The Extras - The Making of the Official Bonanza DVD Collection: Restoration, Challenges, and Triumphs

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

Ever wondered about the painstaking work that goes into restoring and releasing classic television series on DVD? Join our conversation with attorney, archivist, historian and Executive Producer Andrew J. Klyde, the mastermind behind the recent complete series DVD release by Paramount - CBS Home Entertainment in North America of the beloved Western, BONANZA. From the first episode broadcast in Living Color on NBC in 1959 until the last show aired in 1973, BONANZA was “Appointment TV” for more than a decade. Every Sunday after watching the Ed Sullivan Show on CBS, millions of viewers changed channels to catch the adventures of the Cartwright family on BONANZA on NBC. Listen to Andrew's fascinating insights about the mammoth task of restoring and remastering all 431 episodes of the iconic series, and how he got his start in DVD extras and restoration for classic television.  Learn the story of discovering rare, unseen footage from the pilot episode, and the challenges of the restoration process. Discover the devotion of BONANZA fans worldwide, and the myriad efforts Andrew employs to clear legal hurdles and include footage of beloved actors Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon performing (and sometimes singing) far from the Ponderosa. We also discuss delays caused by the pandemic and personnel changes at CBS, and how Andrew's persistence ultimately led to the simultaneous release of the final seasons and the entire series, plus a bonus disc.  Finally, discover the fun, behind-the-scenes stories that help explain BONANZA’s classic, timeless and worldwide appeal. Learn about outtakes, wrap parties featuring never-before-heard recollections, rare episode trailers and Chevrolet and RCA commercials with cast members. Andrew shares his experience of finding priceless extras like films of personal appearances, unearthing forgotten footage in archives scattered across the globe, reaching out to BONANZA alumni and popular culture scholars to record new commentaries, and the hunt for rare photos – many scanned for the first time from negatives and color transparencies in storage for decades – plus hours of priceless material gathered for the first time for a special bonus disc accompanying the official complete series release. Purchase on Amazon:BONANZA: THE OFFICIAL COMPLETE SERIES BONANZA: THE OFFICIAL TWELFTH SEASON BONANZA: THE OFFICIAL THIRTEENTH SEASON BONANZA: THE OFFICIAL FOURTEENTH SEASON The Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and they're released on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. Today we have a special guest on The Extra as to talk about the recent complete series DVD release

of the classic Western television series, Bonanza. For the first time, the release includes all 14 seasons, which comes out to a whopping 431 episodes. Every episode has been restored and remastered from the original 35 millimeter film camera negatives for superior viewing experience. You also get a exclusive bonus disc containing nearly two and a half hours of rare content not seen in more than 60 years. And the man behind this mammoth task is attorney, television archivist and historian Andrew J. Clyde. His clients include Bonanza Ventures, who are the owners of the rights to Bonanza and the High Chaparral, Psychotronic Video and Sons of the Desert, the international organization honoring the classic comedy of Laurel and Hardy.

He's also been a consultant to NBC, Universal Studios, CBS and Paramount Home Entertainment, PAX TV, the CBC and BBC, the Television Academy, and Time Life. He's often a guest at conventions honoring classic film and television westerns and is a regular on radio and TV discussing the enduring popularity of Bonanza. Andrew, welcome to The Extras. Thank you, Tim. It's a pleasure to be here. So I know you've been working in the DVD Extras area and restoration for classic television. So how did you get started, though, in doing that for TV? First of all, I want to point out that I think your cowboy hat is terrific, and I hope you will appreciate that touch.

It's a wonderful homage to the genre that I'm very fond of. I think it's fair to say it started with Bonanza. I've been acquainted with David Dortor, the creator-producer of the series for NBC. He had a falling out with his business affairs advisor, so he asked me if he thought I could take care of merchandising and licensing of all intellectual property for the shows that he created for NBC, Bonanza and The High Chaparral. So I put together some, if I could say so modestly, some very lucrative deals involving clips from Bonanza and clips from the High Chaparral.

And for example, I was very proud of the fact that I was able to construct a deal that resulted in Pernell Roberts signing his first Bonanza-related contract since 1960, almost 40 years prior. To quote him, he said, Andrew, you are a straight shooter, and that's rare in Hollywood, Andrew, you are a straight shooter, and that's rare in Hollywood, and the money's not too bad. So I guess you could say I had good recommendations. Not too long after that, when CBS Home Entertainment acquired the distribution rights to Bonanza, people at Republic Entertainment and Lionsgate that I had some peripheral business with recommended me as someone who could best oversee the release of the Bonanza initial season, taking care of not only the extras, but making sure that the episodes themselves were given the proper treatment, were complete and presented in a very good fashion for the fans. Yeah, and I think a lot of people don't understand that when you work in classic television series like this where there's so many episodes, I mean, it's a monumental task

because there was not great record-keeping necessarily back in the day when these episodes were filmed. You sometimes have a hard time following music rights and all of the different rights. And then these series have been sold to one company or another. And so the rights for different episodes or different seasons or different series can be really complicated. Different episodes or different seasons or different series can be really complicated. So I'm sure being a lawyer, that became very handy for a background for you to be sure that you got the producing of this all correct and all the legal lined up. You're right, Tim.

And I think that was the brilliance of David Dortort, if I could talk about him just for a moment. He had a reputation when Bonanza was in production as being a mentor to people who had talent, but who were untried, untested, specifically writers. And being a writer himself, he had a special fondness for writers. So there are numerous examples that I can cite here, but I don't have to because I go into it on the bonanza set in terms of audio commentary, in terms of liner notes. He would give an opportunity to a writer who had never sold a script before. And in many cases, those scripts turned out to be among the best. So in my case, I had graduated from law school and I had some experience working in a general practice law firm out on Long Island, outside of New York City, where I'm from originally. And he realized I had that legal background, which would help him a great deal.

And so he asked me, can you handle merchandising and licensing? And I said, sure. I had no experience with that before. It's like an actor is asked to be in a Western. Can you ride a horse? So he's born in the saddle. And then he goes out to Griffith Park to learn how to ride before the shoot starts. So that absolutely helped because with a vintage show like Bonanza, it became a scavenger hunt to find extras. You know better than most how difficult it is. But in all fairness, you had a little bit of an advantage working on the wonderful shows you did, like Supernatural and The Big Bang Theory and Young Shelton, Westworld, because in the contracts of the talent, the actors who were on that show, they were required to do extras, to sit in front of a

camera and talk about a particular episode or a particular season. And with Bonanza, you didn't do that. And you were lucky if you could find footage of the actors doing something contemporaneously with when the show was filmed. Yeah. And I did work on some of the Lorimar series, such as some of the Dallas Seasons and Waltons. And, you know, it was very, very challenging because if there was any need to get legal involved in some of those shows, people were like, well, we bought Lorimar, but there was very little paperwork that came over. And so was there ever, you know, was there ever paperwork on this or not? So was there ever, you know, was there ever paperwork on this or not? So the newer series that you just mentioned, you know, the Big Bang Theories or the Supernaturals, that's all true. But anytime we went back to the old Dallas series or the Mavericks or things of that nature or Man From U.N.C.L.E., it became, as you say, a real scavenger hunt to figure everything out.

