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The Western is a genre that's mostly gone by the wayside in recent decades, as portraits of straight-shooting American heroes and uncomplicated "bad guys" have become less digestible to the public. While popular neo-Westerns (like "Justified" or the works of Taylor Sheridan) and perspective-changing genre breakdowns have made a splash in recent yers, the genre has mostly died out. Of the relics that remain, few are as prolific and familiar as "Bonanza," a Western series that ran for an impressive 14 seasons on NBC in the '60s and '70s.

As a long-running TV series, "Bonanza" was able to chart the change — or stubborn lack thereof — within the genre and the country, frankly addressing topics like racism and bigotry while also delivering regular laughs and a dash of melodrama to loyal viewers. The series starred Lorne Green as widower Ben Cartwright and Dan Blocker, Pernell Roberts, and Michael Landon as Ben's three sons.

Herbert “Cowboy” Coward, the sometime actor and pal of Burt Reynolds who played one of the scary, sadistic mountain men in John Boorman’s Deliverance, died Wednesday in a car crash in North Carolina. He was 85.

His death, along with that of his girlfriend Bertha Brooks, 78, and their pet Chihuahua and squirrel, was announced by North Carolina State Highway Patrol officials.

The crash occurred around 3:30 p.m. Et Wednesday on a U.S. Route 19/23 in Haywood County. According to patrol officials, Coward’s vehicle was struck by a pickup truck driven by a 16-year-old, who was taken to a hospital for treatment. No charges have been filed.

North Carolina troopers told Asheville TV station Wlos that Coward had just left a doctor’s office when his car was struck by the teen driver, who was not speeding. Neither Coward nor Brooks was wearing a seat belt.

Coward had come...

Herbert “Cowboy” Coward, who as the sadistic toothless man in John Boorman’s Deliverance terrorized canoeists and audiences alike with the chilling line, “He got a real pretty mouth, ain’t he?,” has been killed in a car accident. He was 85.

Coward died Wednesday when the Nissan he was driving was struck by a pickup truck driven by a 16-year-old in Haywood County, North Carolina, North Carolina State Highway Patrol officials told Wlos-tv.

Coward; his girlfriend, Bertha Brooks; and two pets, a chihuahua and a squirrel, died at the scene, they said. The other driver was taken to a hospital. No charges have been filed.

In the early 1960s, Burt Reynolds was making $100 a week falling off rooftops as a stuntman at the Ghost Town in the Sky amusement park in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, when he first met Coward, who was there playing an outlaw character named Pa Clanton.

Inga Swenson, the two-time Tony-nominated singer and actress who as the dictatorial German cook Gretchen Kraus sparred with Robert Guillaume‘s character on the 1980s ABC sitcom Benson, has died. She was 90.

Swenson died Sunday night of natural causes in hospice care in Los Angeles, her son, Mark Harris, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Swenson also sparkled in two critically acclaimed 1962 films released seven weeks apart — as the mother of Helen Keller (Patty Duke) in Arthur Penn’s The Miracle Worker (1962) and as the wife of a U.S. senator with a dark secret (Don Murray) in Otto Preminger’s political thriller Advise & Consent (1962).

On the strength of those performances, the Nebraska native — no, she was not born in Germany — was cast in 1963 as the spinster Lizzy in 110 in the Shade, based on N. Richard Nash’s play The Rainmaker. She received a Tony nomination for best actress in a musical for that performance,...

Jay Julian Eller, a retired attorney who represented numerous entertainment clients during his long career, died Feb. 2 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 93.

Eller was married to Robin Ray Eller, actor and audiobook narrator, and was the father of longtime Variety editor-in-chief Claudia Eller.

“Dad was the rock and moral compass of our entire family for decades, and his loss leaves a huge hole in our lives and our hearts,” Claudia Eller said.

As a lawyer, Jay Eller represented actors Michael Landon, Dan Blocker and Lorne Greene, the principal stars of the long-running NBC western drama “Bonanza.” Landon also was active as a producer and director as well, creating and shepherding several successful series, including NBC’s “Highway To Heaven” and “Little House on the Prairie,” which made him television’s highest-paid actor-producer at the time.

Eller was Landon’s sole representative during his career, acting as a...

