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

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
BONANZA: THE OFFICIAL SECOND SEASON

Official Bonanza Facebook page
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Transcript

TIM MILLARD: 0:13

Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies and animation and their release on digital DVD, Blu-r ay, 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. Today we have a special guest on The Extras 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 35mm film camera negatives for a superior viewing experience. You also get an exclusive bonus disc containing nearly 2.5 hours of rare content not seen in more than 60 years.

TIM MILLARD: 0:58

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 has 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 1:46

Thank you, Tim. It's a pleasure to be here.

TIM MILLARD: 1:48

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?

Andrew J. Klyde: 2:02

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 Dortort, 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 all intellectual property for the shows that he created for NBC Bonanza and the High Chaperral. 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

Andrew J. Klyde: 3:00

To quote him, he said 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 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.

TIM MILLARD: 3:52

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 the world's 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. 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 4:37

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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 5:53

It's like an actor is asked to be in a Western Can you ride a horse? Oh, I was 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 eldon h S Young a, 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 and nd that And you were lucky if you could find footage of the actors doing something contemporaneously with when the show was filmed.

TIM MILLARD: 7:00

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 paperwork on this or not? So, the newer series that you just mentioned, the Big Bang Theorys 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 Uncle, it became, as you say, a real scavenger hunt to figure everything out. 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 some of the older classic stuff as well.

TIM MILLARD: 8:01

So, yes, but in this instance because, you know, sinking a show like Bonanza, arguably 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 8:28

Yeah, yeah, and you know we talked a little bit about that before. The golden age of physical media film entertainment, as far as DVD, certainly has passed. If it were 2004, 2005, 2006, absolutely, we would have completed the complete series in a much quicker time frame than it 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 one 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 whether something is going to sell. And I think there was an additional obstacle in the case of Bonanza because, if I could give you a very brief history lesson, bonanza was owned, is owned by the National Broadcasting Corporation.

Andrew J. Klyde: 9:36

In 1959, some farsighted executives on the West Coast wanted very much to 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 Lorim ar, and at the time Warner Brothers and Universal and Paramount. Those were the big production companies that turned out motion picture films 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 distributed 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 be a Western and two that it be a one hour. Those were enormously popular at the time. 1958, 1959, 1960, really reached its zenith one-hour the format was also becoming increasingly successful.

Andrew J. Klyde: 11:06

You talk about the classic television Westerns. Gunsmoke, invariably, is number one on people's list and Bonanza is number two. Well, Gunsmoke half-hour a show when it first started in 1955, adapted from a very successful radio show, and so the earliest Gunsmoke episodes were outstanding because cherry-picked were 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

Andrew J. Klyde: 12:13

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 Dortort told me who was there and others corroborated. When he suggested filming in color, he was told why it would be cost prohibiting 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 an RCA in the business of selling colored television sets, of manufacturing colored television sets? Well, yes, but that's RCA and we're NBC. It's a different division. So it's incredulous when you think about it. But eventually they worked it out and Bonanza became the most successful show of the 1960s, full stop, and sold colored 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. So you would think that a show that was that enormously successful in its day would get the full cart 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 14:00

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, very similar to what was happening in the 1940s when the Antitrust Department ruled that motion picture studios could not own motion pictures 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 .. and we saw the East actually exploiting TV shows that weren't well produced, where the media media Brothers on Netflix did not No created, if you will put those words in quotes, and entity called national telephone associates, which later changes name to republic entertainment. CBS had, via calm and a bc had world vision Ironically they're all now under the same corporate parent for a lot of acquisitions and mergers over the years. I i remember high-ranking to NBC nbc executive about various ideas possibilities Possibilities Bonanza bonanza and when 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 had that great rivalry. So make a long story short is probably too late for that.

Andrew J. Klyde: 15:31

CBS was charged with distributing Bonanza and thanks to the dedication of a couple of people which I could talk about,

TIM MILLARD: 16:42

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 gonna get to work on this for fourteen years like you have been to do this with, 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 fourteen years ago and then that was supposed to fund the release of season two and three and four, and gauging interest is that.

Andrew J. Klyde: 17:19

I remember having having initial an initial conversation with someone on the paramount lot in the summer of two thousand eight, and shortly after that i was introduced to angelo dante, who is madman, was his manager of special features for all of cbs home entertainment products and good, good guy, and We work so well together and i couldn't have done it without literally, and he just had a knack for finding things and fine tuning things, and the idea was, as you know, to marketing is so important to release season one in the fall of two thousand nine, which was the fiftieth anniversary of of bonanza's debut on nbc in nineteen fifty nine. So that was the game plan. Can Ross decided early on we would release it in two volumes again a marketing ploy. Both longs 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. So i did the best i could and i, you know you Deal in this.

