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Date Posted: 23:12:32 09/17/12 Mon
Author: Ponderosa Pete
Subject: Re: Ethnic stereotypes abound on BONANZA
In reply to: Jarrod 's message, "Ethnic stereotypes abound on BONANZA" on 09:25:17 09/16/12 Sun

Most insightful comments, Jarrod. I think the best answer is probably the simplest. When you're in the business of producing 34 shows a season, a new show every 6 days, and you have to account to the network programming department, its censorship department (standards & practices), your corporate sponsor (in BONANZA's case, Chevrolet, which has to account to its parent company, General Motors, which doesn't want to risk doing anything that will adversely affect its "bottom line"), and you're under pressure to keep the ratings up and the violence down (as the sixties progressed), you're bound to churn out a few clunkers.

And David Dortort had a reputation for having weak scripts he bought fixed, or he'd know the reason why. And if the reason was . . . . they were too bad to be fixed . . . well, he'd have them fixed anyway! And the fact that they should've been abandoned would be evident on the screen. (E.g., "A Severe Case of Matrimony" to name one. And another -- my personal worst -- "The Lawmaker," and the laundry list of writers attached to that one tends to validate my theory.)

But as Lorne Greene said (and I am paraphrasing): "Nobody ever said that every show we do is great. But even if only 8 or ten shows per season are great, that's a lot more good theater than there'd be without BONANZA."

On the whole, despite the clunkers, BONANZA stands up pretty good against over shows, and stands the test of time, cuz we're still dissecting it, over 50 years later.

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Replies:

[> [> Re: Ethnic stereotypes abound on BONANZA -- Jarrod, 14:53:31 09/23/12 Sun [1]

Good post! Some episodes stand up v-e-r-y well. It occurred to me that while we're having a discussion of ethnic stereotypes, as much as I love the actor and his comedy, Hop Sing is probably the most stereotypical character on the series, and even in the episodes that stand-up well, his presence sometimes detracts. I think most viewers tend to find him funny and relatively harmless so they overlook just how much he projects the writers' racist views of an entire culture of people.


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[> [> [> Re: Ethnic stereotypes abound on BONANZA -- kayleetara, 00:03:39 11/12/12 Mon [1]

Have you seen the episode where Hop Sing falls in love with a white woman? The only episode to really feature Hop Sing, it clearly addresses the prejudices against the Chinese. And there is another episode where the man running for sheriff frames a young Chinese boy for murder as he attempts to run the Chinese out of VC. Bonanza's concepts stands up very well to the test of time, though it did have its missteps. For example, Marlo Thomas playing a Chinese girl was pretty bad.

And Pernell Roberts was a social activist in the '60s that wanted his proposed wife to be an Indian and be played by a black actress. I thought that would have been an interesting concept. They ended up with Kathie Browne, who've I've always disliked for some reason. Didn't like her in "Wink of an Eye" (Star Trek) either.


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