So at least with Dallas, we had a talent that was still alive. And then we did a reboot, if you recall, for I think it was for Turner, where we were interviewing them. So we were able to get them for one of the top Westerns, but also one of the top probably classic TV series ever. And yet it's 2023, and this is the first time that the complete series is being released. It's kind of shocking, isn't it? You would think that it would have come out earlier. Yeah, Yeah. And, you know, we talked a lot, a little bit about that before the golden age of physical media, home entertainment, as far as DVD certainly has passed. If it were 2004, 2005, 2004, 2005, 2006, absolutely.

We would have completed the Complete series in a much quicker time frame than he did now. And it's not lost on me, and I'm sure not lost to enthusiasts out there, that it took pretty much 14 years from when Season 1 was released to when season 14 was just released. And it was 14 years of Bonanza in production. But, you know, it comes down to money, of course, and the question of Bonanza, because if I could give you a very brief history lesson, Bonanza was owned, is owned by the National Broadcasting Corporation. In 1959, some farsighted executives on the West Coast wanted very much to own their own product. own their own product. Taking a page from the CBS book, CBS had great success with a show it owned, Perry Mason. Most shows then, and today for that matter, are not owned by networks, but they're owned by production companies. So you talk about Dallas, which was owned by Lorimar, was owned by Lorimar. And at the time, Warner Brothers and Universal and Paramount, those were the big production companies that turned out motion picture film and then realized sometime in the 1950s that they needed to also create content for this new medium upstart

television. So there was a fellow at NBC by the name of Alan Livingston, who was the head of the programming department at the time, who very much believed that NBC could own its own program and market, produce, distribute it successfully. So reluctantly, he told me he was given marching orders from his superiors in New York. Okay. And he had two requirements, one that it'd be a Western and two that it'd be a one hour. Westerns were enormously popular at the time, 1958, 1959, 1960 really reached its zenith. And the one hour format was also becoming increasingly successful. You talk about the classic television westerns,

Gunsmoke invariably is number one on people's list and Bonanza is number two. Well, Gunsmoke was a half-hour show when it first started in 1955, adapted from a very successful radio show. And so the earliest Gunsmoke episodes were outstanding because they were cherry-picked the most outstanding radio shows and refined. So right out of the starting gate, Gunsmoke had a tremendous advantage. With the exception of Cheyenne, most of your early successful Westerns were half-hour shows. And another exception would be Wagon Train.

And again, the NBC executives took note of that because Wagon Train was an hour. But shows like The Rifleman, Have Gun, Will Travel were half hour shows and very successful. So Alan Livingston had his marching orders, a one hour show and a Western. And he hired David Dortort. And soon after, NBC decision makers decided to take David Dortort's advice and film the show in color. Interestingly, it was not supposed to be filmed in color. A lot of people say it's a very popular statement, but it's just not true. NBC designed the show to sell color television sets, which were manufactured by its parent company, RCA. David Dortor told me who was there and others corroborated. When he suggested filming in color,

he was told why it would be cost prohibitive. And nobody has colored television sets anyway, not enough to justify the expense. So he said, well, is an NBC owned by RCA? And is RCA in the business of selling colored television sets, of manufacturing color television sets probably more than any other show on the air. And then Disney's Wonderful World of Color emulating Bonanza started a couple of years after Bonanza. after Bonanza. So you would think that a show that was that enormously successful in its day would get the full card press treatment on DVD. But as I started to say, the rights issues are sort of convoluted. So NBC was very successful with its show, and NBC International promoted and imported Bonanza to hundreds of countries all over the world and translated into scores of languages. And it's just astonishing how even today Bonanza is still popular and resonates with people outside of the United States. So now fast forward to the early

1970s and the Federal Communications Commission decided that it is not a good thing, it's too much of a monopoly to have television networks distribute their own product. Something similar to what happened in the 1940s when the antitrust department ruled that motion picture studios could not own motion picture theaters. So it was a very similar kind of thinking. So NBC had to divest itself of its programming, as did CBS and as did ABC, those programs that they own. NBC created, if you will, and I'll put those words in quotes, an entity called National Telefilm Associates, which later changed its name to Republic Entertainment. CBS had Viacom and ABC

had World Vision. Ironically, they're all now under the same corporate parent through a lot of acquisitions and mergers over the years. But I remember talking to a high ranking NBC executive about various ideas and possibilities concerning Bonanza. And when he had learned that CBS was going to be distributing Bonanza on home video, on DVD, he just shook his head because, of course, NBC and CBS have that great rivalry. So to make a long story short, it's probably too late for that. CBS was charged with distributing Bonanza. And thanks to the dedication of a couple of people, which I could talk about, Ken Ross, Jeff Nemirofsky, who believed in me, they did all they could to get Bonanza out on DVD. But NBC was just at that point a profit participant. So their interest was minimal. Their attitude was, we cannot do

anything as far as distribution. So you do it, you do a good job. And we're very happy to collect whatever profit you make from it, but we're not really going to help you before that. So psychologically, the people on the CBS side would concentrate on shows like Perry Mason, like Gunsmoke, Rawhide. And Gunsmoke was a terrific, terrific seller and got a lot of attention. And Bonanza, you know, I don't want to say was a terrific, terrific seller and got a lot of attention. And Bonanza, you know, I don't want to say was a bastard stepchild, but it just wasn't looked at with the same love and affection as part of the CBS fam. But we did the best we could despite that. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Yeah, I think that people don't understand just how complex these TV series are. And there's a diminishing will to make it happen when there's so many different entities, corporate entities involved. And it takes somebody like yourself to really pursue it. I mean, how many people are you going to get to work on this for 14 years like you have

been to do this with, of course, your partners there at the studio? So just a quick question about the release schedule. Did you release season one on DVD 14 years ago? And then that was supposed to fund the release of season two and three and four and gauge the interest. I remember having an initial conversation with someone on the Paramount lot in the summer of 2008. And shortly after that, I was introduced to Angelo Dante, who is and was his manager of special features for all of CBS Home Entertainment products. A good, good guy. And we worked so well together.