Andrew J. Klyde: 18:42

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. I'm one of. My clients is the sons of the desert international law 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 ferman act, with Ron Palumbo just written a wonderful book on the history of a bit 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 and People at universal like the book so much that they adapted some of the notes from the book and put it as liner notes and the packaging accompanying universals dvd releases of happen in costello films. But fast forward To a few years later and bob ferman act introduces me to his brother, ron ferman act, who also is a great classic film and television, debautees work on uncovering Forgotten music sources and it's helped with projects involving the people's, for example. And he just New 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 cart rides, 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 riding off singing at that moment just just didn't work.

Andrew J. Klyde: 20:54

So that was sort of a holy grail to find that footage I am and bob, somehow new, where was, and at the eleventh hour literally, was about as late as it could come in terms of production. I told ken ross that i found this. Our members sent me an email at something like eleven pm at night, copying angelo, and said we must make this happen. And we did, i remember was too late to even reference it in the packaging. So so ken ordered that the company paleo extra money to have a sticker on top of the cellophane which indicated that rare, never before seen alternate ending be included. And bob also found Sort of bonanza we're very proud to be brought to you by such a wonderful company is rca, and we urge you to see this wonderful show in color and buy an rca color television set. This footage that's never been seen since September of nineteen fifty nine. So so there are other examples of things like that, like like we discussed earlier, like Finding a needle in a haystack and going on a scavenger hunt.

Andrew J. Klyde: 22:09

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 cps it's been 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 use an inter positive print, which is the next best source to the original camera, and the sales were underwhelming. So the plan to do season two quickly Sort of faded, wasn't tell. About a year later that i got word that season two was in the works and it would not be released simultaneously.

Andrew J. Klyde: 23:01

Season two, volume one. What do you think in the fall of two thousand ten, season two, volume two in the spring of two thousand eleven, and because the Sales for season one were not so great, season two didn't get the love that it should have. 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 nineteen, eighty eight, and i'll talk about that very briefly. It was state of the art nineteen eighty eight. 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 23:52

They 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 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, four hundred thirty one episodes, four hundred thirty three hours. So for many years, and ta later called republic just released enough episodes to show five days a week for a year, not have to repeat. So so the lost episodes came out, nineteen, eighty eight, nineteen, eighty nine, 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 two thousand ten i was told that this is what we're gonna use. So so the episodes were tweaked and they came out and they were okay.

Andrew J. Klyde: 25:01

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's certain was and wasn't a human cry, what this is terrible and how dare you do this, etc. Etc. Then season three was in the works and the same thing, the same treatment, just 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, please, release this the right way and go back to the film. That yes, i must have written something that impressed him, because he gave the order to cancel what was in the works, then 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 25:55

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 three, four, five came out pretty quick succession and 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 26:22

So The decision makers decided well, let's tweak the existing eighty, eighty, nine masters again.

Andrew J. Klyde: 26:29

And i was told this is what we're gonna do, so get ready. 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 have to do that? i guess it was a pretty good thing to do, because you could have said well, we're gonna do it anyway, adios, and we won't have any extras, will just have the episode. Some cells and as you know, that's more often the case with classic television shows and even feature films they it's not a given that they're gonna have extras. So i shot him and they scuttled that, which was nice. Then, about a year later maybe even longer, they finally came up with money. they actually renegotiate the terms of the agreement with nbc. I'm gonna make it more, more palatable for cbs to release the subsequent shows. So 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 Schedule, why it took so long.

TIM MILLARD: 27:31

Why not, along with this complete series box set on dvd, that cbs home entertainment is also releasing the complete seasons of twelve, thirteen and fourteen. And then they also went back and they're Re-releasing season two because of what you had said, that 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 gonna 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, so it's only been out for a little bit, those releases. But do you know what? how did that plan and go for releasing? Was it just a great promotion?

Andrew J. Klyde: 28:33

Well, you know, i touched upon Bonanza's international popularity and that was helpful in terms of getting these last seasons out. And I'll explain. Jeff Nymarovsky 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. 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 misspelled my name once in the packaging But because Australia and New Zealand specifically was so keen on getting Bonanza product, that enabled us to go forward at a time when we stumbled.

Andrew J. Klyde: 29:43

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 behind the scenes mover and shaker and benefactor. 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. 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 31:08

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, etc. Etc, and and 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 32:00

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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 33:23

Why? Because of Nemo Jeffrey Nemorovsky, 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 Arselich, 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 him to release in grand fashion everything that had not yet been released.