Gay Talese comparing Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Michael Cimino to Italian painters working for the Popes during the Renaissance: "These painters now are directors." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

In early 1970, Gay Talese drove up unannounced to the Spahn Ranch. It was less than a year after the murders of Sharon Tate, Voytek Frykowski, Abigail Folger, and Jay Sebring by members of the Manson family that had lived there. The journalistic adventure of meeting George Spahn was turned by Gay into the Esquire magazine article Charlie Manson's Home On The Range. The location is featured in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time … In Hollywood, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt with Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate and Bruce Dern as Spahn.

Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) and Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

King Vidor's Duel in the Sun, starring Gregory Peck,...

The California Film Commission has banned filming in state parks and beaches in the California wildfire zones until further notice.

The commission made the announcement on Tuesday afternoon. The Woolsey fire was at 35% containment on Tuesday after burning about 150 square miles of land in Ventura and Los Angeles counties in six days. More than 400 structures have been destroyed.

“Due to the devastating fires in the Malibu area, Highway 1 along Pacific Coast Highway is closed to north and southbound traffic from Sunset Blvd. (Los Angeles County) to Las Posas Road (Ventura County),” the commission said. “Applications for filming along this portion of Pch, as well as filming at the following State Parks and Beaches will not be accepted until further notice: Malibu Creek State Park, Malibu Pier, Tapia State Park, Point Mugu State Park, Sycamore Cove State Beach, Leo Carrillo State Park, Robert Meyer Memorial State Beach, Point Dume Bluffs State Park,...

It's ring-a-ding time, with producer-star Frank Sinatra and his cooperative director Gordon Douglas doing a variation on the hipster detective saga. The two Tony Rome pictures are lively and fun and chock-ful of borderline offensive content, like smash-zooms into women's rear ends. Tony Rome & Lady in Cement Blu-ray Twilight Time 1967, 1968 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 110 and 93 min. / Street Date September 8, 2016 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95 Starring Frank Sinatra, Richard Conte; Tony Rome: Jill St. John, Sue Lyon, Gena Rowlands, Simon Oakland, Lloyd Bochner, Robert J. Wilke, Virginia Vincent, Joan Shawlee, Lloyd Gough, Rocky Graziano, Elisabeth Fraser, Shecky Greene, Jeanne Cooper, Joe E. Ross, Tiffany Bolling, Deanna Lund. Lady in Cement: Raquel Welch, Dan Blocker, Martin Gabel, Lainie Kazan, Paul Mungar, Richard Deacon, Joe E. Lewis, Bunny Yeager. Cinematography Joseph Biroc Original Music Billy May, Hugo Montenegro; song by Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra Written by Richard L. Breen...

Vilmos Zsigmond won the National Society of Film Critics' award for best cinematography on this, his third pairing with director Robert Altman. Altman and Leigh Brackett, cowriter of the screenplay for The Big Sleep, turn Raymond Chandler’s La gumshoe into a figure of ’70s angst in what many consider the director’s masterpiece and Elliott Gould’s finest hour. Bonanza star Dan Blocker was to have played Sterling Hayden’s role, but passed away before filming began. John Williams’ witty score is almost entirely variations on one theme.

FilmOn Binge: “Bonanza” is available for free viewing, which is great for vintage television fans. “Bonanza” is a show that spanned from the late ’50s to the early ’70s following Ben Cartwright (played by Lorne Greene) and his sons (Michael Landon, Dan Blocker, Pernell Roberts) as they run Ponderosa Ranch and defend their home while helping the members of the community. One of the episodes you can see during the FilmOn binge is “The Spitfire.” The episode revolves around a revenge plot. “After Joe [Landon] kills a man in self defense who tried to set fire to the Ponderosa to clear himself some land, he has to take his lively, [ Read More ]

The post Watch FilmOn Binge: Bonanza for Free appeared first on Shockya.com.

After last night’s Glee, an emotional tribute to Finn Hudson (without revealing his cause of death but rather focusing on his life), we decided to look back at how other television shows have handled a death in the family. The scenario can be traced back to Dan Blocker’s unexpected death before filming began on Bonanza’s final season. As a result, Bonanza was one of the first (if not the first) television show to address an actor’s death, and it did so by killing off Hoss, Blocker’s character. Many shows have followed that same path, while...

Director Robert Altman.

Robert Altman: Eclectic Maverick

By

Alex Simon

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the April 1999 issue of Venice Magazine.