And I couldn't have done it without him literally. And he just had a knack for, for finding things and fine tuning things. Um, and the idea was, as you know, Tim, marketing is so important to release season one in the fall of 2009, which was the 50th anniversary of Bonanza's debut on NBC in 1959. So that was the game plan. Ken Ross decided early on we would release it in two volumes, again, a marketing ploy. Both volumes would be released on the same day. And my marching orders were to find as many good quality extras as I can for as little money as possible. And that's, of course, an old story. So I did the best I could. And I, you know,

you deal in this arena of classic television, classic films. It's very much a small world. And so you come across people and names and you keep in touch and they're helpful. You mentioned in your intro, and I thank you again for that very gracious and informative intro. One of my clients is Sons of the Desert, the International Laurel and Hardy Fan Appreciation Society. They have their monthly meetings in areas and cities all over the world. So I was at a meeting at the New York City tent, and one of the attendees was Bob Firminac, who with Ron Palumbo had just written a wonderful book on the history of Abbott and Costello's films, which is a subject near and dear to my heart. So we started talking and it's a marvelous book, by the way, which I recommend very highly.

Universal liked the book so much that they adapted some of the notes from the book and put it as liner notes in the packaging accompanying Universal's DVD releases of Avanon Costello films. But fast forward to a few years later, and Bob Firminac introduces me to his brother, Ron Fermanack, who also is a great classic film and television devotee. He's worked on uncovering forgotten music sources and has helped with projects involving the Beatles, for example. And he just knew where to get a hold of the rare alternate version of the pilot episode of Bonanza. And Bonanza enthusiasts will know what I am talking about. At the end of the initial episode, the Cartwrights ride off into the sunset, whooping. It's a very nice conclusion. But as written, they were riding off singing the Bonanza theme song. And someone decided that the Bonanza theme song lyrics were not exactly inspiring. And writing off singing at that moment just didn't work. So that was

sort of a holy grail to find that footage. And Bob somehow knew where it was. And at the 11th hour, literally it was about as late as it could come in terms of production. I told Ken Ross that I found this. I remember he sent me an email at something like 11 p.m. at night, copying Angelo and said, we must make this happen. And we did. I remember it was too late to even reference it in the packaging. So Ken ordered that the company pay a little extra money to have a sticker on top of the cellophane, which indicated that that rare, never before seen alternate ending be included. And Bob also found Lorne Green saying, well, there you have it, our very first episode of Bonanza. We're very proud to be brought to you by such a wonderful company as RCA, and we urge you to see this wonderful show in color and buy an RCA color television set.

This is footage that's never been seen since September of 1959. never been seen since September of 1959. So there are other examples of things like that, like we discussed earlier, like finding a needle in a haystack and going on a scavenger hunt. So the plan was to have a season released every few months. Well, for reasons that don't entirely make sense to me, the sales of the initial season were less than anticipated. And CBS had spent a lot of money doing the right thing, going back to the original source material, camera negatives. And I think in one instance, they were not able to use them. So they used an interpositive print, which is the next best source to the original camera negative. And the sales were underwhelming.

So the plan to do season two quickly sort of faded. It wasn't until about a year later that I got word that season two was in the works and it would not be released simultaneously. Season two, volume one would be, I think, in the fall and it would not be released simultaneously. Season two, volume one would be, I think in the fall of 2010 and season two, volume two in the spring of 2011. And because the sales for season one were not so great, um, season two didn't get the love that it should have. Um, I was told to save money for reasons that I've just explained. Instead of going back to the original film masters, they would go back to analog tape that was created in 1988. And I'll talk about that very briefly. It was state of the art in 1988. Bonanza was going into syndication for the first time on Pat Robertson's CBN family channel.

And they were very excited to get something called Bonanza the Lost Episodes. Now, there weren't any lost episodes, but taking a page out of Jackie Gleason's playbook when he decided to distribute the skits from his variety show that had to do with the Honeymooners as separate episodes. He called those the Honeymooners, the lost episodes. So Bonanza, the lost episodes were just the later seasons that were never syndicated before, because there were just so many episodes of Bonanza, as you pointed out, 431 episodes totaling 433 hours. So for many years, NTA, later called Republic, just released enough episodes to show five days a week for a year and not have to repeat. And the restoration from film to an analog video format was funded by very expensive by NBC, by the CBN Family Channel and Republic Entertainment. So in 2010, I was told that this is what we're going to use. So the episodes were tweaked and they came out and they were OK.

And they were okay. And there wasn't any criticism, as I can recall, maybe one or two critics pointed out that some episodes didn't look as sharp as others. But there certainly wasn't a hue and cry, what, this is terrible, and go back to the analog masters and tweak them a little bit. And I felt that this was not a good thing. And so I wrote one of my famous memos to Ken Ross, and I said, we really should try to come up with money to please to tweak the existing season three episodes and go back to film and release them after being remastered from film. So that delayed the release. And that was sort of a repeat over the next several years. The sales numbers were good, but they were never great. And so they didn't come out as quickly as fans or as I would have hoped. But eventually they came out. I remember I think three, four, five came out in pretty quick succession. And then there was a pause. And so it took a long time to get to the end.

And there were stops and starts. And I remember season nine, for example, again, sales were not great. I remember season nine, for example, again, sales were not great. So the decision makers decided, well, let's tweak the existing 88, 89 masters again. And I was told this is what we're going to do. So get ready, Andy. And I said, I don't want to do that. And I remember the executive with whom I had this conversation was shocked.

What do you mean you don't want to do that? And I guess it was a pretty gutsy thing to do because he could have said, well, we're going to do it anyway. Adios. Adios. And we won't have any extras. We'll just have the episodes themselves. And as you know, that's more often the case with classic television shows and even feature films. It's not a given that they're going to have extras. So I shot Tim and they scuttled that, which was nice. Then about a year later, maybe even longer, they finally came up with money. They actually renegotiated the terms of the agreement with NBC to make it more palatable for CBS to release the subsequent shows. So, you know, I don't want to get into too much detail as far as the

release story of each episode, but that had a lot to do with the scheduling and why it took so long. Well, I know that along with this complete series box set on DVD, that CBS Home Entertainment is also releasing the complete seasons of 12, 13, and 14. And then they also went back and they're re-releasing season two because of what you had said, hadn't done it from the original film negative. So that's quite a big release right now. So it looks like as I'm reading it, they decided, okay, we're finally done. And we're going to just do, rather than stringing those out like they had previously, we're going to just release the complete series because they could have just released 12, 13, 14 over the course of six months or something individually. So what went into the thinking here for completing everything right now here?