Andrew J. Klyde: 34:24

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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 35:00

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 pièce de résistance 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 36:07

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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 37:08

So many more months past again, i wrote one of my famous, 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. 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 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 38:12

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 Colombo. 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 okay. 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 eventually, eventually it was done.

TIM MILLARD: 39:04

That's a history lesson, just how complicated it is. And I know many people listen to this podcast, wonder why it takes so long to get some of these 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.

TIM MILLARD: 40:30

Now 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.

TIM MILLARD: 40:57

Is it really worth doing a box set? And 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 write that train as it goes out of the station and try to get some incremental income for the studios.

TIM MILLARD: 41:39

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?

Andrew J. Klyde: 41:59

You know I'll be happy to talk about in some detail, tim, and I thank you for bringing it up. But before we leave the arena of the episodes themselves, i just wanted to say quickly you would talk about the difficulty of putting out a series that's four seasons, let alone 14. I would also respectfully remind your viewers, who are pretty sophisticated and who know this already, i'm sure, that a show like Bonanza 34 episodes produced in a season Harry Mason, 36, 38, the honeymoon is 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 43:40

Post-haste 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, a terrific guy, very helpful on very many stages, and I had a wonderful conversation with him where he said 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 the budget translates into how much time you spend on restoring a particular episode. So, for those who don't know, very, 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 44:54

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, i've always tried to include as much as possible and I'm very proud of the fact that I would reach out to actors and actresses and without exception, they all had fond memories of their experiences on the show, and this is not just for bonanza but also for the high chaperral and gun smoke, although unfortunately bonanza had the same problem as gun smoke not really too many principles still around anymore, but for high chaperral we got Henry Garrow to do some commentary, so people who are no longer around did wonderful audio commentaries for me for bonanza, and there are online sources, motion picture television, archivists, associations, and you could pose questions and hopefully people will respond.

Andrew J. Klyde: 46:59

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 the 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 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 48:32

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 hard for it. 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 to marry the two. But again, a scavenger hunt, treasure hunt, is an absolutely appropriate metaphor to describe what I was doing.

Andrew J. Klyde: 49:17

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. And when Victor Jory got sick in the spring of 1953, fletcher Markle called his old friend Lorne Green, who coincidentally 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 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 Best Truman. So just wonderful stuff, but complicated and complex because there were songs throughout And, as you know, tim, songwriters are very, very, very expensive, so I was faced with cutting out the songs or paying money to get the song.

Andrew J. Klyde: 50:49

So, again then, i cannot thank Matt enough Matt Arsallidge 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 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 a stick, 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 52:15

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 For now Robert's show, it's the Trees Munsell who was on the show the day before. So 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 the cast were citing the alphabet on Sesame Street, michael Landon interviewed in Sweden Again, an example of popularity outside of the United States And trailers, scenes from next week.

Andrew J. Klyde: 53:10

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. Bonanza was canceled on a Monday and the crew was told that they would finish the last show the following Wednesday, two days later, and that's it. No more Bonanza and the director and the cinematographer all 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 the soundstage in Warner Brothers And Deer Mitch Vogel, who was a regular the last few years. He gave me loan me an audio reel-to-reel recording of that party which was given to all of the participants. So it's fantastic, rare stuff.

Andrew J. Klyde: 54:19

So you have Lorne Green and Michael Landon and David Dortor from 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 54:43

I was able to get in touch through my buddy, stan Taffel, 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 extensively 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. Of course he went off and talked about one of his favorite subjects, which was bonanza. So all we have was audio, but with a wonderful editor named Ginger bring them 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'm told.

TIM MILLARD: 55:37

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, but it looked like you have a nice list of extras just on on seasons 12, 13.

TIM MILLARD: 56:04

Oh sure, 15, including those audio commentaries with Series start, 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 complete list 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 disk 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 this that you didn't mention was this blooper gag reel. Now, is that have gags from all of the seasons, or various different seasons, i should say?

Andrew J. Klyde: 57:02

Well, 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, a very near the top of the list. People love that they're great.

Andrew J. Klyde: 57:15

Everybody loves bloopers and, for those that don't know, this is footage that was never meant to be seen outside of the production company. Often they would have Rap parties at the end of the season 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 landed 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, you know, i just couldn't find the others. I'm I know they were out there.

Andrew J. Klyde: 58:15

An Uber fan by the name of Mary Stone told me she swear she remembers as a little kid watching probably the Mike Douglas show, michael Landon being a guest and introducing bloopers, which which included Pernell 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 the awesome, the leprechauns and and Lauren 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 that we do have a lot of good stuff And and I was reminded also of the Chevrolet issue People have said to me or I've 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 disk. Why don't you have a Chevrolet commercial in every episode? Because, after all, every episode had Chevrolet commercials.