It's the Fall of 1977 and I'm a bored and rebellious ten year old in search of a new movie to occupy my underworked and creativity-starved brain, feeling far too mature for previous favorites Wily Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) and Return of the Pink Panther (1975), and wanting something more up-to-date and edgy than Chaplin's City Lights (1931). I needed a movie to call my favorite that would be symbolic of my own new-found manhood (and something that would really piss off my parents and teachers). Mom and Dad were going out for the evening, leaving me with whatever unfortunate baby-sitter happened to need the $10 badly enough to play mother hen to an obnoxiously precocious only child like myself. I scanned the TV Guide for what...

Few classic shows made it to 14 seasons like Bonanza, but the ones that do leave an everlasting impression on popular culture for decades to come. It’ll come as a surprise of no one that the era of the western has long since come to an end, but in its golden age we got serials like Rawhide, Gunsmoke, and Bonanza. The latter told the story of the Cartwright family, a father and his three sons, making a living any way they can in late 1800’s Nevada, headquartered on their ranch, the Ponderosa. By the fourth season, the characters played by Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, Dan Blocker, and Pernell Roberts had been firmly established with few surprises to offer. Instead the show tells one story after another (and so on for many seasons to come) with some solid writing and acting from the regulars. It might not have any surprises or groundbreaking storytelling,...

When Gene Roddenberry tried to explain to NBC execs that his new show Star Trek would be “Wagon Train to the stars,” he had some evidence to back himself up: This never before released two-disc set showcases the stars' appearances on classic (and some completely forgotten) western programs from the 50s and 60s. Disc 1 includes: Tate (1960): Episode Comanche Scalps starring Leonard Nimoy and co-starring a young Robert Redford in the critically-acclaimed but obscure series Bonanza (1960): Episode The Ape co-starring Leonard Nimoy and Dan Blocker Outlaws (1960): Episode Starfall Parts 1 & 2: Starring William Shatner, Cloris Leachman and more in a feature-length adventure. Disc 2 includes: The Lone Ranger (1949): Episode Legion of Old-Timers featuring Deforest Kelley, Clayton Moore & Jay Silverheels Last of the Mohicans (1957): Epiode The Scapegoat starring Lon Chaney Jr. and James Doohan Outlaws(1960): EpisodeShorty featuring Edward Binns, Alfred Ryder and Leonard Nemoy White Comanche (1968): The...

Oakland — Just in time for the holiday season, the Gravy has arrived.

Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie opens up in various theaters across America at the start of December. Wavy Gravy is an icon with an ever changing career. He’s gone from the legendary Merry Pranksters to the head of security at the original Woodstock to running a respected charity and finally achieving international greatness as a flavor of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. The many facets of his life are covered in the documentary directed by Michelle Esrick.

We had a chance to sit down for an extensive interview with Wavy Gravy and Michelle Esrick when the movie premiered at 2009’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

This first part has him discuss getting drunk with Jack Kerouac (On the Road) and dropping acid at the Electric Acid Kool-Aid Tests. Ahhh good times.

Now we get...

David Dortort, who created "Bonanza," the top-rated Western that aired for 14 years on NBC with family values as its centerpiece, died Sept. 5 in his apartment in Westwood. He was 93.

"Bonanza" ran from 1959-73, was the most-watched show on television from 1964-67 and maintained a place in the ratings top 10 for a decade. Dortort also created "The High Chaparral," which originally followed "Bonanza" on Sunday nights on NBC and ran for three seasons.

In 1959, Dortort pitched his show to RCA subsidiary NBC. "Bonanza" would be filmed in color in gorgeous Lake Tahoe, Nev. -- to help promote the sale of RCA's color TVs -- and feature a cast of relative unknowns (Michael Landon, Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker and Pernell Roberts) as members of the Cartwright family.

Dortort went away from the typical Western formula of focusing on lone drifters, choosing to focus on a family of three boys and a father living on the Ponderosa Ranch.

Actor Pernell Roberts was best known for his role as Adam, the eldest Cartwright son, on the television western Bonanza from 1959 to 1965. He later starred in the medical drama Trapper John, M.D. from 1979 to 1986.

Roberts was born in Waycross, Georgia, on May 18, 1928, and began his career on stage in 1950 in Washington D.C., with the Arena Stage. He moved to New York City in 1952, and made his Broadway debut several years later. Roberts went to Hollywood in 1957, where he appeared on television and in several films.