It just has been released maybe three weeks now while you and i are talking um yeah so it's only been out for a little bit those those releases but you know what uh how did that planning go for releasing it was it just a great greater promotion well you know i touched upon bonanza's international popularity and um that was helpful in terms of getting these last seasons out. And I'll explain. Jeff Nemirofsky, Nemo affectionately to those of us who work with him and are friendly with him, was very good. He's retired now. He was very good at making international distribution deals. And one of his favorite territories was Australia and New Zealand. And the distributor there was very anxious to get new Bonanza product. So they would take the work that we did and repackage it slightly and release it in those territories. and release it in those territories. To my chagrin, sometimes they would misspell things like names of episodes, names of actors. I'm not sure. I think somebody told me they've misspelled my name once in the packaging. But because Australia, New Zealand specifically,

was so keen on getting Bonanza product, that enabled us to go forward at a time when we stumbled. So there was a big gap between season 10 and season 11. And I'll blame the pandemic, which is a good thing to blame for a lot of ills, on the delay of release. And there was also a restructuring. So virtually all of the personnel that comprise CBS Home Entertainment, unfortunately, were let go, including Ken Ross, who I admired a great deal and really was the behind the scenes mover and shaker and benefactor. You know, it got to the point where he would say, Andy, if you want to do it, then let's do it, which was nice. I'll just go off on a tangent twice very briefly.

just go off on a tangent twice very briefly. There was a wonderful fellow named Paul Brownstein, who was a pioneer in the golden age back in the early 2000s of DVD release. And he was tapped by Ken Ross to put out something called Gunsmoke, the 50th anniversary. And so that consisted of what I guess he decided were the best episodes of Gunsmoke. And he loaded them with extras. He had Jim Arnest come in and record some audio intros. And he got home movies that Dennis Weaver took on the set.

Just really fantastic stuff. So he was sort of a pioneer. And he had, as his credit on the packaging, DVD executive producer. So for reasons unknown to me, I was told that my packaging credit would be consultant. So I'm a humble fellow, but not always that humble. So I said, well, why am I just a consultant and not DVD executive producer? So I was told, well, that's the way it is. Take it or leave it, et cetera, et cetera. And as you know, sometimes they give you credit in lieu of payment. At least they were paying me,

but I thought it would be nice to get a credit commensurate with the work I was doing. So Ken Ross, he just jumped into the fray, into this email exchange back and forth, and used a word that we probably cannot say here because there might be young people listening, said Clyde has done twice the work that Brownstein has done. Give him the credit. So I got that. And similarly, the packaging, when I looked at the proofs, said some episodes may be edited from their original network versions. So I said, well, why is that there? And my legal colleagues, Duke Lay, a great, great guy that I've worked with for many years now, he said, well, this is what we've always done because we can't be sure.

So we want to cover ourselves. You know, you're a lawyer. So I said, well, yeah, but in Bonanza's case, they are complete. And if they're not complete, we should make sure they're complete before we put them out. So we went back and forth, back and forth. And again, Ken overruled everyone else and said, take that disclaimer off. And to make sure we're going to send Clyde all of the screeners. And so I thought, oh, I opened my mouth. So now I was obligated to sit there and watch every episode to make sure that they were complete. And in most cases, they were. I remember in one case, 1961 episode, The Frenchman, there were about 40 seconds missing. And I said, there are 40 seconds missing.

So they scrambled and they were able to insert it in again, relatively close to the production deadline. You know, the foibles and the trials and the tribulations and the ups and downs factor into release dates. So it's now post-pandemic and I get word that they're going to release the next season of Bonanza. Why? Because of Nemo. Jeffrey Nemirovsky, who had a pending agreement with the distributors in Australia and New Zealand to release the next season. And if he didn't have that paperwork, season 11 wouldn't have been released and we would have scuttled the project and who

knows how long it would have been delayed and maybe never gotten back on track. So because of the devotees in Australia and New Zealand, we were able to get season 11 out. And that sort of led the way to Matt Arcelich, who was Ken Ross's successor, coming to me and saying, you know, we figured out a way to get the rest of Bonanza out. Are you available for a Zoom conference? So we talked and his plan was, as you've just described, Tim, to release in grand fashion everything that had not yet been released. He wanted to release 12, 13, 14, all on the same day, and a complete series box set with a bonus disc to entice and encourage those who hadn't yet bought Bonanza, or more precisely, to get those who had already bought the season sets to have

an incentive to double dip because of the bonus discs. And he said, can you do it? Can we do it? So I said, sure, of course. Can we do it within the next 10 months? What? You know, it wasn't even that much time. He was asking me to do what I had done previously. And I guess from start to finish, more or less, give or take maybe four months between my initial conversations with Angelo Dante and the DLT date, the date that we must deliver, three or four months. And now he was asking me to do it like a month per season. And then he explained to me, and this was the piece de resistance. He said, we don't want to spend the money to go back to film. We want to take these 88, 89 era analog masters, tweak them,

and release them. So I said, I don't think that's such a great idea. But I realized that the climate had changed. And I couldn't say what I did concerning season three. And it was pretty much now or never, because it's now 2021. And it's the tail end of the pandemic and people are buying physical media less and less. So I protested, but only slightly. So I remember arranging for Tim Matheson, a great guy who I cannot say enough about, coming into the recording studio to record not one, not two, but three audio commentaries for three different shows to do special introductions for other shows and trailer narrations. Just terrific. But he had to look at something on the screen that was like,

I don't know, looking through a dirty window with a window shade over and out of focus and color was terrible. And I apologized. I apologized. But that was all we had. And those were the analog masters that hadn't yet been tweaked. But at least Tim could figure out what was going on from looking at the monitor. So not too long after that, Matt got back to me and he said, you know, I guess you were right. And we can't put these out this way. They just, they don't look good. So the project is on pause until we find money. We have to find money to fund the restorations. So many more months passed. Again,

I wrote one of my famous memos. I said, you know, considering Bonanza's international appeal, isn't there a way you could get money from the CBS international Division. And that's what happened. It took a while, but the head of the CBS International Division was Richard Yanovich, another wonderful, great, great guy and a big Bonanza fan. And we would have lunch together when I would be on the West Coast. And I became so endeared to him because I gave him a gift of a Ponderosa map, which he proudly hung in his home, he told me. And he would have forked up the money like that, but unfortunately, he retired. But he did have a conversation with his successor, who turned out to also be a good guy, and he came up with the money. So thanks to that big influx of cash, we were able to fund the restorations the proper way from the original 35 millimeter film for 12, for 13, and for 14. And I said, and wait a minute, fellas, season two. Well, what about season? I mean, I remember so vividly, this was the end of a Zoom meeting. There were several of us. And I said, and one more thing, one more thing, you know, sort of like Columbo.

