Best TV Dads · Episode 2
Charles Ingalls
Little House on the Prairie (1974–83). Pa: the fiddle by the fire, hard work and faith, Michael Landon, the real Charles Ingalls, and the heartbreak of Mary losing her sight.
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Shannon A little log house on the edge of the prairie. Snow outside, a fire inside. The girls are in their nightgowns, and their father takes down his fiddle.
Gordon And he plays them to sleep.
Shannon That was Pa. Charles Ingalls. And for the better part of a decade, millions of families gathered around the television to sit by his fire.
Gordon I'd only ever heard the name. Then I watched the very first episode this week, and by the end, I was hooked.
Shannon Welcome to Best TV Dads. Each episode, we sit down with one of television's great fathers. And this one is close to my heart. Little House was always on in reruns when I was a kid.
Gordon So this time, we're heading out to the prairie, to Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Episode two. Charles Ingalls.
Gordon So, here's what makes this one special. Charles Ingalls was a real man.
Shannon He was. Little House on the Prairie is based on a series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. She was his daughter. And in the 1930s, when she was in her sixties, she started writing down the story of her childhood on the frontier.
Gordon And her father is at the heart of those books.
Shannon Absolutely. The real Charles Ingalls was a farmer, a carpenter, a hunter. He moved his family again and again, from Wisconsin, to Kansas, to Minnesota, to the Dakota Territory, always looking for a better place. And in the evenings, he played the fiddle.
Gordon The real fiddle.
Shannon It still exists. It's kept at the Laura Ingalls Wilder home and museum in Mansfield, Missouri.
Gordon And on television, Pa was Michael Landon.
Shannon He was. And Michael Landon was already a star. For fourteen years, he'd played Little Joe Cartwright on Bonanza, one of the biggest westerns ever on television.
Gordon So he knew his way around a horse.
Shannon He did. But Little House was really his show. He was the executive producer. He wrote many of the episodes, and he directed a lot of them too.
Gordon So Pa was in charge on screen and off.
Shannon In every sense. And he had a clear idea of what he wanted. A show about a family that works hard, loves each other, and gets through hard times together.
Gordon Now, the family.
Shannon There's Ma, Caroline, played by Karen Grassle. Strong, gentle, and the rock of the house. And the girls. Mary, the oldest, played by Melissa Sue Anderson. Little Carrie. And Laura, played by Melissa Gilbert.
Gordon And Pa had a special name for Laura.
Shannon Half-pint. Because she was small, and stubborn, and always getting into scrapes. And Laura adored her Pa.
Gordon You can see it on the screen.
Shannon You really can. Melissa Gilbert has said that Michael Landon was a father figure to her. And when Pa scoops Laura up, or sits with her on the porch steps, it doesn't feel like acting.
Gordon So what kind of father was Charles Ingalls?
Shannon A working father, first of all. He's out in the fields at dawn. He takes jobs at the mill, he hauls freight, he does whatever it takes to keep food on the table. And he never complains about it in front of the girls.
Gordon And he's strong.
Shannon Strong, but gentle. He'll take on a bully in town without a second thought. And then he'll come home, sit down with a child who's had her heart broken, and just listen.
Gordon And there's faith in that house, too.
Shannon There is. The Ingalls family goes to church on Sunday, they say grace at supper, and when things go wrong, they pray about it. The show never preached, but faith was simply part of their lives.
Gordon And he cried.
Shannon He did. That was unusual for a TV dad in the seventies. When something sad happened, Charles Ingalls let his tears show. And it made him more of a man in people's eyes, not less.
Gordon And the show didn't shy away from hard things.
Shannon Not at all. Crops fail. Money runs out. People get sick. The family loses a baby son. And later on, Mary loses her sight.
Gordon That was a heartbreaking storyline.
Shannon It was. Pa knows before she does, and he can't bring himself to tell her. When she wakes up and can't see, he's the one who holds her and helps her find the courage to go on. Mary goes away to a school for the blind, marries her teacher, and ends up teaching blind children herself.
Gordon Wait. Did the real Mary go blind too?
Shannon She did. In the books, and in real life. The show changed a lot of things from the books, but that part was true.
Gordon And the opening! I couldn't stop smiling at it.
Shannon The girls running down the hill, through the wildflowers, toward the camera.
Gordon And the little one falls down.
Shannon Carrie trips and tumbles in the grass. That wasn't planned. They kept it in, and it became one of the most famous moments in the whole show.
Gordon I love that.
Shannon So does everyone. It's the whole show in a few seconds. Kids running free, a little stumble, and getting right back up.
Gordon And Michael Landon left us too soon.
Shannon He did. He died in 1991, at just fifty-four years old. But he's remembered as Pa by millions of people, and the show has never really been off the air. It's still in reruns, all over the world.
Gordon And the real Laura would have been proud, I think.
Shannon I think so too. Her Pa ended up being one of the most loved fathers in television history.
Gordon So, what's your pick?
Shannon Mine is from the first season. The Lord Is My Shepherd. The Ingalls have a baby boy, and Laura feels left out. She's sure Pa loves his new son more than he loves her. And then the baby gets sick, and they lose him, and Laura blames herself. It's a hard, beautiful episode about a father's love, and a little girl finding out how much she's loved.
Gordon And mine is I'll Be Waving as You Drive Away. It's the one where Mary loses her sight. Pa is at his very best, and at his most heartbroken. Have the tissues ready.
Shannon And our rating, out of five neckties.
Gordon Five neckties. And maybe a string tie, for the prairie.
Shannon Five from me too. Pa is the father everyone wishes they'd had.
Gordon That's Charles Ingalls. A fiddle by the fire, a strong pair of hands, and a heart big enough for the whole prairie.
Shannon Next time, we're leaving the prairie for the stars. A single father, raising his son on a space station way out on the frontier of space. Benjamin Sisko.
Gordon That's next time, on Best TV Dads.