Andrew J. Klyde: 59:27

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 Beck's, 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 Crab series that aired and ceased production before Bonanza started, but for some inexplicable reason Trost 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 that changed the name so many times It used to be the Museum of.

Andrew J. Klyde: 1:00:23

Radio and Television 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 didn't have anymore. Sure.

TIM MILLARD: 1:01:00

But 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.

TIM MILLARD: 1:01:43

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 it frees you up to do that.

TIM MILLARD: 1:02:08

So that's just one of those little things 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 very specific 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, 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 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 1:03:06

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 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 said OK. And then we had a little more candid discussion and the graphic art people 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 later, day Western and sells fantastically, you know, 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 Western's category but in DVD and in Blu-ray. So I certainly had no objection to them emulating the marketing playbook 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 Victor Sanyang and Ding Russell and Ray Teal and Tim Matheson and Mitch Vogel They were on the set as well as, of course, lauren Green and Dan Blocker and Bernal Roberts and Michael Land.

Andrew J. Klyde: 1:05:24

And I 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 the course writer, director credits and air dates and production film dates, which I worked very hard to include with all the episodes. And 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 do. So you might need a magnifying glass to read them, but the information is there if you want it.

TIM MILLARD: 1:06:31

So it's a 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.

TIM MILLARD: 1:07:00

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. But I know one thing I tend to always do is watch the extras And that's because, as much as the, 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, the interviews, or to hear the commentary from a guy like Tim and get his perspective all these years later on that 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 1:07:51

So Tim says a, tim says a wonderful story. and just to give you a little appetizer, they were filming on location in northern California And Lauren Green was driving a Mercedes. and he walks by the Mercedes and it has a magnificent 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 Lauren Green's gold wing Mercedes. What am I going to do? So we 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 and the courage to face Lauren Green and tell him that he broke it. I will say, tim, if I could and I cannot thank you enough for giving me the opportunity to talk about the set, talk about the extras, and I'm with you. You know, 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 1:09:04

But I think people who are collectors by nature, who acquire things for their home library, should find this series appealing. you're a you're a western Enthusiast, it goes without saying. but answer is one of the great westerns of all time and 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 and true grit and and stagecoach, and for its cavalry trilogy, trilogy. You can add to that Gun smoke and bonanza and the rifleman in the big valley, in the high chaperral and and Yellowstone. And if you have a fondness for a classic movie, regardless of the genre, you're going to seek it out. And and if you're a fairly, i guess, open-minded or or or far reaching broad-minded kind of person, you're not going to limit yourself to a specific genre.

Andrew J. Klyde: 1:10:11

And I think the, the brilliance and the success of bonanza has to do with the fact that it's not easily categorizable. There's no question that gun smoke was the most successful traditional, solid western on television because it presented, week 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 tiered jerker the next week, farce the following week, an hour and out laugh riot like the younger brothers younger brother which you mentioned, with our buddy Stan Taffel doing a narration for, with, with the great Chuck McCann and Strother Martin as the featured guest stars. Even a fantasy show there were. 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 appeal.

Andrew J. Klyde: 1:11:17

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 it is as good as it was. There are certainly clickers per season in Bonanza and gun smoke and you name the greatest series and you're going to have clickers again because you're turning out 30 plus shows season. So if you're mindful of that, i would urge you to give Bonanza a try. whether whether it's science fiction, whether it's romantic comedy or romance, tier churkers or thrillers or action adventure, whatever suits your taste, you're going to find a bonanza episode that fits the bill and I think 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 1:12:19

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, 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. with Bonanza was in the negative.

Andrew J. Klyde: 1:12:50

Bonanza pioneered color television code act would present to David door toward its latest, faster film to capture color, because then the film was slower and you needed an enormous amount of candle candle power to light the sets. So Bonanza was a pioneer in that regard. in filming outdoors, many sequences were filmed on location like Tahoe, arizona, northern California. So it's 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.

TIM MILLARD: 1:13:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a terrific series, it's a classic, as you said, gunsmoak, bonanza, the 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 I, the stars of the Bonanza, i mean the love, michael Landon, lorne Green, i mean Michael Landon, of course went on to have an amazing career with the house, in the prairie and in everything you can't have little house on the prairie without Bonanza.

TIM MILLARD: 1:13:58

it's literally a secret Yeah and in both of those they focused on, you know, a lot of morality tales, really, yeah, and that, i think, resonates and that lasts in many ways because, yeah, 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.

Andrew J. Klyde: 1:14:30

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.

TIM MILLARD: 1:14:50

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. 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 wwwtheextrastv. You'll 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. 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.