenly
Brandon Tartikoff, NBC’s entertainment president at the time, admitted to the Times he was skeptical when Landon said he wanted to play an angel. “I said, ‘The critics are going to have a field day with this!’” he revealed. “But Landon told me, ‘I don’t much care what they say. There are an awful lot of people out there who are trying to make people laugh; there are very few shows that can, on a regular basis, give the audience a good cry. I know I can do that — and if I do it well, they [the audience] will be back.’”
In his Times interview, Landon chuckled as he recalled NBC executives’ reactions. “I think they really felt it was just something I had to get out of my system,” he said.
The Highway to Heaven premise wasn’t exactly the high-concept fare NBC was going for at the time, according to Daly. There was sentimentality instead of, say, shootouts. “You’re going to laugh or cry, one or the other — you’re not just going to watch a car chase,” Landon told the Times. “I do the kind of shows that I like to sit down and watch with my family.”
With Bonanza and Little House, Landon had done well by NBC, and so the network gave Highway to Heaven’s pilot episode a go. That pilot disappointed network execs, but Landon recalled them being “shocked by the good results” when test audiences screened the episode, according to the biography. NBC finally slated the show for broadcast on Wednesday nights at 8 p.m., starting on September 19, 1984.
In the end, Highway to Heaven ran for five seasons, ending its run in 1989, just weeks after French’s death. Landon died two years later — after adding a couple more TV movies to his résumé — giving his the title of his final full-time TV gig even more resonance.
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Puzzler '80s Comedy Classics
Vol 1, Issue 6
This issue is packed with puzzles and trivia from all your favorite '80s sitcoms.
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