MovieChat Forums > Bonanza (1959) Discussion > Small staff?

Small staff?

posted 8 years ago by Asteri-Atypical
8 replies | jump to latest

One thing I always found odd is how few employees you ever see on the Ponderosa. Whenever there is trouble, it's always Ben and his sons rushing in, themselves (and usually only by themselves).

Sure, I understand you might not see a lot of the employees which are out working the vastness of the spread, but you'd think if Ben were to call on them, he'd have the resources of a small army to shoot it out with those who would cause his family trouble.

Even on the homestead, itself, you'd think there would be a few hands here and there, bringing in meat, cutting wood, cleaning, and doing maintenance. Not to mention in a rough land like that, and being rich, you'd think they'd want to have some hired hands as extra guns. We've seen it time and time again how they could use some extra firepower.

Yet the way it is, you'd think the four of them were running thousands of acres of ranch all by themselves.

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Hail to the Cheeto!

[–] Kel_Vernsen 8 years ago

The four of them were the focal point of the show. So it makes sense. Imagine how it would look if Ben called for backup every time there was trouble or the ranch needed defending. Plus there was Sheriff Coffee who usually assisted whenever there was trouble.

[–] Asteri-Atypical 8 years ago

So it makes sense.

Only insofar as to serve the purpose of the focus on the Cartwrights, but not so much sense about how things would actually happen.

Imagine how it would look if Ben called for backup every time there was trouble or the ranch needed defending.

Probably more realistic. Besides, the family could still be front and center (which would be stretching the truth a bit in itself) to put the attention on them, as a hands-on lot, but just have more people in the trees or along the ridges with guns, following their orders.

Imagine some of those WWII movies where you only saw 4-5 main soldiers fighting every battle themselves without any other soldiers in sight.

Plus there was Sheriff Coffee who usually assisted whenever there was trouble.

Yeah, that, too, made it almost seem a little worse. When things got too much, instead of having resources, they called the singular sheriff.

Don't get me wrong, I love the show, I just thought this aspect seemed a little odd.

______
Hail to the Cheeto!

[–] firstnamejane 8 years ago

I'm sure hiring all those extras would have been deemed unnecessary and too expensive.

I think the audience accepted the show wasn't exactly realistic in the sense that there should have been more hands around and there weren't, and the producers expected the audience to just accept it and enjoy what they were shown.

[–] Asteri-Atypical 8 years ago

I'm sure hiring all those extras would have been deemed unnecessary and too expensive.

That was my main theory as to why it came to be the way it was.

In fact, many shows more modest than Bonanza was in it heyday had plenty of extras, especially WWII shows, but I've wondered if, in its early days, Bonanza was on a bit of a budget, before it became highly popular, and they started without extras, and by the time it got popular and they could have hired more, it was already established, in show mythology, that the Cartwrights did everything singlehandedly.

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Hail to the Cheeto!

[–] firstnamejane 8 years ago

It seems the only way producer David Dortort could get NBC to agree to film the show in color was if he agreed to pay for that aspect of filming, so I'd agree they were on a budget, especially at the beginning.

According to Dortort, at the end of the third year, he was given a bill of two million dollars that he was expected to pay, even though the show was very successful by then. He signed a contract agreeing to pay and they were holding him to that contract. He threatened to quit but they ended up resolving the issue, and he paid half the amount. Dortort talks about it in an interview that you can see on YouTube. It's a three hour interview where he talks about his entire career. I'll be back with a link if/when I find it.

ETA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyhVpOqJhsI

The part where he starts talking about getting the bill starts around two hours in, at 2:03:20.

[–] Asteri-Atypical 8 years ago

Sounds like something interesting to watch when the time comes available.

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Hail to the Cheeto!

[–] MAGolding (1240) 6 years ago

In Forty Guns Barbara Stanwick is a rancher with 40 hired gunmen to help her control the town.

In West Texas in Duel in the Sun (1946) there is a scene where a rancher calls hundreds of his cowboys to prevent a railroad from crossing his land and what looks like a big part of a cavalry regiment arrives to protect the railroad men.

The ranch, Spanish Bit, in West Texas in Duel in the Sun (1946) is described as a million acres. That equals about 1,562.5 square miles or 4,046.85 square kilometers.

I have read that the Pondorosa had an area of 1,000 square miles, or 2,589.99 square kilometers. Thus the Pondorosa is about 0.64 times the size of Spanish Bit and Ben Cartwright should have had about 0.64 of the hundreds of employees that Senator McCanles had at Spanish Bit.

When the Comstock Lode was discovered in 1859 a silver rush of prospectors flooded the area around the Pondorosa. The prospectors tended to recognize only miner's law, in which the only claim to land the miner's considered valid was a mineral rights claim filed by a prospector. In the eyes of prospectors it didn't matter how much a legal claim Indians, Mexicans, or Americans had to land if a prospector found valuable minerals on their land and staked a claim to it.

So it seems to me that that the only way Ben could have prevented prospectors from swarming into the Pondorosa like locusts and seizing control of it would be to have tens or hundreds of employees there who could fight off the prospectors.

[–] ATG6 (3000) 6 years ago

all they had was Hop-Sing the Chinese chef. no housekeepers, no gardeners, no stable boy. Just a few ranch hands when the episode needed them.