And Matt said, yes. What now? What do you want? Yeah. I said, season two, as you'll recall, was never properly remastered for film because season one was not so hot sales wise. And nobody really complained about season two. And the end result was OK. But I'm sure you'll agree from a marketing perspective, it would be nice to be able to say,

here now, the complete series completely restored from film. And he said, you're right. So that delayed the project further and had to find more money to do that. But, but eventually, um, eventually it was done. That's a, uh, history lesson, just how complicated it is. And I know, you know, many people listen to this podcast, wonder why it takes so long to get some of these, uh, TV series that maybe only ran four seasons, let alone 14 seasons, to get them cleared and out there. And you just basically gave us a real peek into some of the maneuverings financially and otherwise the decision-making and what it takes and the timing and the exterior factors of people retiring and different divisions having to be approached for money. And it's a complicated thing. And I'm just glad because I thought possibly we would never see

a complete series with a bonus disc. Now, let me clarify that. Finishing the seasons individually and putting them into one package, fine. Yeah. Because you're just putting the money basically into the individual seasons and you have the extras for each season. But to then also come up with a two and a half hour bonus disc with all of the content and the work that it took to do that to try to sell the complete series as a box set is something that I'm pretty sure is going to be more and more rare. And there's a lot of reasons for that, of course. But the main one is because physical disc literally takes up a lot of room. I mean, it's so much easier with streaming. Yeah. I mean, you have these huge boxes that are heavy. Okay. And yeah,

can you get free shipping? Sure. From some places you can, otherwise everybody else charges shipping based on the weight of these huge boxes and to manually put all these discs in the box. I mean, just, there's just so many things that go into, is it really worth doing a box set? And it's even a, it's, it's even impacting things like, can we do a collection of films? And then it becomes really difficult and challenging financially to do that. But I don't know. I mean, how many more of these terrific TV classic series that have never been finished are we going to get? It could be very small. Though there is some hope that if streaming needs to restore, and so they put up some of the money to restore the episodes and go back, that then the home entertainment divisions can kind of

ride that, you know, that train as it goes out of the station and try to get some incremental income for the studios. So I'm just happy that it's out. And it's really interesting to kind of get your insights into the story of it. Let's talk about the bonus disc for a second, two and a half hours. I'm not going to go through the list because it's too long, but what are some of the highlights on here that you'd like the fans to know about? You know, I'll be happy to talk about in some detail, Tim, and I thank you for bringing that up. But before we leave the arena who know this already, I'm sure, that a show like Bonanza, 34 episodes produced in a season. Perry Mason, 36, 38. The Honeymooners, 39. And you compare that to today's shows, 12, 14, 8, 9. Yellowstone, which has been called Bonanza on steroids, has what, eight or nine episodes per season? There's just no comparison in terms of the output,

in terms of the product. And you had actors who were committed to a series, and in those days, they were committed to a network. In the case of Bonanza, the actors couldn't do anything on any other shows for fear of competition. So a Bonanza production schedule would start in May, and it would end the following March. So two months off, and that's not enough time to do anything except go home and rest and recuperate until the season has to start up again. So very, very, very different atmosphere. And then I wanted to say one more thing about the quality of the complete episodes themselves, because I was so touched by this story, I wanted to share it. I wanted to share it. Postaste is a company based in Los Angeles that was charged with the task of restoring and remastering these last few seasons. And I talked to Wilder, who was the project

manager, terrific guy, very helpful on very many stages. And I had a wonderful conversation with him where he said, you know, somewhat candidly, he said, we don't have a big budget to work with here, but we're doing the best we could with what we have. And, you know, the budget translates into how much time you spend on restoring a particular episode. very quickly, you take the 35 millimeter film, the negative, and you load it onto a device that is able to scan the images in a high quality format. And you now have a digital scan and then you have software that cleans, that takes out dust and dirt and scratches and does color correcting because sometimes the color in the negative elements have faded. So although you have a computer program that does this in a relatively rapid, efficient way, you also need a human touch to look and to tweak. So Wilder told me that the people who were working on this, for the most part, were very young and were not very familiar with Bonanza. And they loved what

they were watching. And they got engrossed in the project as they were watching and doing the restoration, so much so that they put more time into it than they should have, which I thought was very gratifying. And if I can get into the weeds just once very briefly, in the season two restoration, which was the most recent restoration done, there's a sequence with a hot air balloon in a wonderful episode directed by Robert Altman. And the Bonanza budget in 1960-61 couldn't afford a hot air balloon. So they built a basket and you could see the basket, but you had the camera pointing up, you could see there was no balloon above it, but he used stock footage from Paramount's library. And when the episode aired in 1960, 61, you could see it was stock footage because it was grainy and there were specks of dust. But now it's restored and it's seamless. It looks like it was filmed when they filmed the rest of the episode. So that was really, really nice. So as far as the extras,

um, you know, I've always tried to include as much as possible. And I'm very proud of the fact that I would reach out to, um, actors and actresses and without exception, they all had fond memories of their, uh, experiences on the show. And, and this is not just for Bonanza, but also for the High Chaparral and Gunsmoke, although unfortunately Bonanza had the same problem as Gunsmoke, not really too many principals still around anymore. But for High Chaparral, we got Henry Garrow to do some commentary.