He was cast as Adam Cartwright in the hit western Bonanza in 1959. Lorne Greene played the Cartwright patriarch Ben, and Dan Blocker and Michael Landon were younger brothers, Hoss and Little Joe. Despite the series’ popularity, Roberts was unsatisfied with his role and left after six seasons in 1965. His many television credits also include roles in episodes of One Step Beyond, The Girl from U.

Pernell Roberts, the last remaining cast member of Bonanza, has died from cancer at age 81. Roberts played the role of Adam, brother of Dan Blocker and Michael Landon, on the smash hit TV series between 1959 and 1965. He felt frustrated that his character was never fully developed and thought it was ridiculous that a man in his 30s would constantly defer to his father's (Lorne Greene) wishes. Like so many other stars who left hit TV series, Roberts' career stagnated for many years. However, in 1979 he was back in a hit, playing the title role of Trapper John, M.D., based on a character from the M*A*S*H TV series. The show lasted until 1986. For more click here...

Bonanza is one of those shows that most people have heard about, maybe hum the extremely well-known theme song too, yet haven’t seen or wouldn’t really bother seeing. I certainly never went out of my way to look for it, nor did I care to, since I was content with it being one of those things I just missed the boat on, like being an Edo-era ronin or attending Caligula’s cocktail parties.

Started airing fifty years ago on NBC, the long-running western (14 seasons, for a total of 430 hour-long episodes) is one of those TV landmarks that new viewers today might assume daunting to get into—even for Western fans like myself—but now that Paramount has officially released a sharply remastered DVD of the first season, watching it for the first time, it’s surprisingly easy to sit back and get into, as it has a bit...

Here’s a list of some of the new movie and TV shows coming to DVD and Blu-ray this week that we’re looking forward to seeing. Also, there’s some classic, and not-so-classic, movies hitting Blu-ray for the first time this week as well.

Of all the new releases, we’re particularly interested in the Blu-ray versions of movies and TV shows like Army of Darkness, Hero, An American Werewolf in London, The Big Bang Theory Season Two and Bonanza. Yes, some of us are even excited about the debut of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which drops today on Blu-ray.

Check them out.

Movies

An American Werewolf in London (Full Moon Edition) ~ David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, Griffin Dunne (Blu-ray)

Army of Darkness (Screwhead Edition) ~ Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz (Blu-ray)

Bionicle: The Legend Reborn ~ Dee Bradley Baker, Jeff Bennett, Jim Cummings, and Michael Dorn (DVD)

Child’s Play ~ Roslyn Alexander, Jack Colvin,...

Burbank – Chat Fatigue is coming.

Forget swine flu (or H1N1); Chat Fatigue will be the sickness that will overtake millions this fall. The group most susceptible to this are NBC viewers. Now that Jay Leno will be taking over the 10 p.m. slot from Monday to Friday (starting Sept. 14) on the Peacock network, viewers will get four hours of people sitting behind desks and talking directly to the camera.

Can the average viewer really handle going from Leno to local news to Conan O’Brien to Jimmy Fallon to Carson Daly? How many guys in suits and ties sitting behind a desk do you want to experience after an 8 hours of work day with guys in suits and ties sitting behind desks? They’re all going to stare at you through the boob tube and jibber jabber. Kinda like the doofus with the desk next to you at work.

Robert Altman and Leigh Brackett, cowriter of the screenplay for The Big Sleep, turn Raymond Chandler's La gumshoe into a figure of '70s angst in what many consider Altman's masterpiece and Elliott Gould's finest hour. Bonanza star Dan Blocker was to have played Sterling Hayden's role, but passed away before filming began. John Williams' witty score is almost entirely variations on one theme.

(Elliott Gould, above, as Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye.)

by Jon Zelazny

Editor’s note: this article originally appeared at EightMillionStories.com on November 14, 2008.

With the back-to-back success of his Oscar-nominated role in the off-beat wife-swapping hit Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) and the even bigger off-beat hit Mash (1970), Brooklyn’s own Elliott Gould skyrocketed to worldwide fame.

While perhaps best known to those under 40 as Ross and Monica’s dad on “Friends,” or Vegas financier Reuben Tishkoff in the blockbuster Ocean’s 11 series, cine-scholars generally regard Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973) as Gould’s most iconic starring role. 2008 marks the 35th anniversary of their extraordinary modern-day reinterpretation of Raymond Chandler’s classic private eye, Philip Marlowe.

Elliott Gould invited me to his home in west Los Angeles, where he generously spoke at length of his three major collaborations with Altman, who passed away two years ago.

I read...