THE HOSTAGE BONANZA SERIES

Even when they fight among themselves, there’s no mistaking their bond, and the series merits Dove approval for All Ages.Įven when they fight among themselves and things get thorny, there’s no mistaking the Cartwrights’ bond. This gives birth to a series that’s more about family than anything else - brothers who each are as different as night and day from the next, and how they come together despite their differences. There are fistfights and a drawdown with a gunslinger - what would a Western be without them? - and a conclusion that allows a 14-year series to be born, and to run in syndication to this day. When Lotta sniffs out that the businessmen weren’t entirely honest with her about their intentions, she helps Little Joe escape them. It figures that Little Joe (Michael Landon), the youngest of the brothers Cartwright - who include Adam and Hoss - would be the one to get lured to her hotel room. The stagecoach loses a wheel and now she’s the damsel in distress, with initially skeptical Cartwrights cautiously aiding her because nobody just gets lost on the Ponderosa. So, the businessmen send Miss Crabtree onto Cartwright property, as if she’d gotten lost. A letter to the Army fort down in the Arizona Territory would have been wiser, but his. There, businessmen are waiting to hold him hostage and force patriarch Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene) to surrender the timber rights. The telegram could have been answered with a fuller description of Joe. So they employ beautiful actress Lotta Crabtree (Yvonne De Carlo) - you might recognize her as Lily of The Munsters fame - to seduce one of the Cartwright brothers into Virginia City. network television (behind CBS's Gunsmoke), and within the top 10 longest-running, live-action American series.

Lasting 14 seasons and 431 episodes, Bonanza is NBC's longest-running western, the second-longest-running western series on U.S. If they can get timber rights in part of the ranch, their businesses will survive. Bonanza is an American Western television series that ran on NBC from September 12, 1959, to January 16, 1973. In this pilot episode, Alpheus Troy see the Ponderosa as an obstacle to their mining business. Throughout the series, it’s the envy of the nation, its largest ranch, and businessmen have wanted a piece of it right from the start. The boys must come up with a plan to save him.

Welcome to the Ponderosa, the sprawling ranch owned by the Cartwrights in 1860s Nevada, just off the shores of Lake Tahoe. Outlaws capture Ben and hide him in an abandoned mine, holding him for a ransom.

The hostage bonanza