So people who are no longer around did wonderful audio commentaries for me, for Bonanza. And, you know, there are online sources, motion picture, television, archivists, associations, and you could pose questions and hopefully people will respond. I was able to get access to material at the Library of Congress that indicated air dates of certain things. Certain things I couldn't find because they just don't exist anymore. I knew, of course, that Bonanza was sponsored by Chevrolet for many years. So I reached out to a wonderful woman at Campbell Ewald, which was the advertising agency that

represented the Chevrolet division of General Motors for many years. And she pointed me in the right direction to where films were stored. And I remember getting a box open in a facility because I wanted to transfer the film material to a digital format. And the dust was throughout the box. And you had to open up these little cardboard boxes, which contained 16 millimeter reels of film, which were the commercials. And in some rare cases, 35 millimeter. Again, Bonanza devotees will know about the special five minute commercials, which aired after episodes ran uninterrupted starting in the 1962 season to herald the brand new Chevrolets. And that was

a fantastic thing for people to see. Imagine the entire country and Bonanza had ratings that were higher than just about any other show for a good number of years in the 1960s. You sit down, you watch the fall of 1962, all of the new 1963 cars with the Cartwrights, with the cast of My Three Sons, with the cast of Route 66 introducing the film. And so I found all that, all this footage that had never been seen since the show aired. And the following year, the five-minute commercial was in effect home movies of the Dan Blocker family. Instead of having cast members of other shows sponsored by Chevrolet, they had Dan and his children. And I found the picture, but no sound. And that's pretty heartbreaking. So I continued to look, to look, to look. And

finally, I found a compilation reel that was put together, I don't know, probably in the 1980s. And that had the picture track, but no sound. But I had the sound from 35 millimeter elements. So I was able to marry the two. But again, a scavenger hunt, treasure hunt is an absolutely appropriate metaphor to describe what I was doing. So when it came time to do the bonus disc, I had my sights set on a CBC documentary that was produced in 1963, profiling Lorne Green by his old friend Fletcher Markle, who was producer of Studio One. In the spring of 1953, Fletcher Markle called his old friend, Lorne Green, who coincidentally he had just had lunch with in New York, and asked him if he could fill in for Victor Jory. And that's what really launched Lorne Green's career as an actor. Before that, he was the voice of Doom and a well-known radio news broadcaster in Canada. But it's funny, again, small world, the way things come together.

Fletcher Markle interviewed Lorne and took a crew to the Bonanza set for filming of an episode called The Legacy. And it was a day in the life of Lorne Green, actual several days, which consisted of him going to the RCA recording studios, which no longer exists on Sunset Boulevard, to talk about recording songs, footage of him going to a rodeo in Missouri and meeting President Truman and Bess Truman. So just wonderful stuff, but complicated and complex because there were songs throughout. And as you know, Tim, song rights are very, very, very expensive. So I was faced with cutting out the songs or paying money to get the songs. So again, then I cannot thank Matt enough, Matt Arcelich, because he was able to give me a budget that was a little higher than what I had before. And what I had before was very little.

And so we were able to include things like that, which had music. And so we were able to include things like that, which had music. And we were able to use the Bonanza theme song and some of these extras, which also is prohibitive, but I was able to work out a deal. I guess Bonanza devotees will be especially thrilled to see Pernell Roberts in footage from the F. Sullivan Show in 1965, which again, has never been seen since 1965. I wanted to also include footage of him being interviewed on the Mike Douglas show. And I found what I thought was the original footage on two inch quad videotape. And again, your audience probably knows what that is. But for those who don't, it's huge, maybe the size of a motorcycle tire and about as thick. And it's very delicate. And the fact that it survived at all is miraculous. And you have to go through a process called baking, where you heat it up in such a way that you minimize the chances of this brittle videotape flaking or even worse, breaking. So I had it shipped from the archives at CBS to a

post-production facility elsewhere in Los Angeles. Not too many years ago, this would have been done on site at a place called Jurassic Park, where they had wonderful equipment to be able to do in-house conversions from antiquated formats to modern digital. But for reasons that I don't need to go into, that just doesn't exist anymore. And there's no budget to do that kind of stuff. So you send it out. So I was all I was excited because I was able to get this done again, literally at the 11th hour. And they open it up and they tell me it's the wrong reel. It's not Grinnell Roberts show, it's Patrice Munsell, who was on the show the day before. we ran out of time so we couldn't use

that so we have to wait for the blu-ray release for that one but uh the cast reciting the alphabet on sesame street um michael landon interviewed in sweden again an example of of popularity outside of the united states and trailers, scenes from next week, I was able to find rare, rare footage of the guys in front of the camera. Most of the seasons was just an audio voiceover, but for two or three years in the middle 60s, they recorded on-camera intros. So it's a wonderful, wonderful collection.

Two and a half hours worth. The fly on the wall. If you're fortunate to buy the set, you'll listen to what I call the last party. finished the last show the following Wednesday, two days later, and that's it. No more Bonanza. And the director and the cinematographer were already in the studio prepping for the next show. They went home. So there was a wake, if you will, a few days after that on a soundstage in Warner Brothers. And dear Mitch Vogel, who was a regular the last few years, he gave me, loaned me an audio reel-to-reel recording of that party, which was given to all of the participants. So it's fantastic, rare stuff. So you have Lorne Green and Michael Landon and David Dortort and Tom Sarnoff from NBC and Bing Russell and Mitch Vogel and others talking about Bonanza and what it was like to be a family together for 14 years. And the last interview that Michael Landon ever gave before he found out that, tragically, he was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer,

I was able to get in touch through my buddy Stan Tafel, who's very involved in film restoration with classic silent comedies. buddy Stan Tafel, who's very involved in film restoration with classic silent comedies. He could put me in touch with Bill Brioche, who is a Canadian journalist who fortuitously was in California at the time and was friendly with Michael's publicist and was able to arrange an interview with Michael in March of 1991. And they talked ostensibly about Us, which was a project that he had developed for CBS and would have been, I'm sure, a successful series had he lived. But of course, he went off and talked about one of his favorite subjects, which was Bonanza. So all we had was audio, but with a wonderful editor named Ginger Brigham Cook, I was able to put a wonderful slideshow together.

So I could go on and people could very easily go to Amazon and read the laundry list of extras, but it's well worth the price, I am told. Yeah. And I just want to point out for the listener that if you collected the individual seasons, you can now just buy the ones that you don't have. And you have all new great extras on each of those seasons as well, including, you just mentioned Stan, who is also a friend of mine, a commentary you guys recorded for season 13 together.

That was fun. But it looked like you have a nice list of extras just on seasons 12, 13. Oh, sure. Including those audio commentaries with series star Tim Matheson that you mentioned as well.

So if you have all the seasons except for a few and you just want to be a completist on those seasons, it's great that you can just do that. Now, people might ask, what about this two and a half hour bonus disc and why is it only on the complete series? And those of us who have worked on complete series, at least I can speak for myself, I love working on extras that go on a complete series because you can put on extras that cover more than one season, including even potentially every season

in a way that you can't do with the individual seasons. One of them that I noticed you have on here on the bonus disc that you didn't mention was this blooper gag reel. Now, does that have gags from all of the seasons or various different seasons, I should say? Well, thank you for reminding me, Tim. There are just so many. Sometimes it's hard to think of everything. But certainly, the blooper reel is at the top of the list or very near the top of the list. People love those. They're great.

Everybody loves bloopers. And for those who don't know, this is footage that was never meant to be seen outside of the production company. Often they would have wrap parties at the end of the season or holiday parties at the end of December. or holiday parties at the end of December. And for fun, they would show outtakes, flubs, mistakes that the cast made. And you would hear the director say, save it, after they would do a take, after Dan Blocker would mess up a line or Michael Landon would do something silly. So although bloopers, outtakes were collected from the first year, for reasons that I can't fully explain, I only have from 1968 and later.

So the 10th year through the 13th year. And I apologize for that. But I just couldn't find the others. I know they were out there. An Uber fan by the name of Mary Stone told me she swears she remembers as a little kid watching probably the Mike Douglas show, Michael Landon being a guest and introducing bloopers, which included Purnell reciting a very serious speech and Michael giggling and making funny noises off camera to cause him to break up. Michael Landon bursting into the Ponderosa living room and being overcome with emotion during Hoss and the Leprechauns and Lorne and Pernell having to lift

him up. So unfortunately, we don't have that. But being a glass half full kind of a guy instead of glass empty, I would emphasize that we do have a lot of good stuff. And I was reminded also of the Chevrolet issue. People have said to me or have written to me or I've read comments online, People have said to me or have written to me or I've read comments online, well, you have one or two or three, especially when Chevrolet first started sponsoring Bonanza, Chevrolet spots per disc. Why don't you have a Chevrolet commercial in every episode? Because after all, every episode had Chevrolet commercials. Well, the answer is, unfortunately, not everything survives. So I was very fortunate to find everything that I could. And it didn't all come from Chevrolet.

Bob Trost, a good friend of our friend Jerry Becks, owns a film archive facility in New York City. And he had a 16 millimeter print of Captain Gallant and the Foreign Legion, which was a Buster Crabb series that aired and ceased production before Bonanza started. But for some inexplicable reason, Frost still had a print of a syndicated version of the show, which ran on the NBC network. So it included a promo for Bonanza, which was fantastic that I otherwise would not have gotten. The Museum of Media in New York City and Beverly Hills, they've changed the name so many times. It used to be the Museum of Radio and Television Broadcasting, Museum of Broadcasting. Museum of Broadcasting. They had a pilot episode for a game show that never sold, but to show sponsors what the format was like, they had commercials for NBC shows, which included

the premiere of Bonanza. So I worked very hard to be able to get that. So again, overused word, but very appropriate, scavenger hunt. So the Chevrolet commercials, please be grateful for what's there. And I wish I could have used more, but I was not being stingy. I just, I just didn't have any more. Sure. Sure. Well, I think just to conclude that portion of it is the reason why there is some content, some extras that are not on the individual seasons and can only be on a bonus disc of a complete series is, for example, that blooper reel that covers bloopers from three or four different seasons. There might not be enough bloopers for any one season to justify a blooper reel, especially this many years after trying to find assets. But if you find one blooper from four

seasons or two, that's enough to put it together into a blooper reel, which has enough length and everything to be fun for people. So that is why you're going to find content on the bonus disc that is nowhere else. Obviously, it's a great selling point to buy the complete series, But it's also a great opportunity for people like yourself and myself to gather materials that you now have the freedom legally to put on the complete series because they might have shown a clip from season one, season six, season three in the interview, or they might have talked about those. And so it frees you up to do that.

So that's just one of those little things that that people don't always get of why you have a limitation as an extras producer or as a studio and again why does the studio have that limitation well because they work with the guilds and the guilds have uh very specific uh restrictions about tv seasons and what you can do. And you can't just use one actor who was only in season five and talk about them in a different season or share their image without them getting compensation, so on and so forth. So there's all these little things and that's why, just so that the listeners and the fans know why that is.

So ideally, if you haven't bought the individual seasons, you can just buy the complete set. Or if you only bought a few of the individual seasons, you might want to just buy this complete series collection because then you get each individual season and all of the extras that are in that season. So it's a great thing to have on your shelf. And the packaging looks pretty good, I thought. Yeah, I think so. My initial reaction was, well, gee, the colors are sort of dark, and Bonanza is bright, and Lake Tahoe blue, and the lavish map to illustrate the Ponderosa, which is blue and elements of red. And I was told, well, this is the way we want to do it. And I was told, well, this is the way we want to do it. And I said, okay. And then, you know, we had a little more candid discussion and the graphic art people are very, very talented people that I work with, wanted to emulate the success of Yellowstone, which is what the most successful television show on the planet now and a later day Western and sells fantastically. And it's so gratifying.

It's thrilling to see, despite the pundits predicting the demise of physical media, you can still go to Amazon and Best Buy and other sources and point to the sales numbers. And Amazon, especially because it's public, will show Yellowstone at the number one selling spot. And not just in the Westerns category, but in DVD and Blu-ray. So I certainly had no objection to them emulating the marketing playbook to promote Bonanza in a similar fashion to Yellowstone, to promote Bonanza in a similar fashion to Yellowstone, if that's going to achieve success, because the purists, the enthusiasts, the classic television, classic film collectors will buy the Bonanza set, but we want the set to appeal to people who may not be aware of Bonanza. And so if the colors are darker on the Bonanza packaging because they want to appeal to people who will be looking for something similar to Yellowstone, then it's very, very fine with me. I did go out of my way to make sure that the box included illustrations of all the supporting cast members. So not just the quartet, but wonderful people like,

uh, Victor Sen Young and Bing Russell and Ray Teal and Tim Matheson and Mitch Vogel. Um, they were on the set as well as of course, Lauren Green and Dan Blocker and Burnell Roberts and Michael Land. Um, and I will say something about the individual sets.

I seem to recall a disgruntled, um, will say something about the individual sets. I seem to recall a disgruntled critic on Amazon writing, the only way to get those last seasons is to buy the complete box set. That's not fair. And that's not true. You can buy season 12 individually. You can buy season 13, buy season 14. And the packaging is completely different because it's not part of the complete series set. And you have all of the detailed liner notes that you've come to expect from me with, of course, writer-director credits and air dates and production film dates, which I worked very hard to include with all the episodes. I remember that was another little fight I had with Ken Ross's people. They said,

well, we don't have any room on the packaging. So Ken said, well, if Clyde has gone through all the trouble to find these dates and can verify these dates are accurate, then we'll just reduce the font size. So that's what we did. So you might need a magnifying glass to read them, but the information is there if you want it. Well, it's a great looking set. And for the fans of the show and those people who have not been buying, but want to go back and get this complete series set, it's a great opportunity now. And you coming on and giving us kind of the nuts and bolts and deep dive into this release, I think should let the listeners of the extras podcast know what exactly it took to get to

this release and what's in the release and just what they can expect. And I mean, it's great when you go back and you watch the episodes, but 400 and something episodes, I don't know who has the time to watch all those episodes. So sometimes you do pick and choose your favorite episodes. I don't know who has the time to watch all those episodes. So sometimes you do pick and choose your favorite episodes. But I know one thing I tend to always do is watch the extras. And that's because as much as the episodes are terrific to watch and great fun, sometimes you're getting nuggets. And it also feeds into your memories or your nostalgia to see these extras, the outtakes or the interviews, or to hear the commentary from a guy like Tim and get his perspective all these years later on that episode. So it's a great way to revisit an episode that you haven't seen in a while. So

all in all, terrific series. And I just want to thank you for coming on the Extras to talk about it today. You know, Tim says, Tim tells a wonderful story. And just to give you a little appetizer, they were filming on location in Northern California. And Lorne Green was driving a Mercedes and he walks by the Mercedes and it has a magnificent hood ornament emblem. hood ornament, emblem. And he starts fooling around with it because he's a kid. He's like 22, 23 at the time. And it breaks off in his hand. And he's shocked and he's flabbergasted and he's petrified. He's horrified. My gosh, I've just broken the medallion off of Lorne Green's gold-winged Mercedes. What am I going to do? So he very carefully, very gingerly puts it right back on top of the hood and he walks away. I mean, a strong wind will blow it off, but he just didn't have the wherewithal me the opportunity to talk about the set, talk about the extras. And I'm with you. If I get something, I'm going to watch the extras.

And depending on who I'm with, it might be the first thing or we might watch it after we watch the show or the movie. But I think people who are collectors by nature, People who are collectors by nature, who acquire things for their home library, should find this series appealing. You're a Western enthusiast. It goes without saying. Bonance is one of the great Westerns of all time, and I wouldn't even qualify it by calling it a television Western. You have your list of great Westerns. It's The Searchers and Red River and True Grit and Stagecoach and Ford's Cavalry Trilogy. You can add to that Gunsmoke and Bonanza and The Rifleman and The Big Valley and The High Chaparral and Yellowstone.

Valley and the High Chaparral and Yellowstone. And if you have a fondness for a classic movie, regardless of the genre, you're going to seek it out. And if you're a fairly, I guess, open-minded or far-reaching, broad-minded kind of person, you're not going to limit yourself to a specific genre. And I think the brilliance and the success of Bonanza has to do with the fact that it's not easily categorizable. There's no question that Gunsmoke was the most successful traditional solid Western on television because it presented, after week, wonderful, solid stories in the Western tradition, in the Western milieu. Bonanza had episodes that did that, but more than any other series, I think it had the ability to shift gears. It had the versatility to present a traditional Western one week, a tearjerker the next week, farce the following week, an out-and-out laugh riot

like the Younger Brothers' Younger Brother, which you mentioned with our buddy Stan Tafel doing a narration for, with the great Chuck McCann and Strother Martin as the featured guest stars, even a fantasy show. There were several Bonanza shows that went into the realm of fantasy. So I think that's a lot to do, has a lot to do with Bonanza's appeal. So for film, television enthusiasts that want to see an example of television production at a time when it was very difficult to come up with quality shows week after week. And it's remarkable, miraculous, that Bonanza's track record is as good as it was. There are certainly clinkers per season in Bonanza

and Gunsmoke, and you name the greatest series and you're going to have clinkers, again, because you're turning out 30 plus shows a season. So if you're mindful of that, I would urge you to give Bonanza a try. Whether it's romantic comedy or romance tearjerkers or thrillers or action adventure, whatever suits your taste, you're going to find a Bonanza episode that fits the bill. that it's wonderful to be able to sit in the comfort of your home and to watch these episodes looking like they were made yesterday. You know, it's sort of a pet peeve of mine that someone will write or say, oh, well, it was made, you fill in the blank, 50 years ago, 60 years ago. At least that's the best it's going to look. And that's not true, because you can go back to the film. And my dear friend Haskell Boggs, the great cinematographer for every other episode of Bonanza and worked at Paramount since the early 30s, he said to me, Andy, if you have it in the negative, then you're always going to have good

quality product as long as it's in the negative. And with Bonanza, it was in the negative. Bonanza pioneered color television. Kodak would present to David Dorthor its latest, faster film to capture color because then the film was slower and you needed an enormous amount of candle power to light the sets. So Bonanza was a pioneer in that regard. In filming outdoors, many sequences were filmed on location,

Lake Tahoe, Arizona, Northern California. So it's worth checking out if you're not a Bonanza fan, but you're a fan of classic, well-produced, well-made television shows, as well as feature films. I would combine the two because in many ways, the best of Bonanza is like watching a mini feature film. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a terrific series. It's a classic. As you said, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, they're right there. They have their fans

and often the fans overlap both of those for different reasons. As you say, they're different shows. So, and the stars of Bonanza, I mean, beloved Michael Landon, Lorne Green. I mean, Michael Landon, of course, went on to have an amazing career

with Little House on the Prairie and everything. You can't have Little House on the Prairie and everything. You can't have Little House on the Prairie without Bonanza. It's literally a sequel. And in both of those, they focused on a lot of morality tales, really. And that, I think, resonates. And that lasts in many ways because it's timeless. Those types of stories are timeless.

So, well, thanks again, Andrew. It's been a lot of fun. And I'm hoping that this will sell and it will lead to more and more classic television and Westerns being brought to the fans. Fingers and toes and other appendages crossed. And you're very welcome, Tim. And thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk to people directly and tell them a

little about something that they might not already know. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did. It's great to see Bonanza finally getting a full series release after all these years. I know I have fond memories of watching this show with my grandfather, who lived most of his life in Montana before retiring to Bend, Oregon. After a busy morning tending to his garden and his cows, we'd always stop to watch the afternoon reruns of Bonanza. of Bonanza. For those who would like to purchase the new Bonanza Complete Series DVD or the individual season releases, there are links in the podcast show notes and on our website at www.theextras.tv. So be sure and check those out. If you're on social media, be sure and follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to continue the conversation and to be a part of our community. Twitter, or Instagram to continue the conversation and to be a part of our community. And check out our YouTube channel as we are posting more videos there all the time.

You can find all the links in the podcast show notes. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. the extras is a production of otaku media producers of podcasts behind the scenes extras and media that connects creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals at www.otakumedia.tv or look for the link in the show notes.