January 16, 1973…”Bonanza” & The Fake Mountain Come To An End

January 16, 1973…”Bonanza” & The Fake Mountain Come To An End

First, the “Bonanza” part of the story:

From September 12, 1959, until January 16, 1973 the men from The Ponderosa rode into our homes every week, but is wasn’t always a sooth ride. Initially the show aired opposite CBS blockbuster “Perry Mason” and the ratings were so bad that NBC wanted to kill the show, but RCA had a different idea.

“Bonanza” was one of the first series to be filmed in color and looked great on RCA’s big color sets, so they took over as the primary sponsor.

By 1961, ‘Bonanza’ was the number two show and stayed in the top three till 1970 and was number one from ’64 till ’67. By 1970, Bonanza was the first series to appear in the Top Five list for nine consecutive seasons (a record that would stand for many years) and thus established itself as the single biggest hit television series of the 1960s. Bonanza remained high on the Nielsen ratings until 1971, when it finally fell out of the Top Ten.

Now, about that “mountain” behind Virginia City…

The “mountain” at the rear of the Paramount Studios Western Street was actually constructed of a chicken-wire framework covered over by plaster and was immobile. I have highlighted in yellow where I think it was.

In March of 1959, ‘Bonanza’ producer David Dortort selected Paramount Studios in Hollywood to film the series. They had the largest sound stages and a good western street which was built for ‘Whispering Smith’ in 1947 starring Alan Ladd.

The reason the fake mountain was erected was to hide a high peaked construction mill built by Desilu in 1957. Another painted backdrop was located near the Western Street, for other shots, of a blue sky, with clouds. In the large annotated photo from 1975, you can see the “sky” behind the water set…the same one used in the parting of the waters in “The Ten Commandments”.

The Western Street was much smaller than the impressions we got from seeing it on “Bonanza” as wide-angle camera lenses made it appear much larger than in real-life. The local pigeons would frequently land and perch atop the fake mountain, shattering the illusion of distance and filming would be stopped until one of the crew members scared them away.

Other TV series made at the Western Street for exterior filming while “Bonanza” was being made there were “Have Gun-Will Travel”, “Branded”, and “The Guns of Will Sonnet”.

In 1979, a demolition team demolished the Western Street for an executive parking lot. The only building that was saved was the barn which was first seen in Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Squaw Man” the first feature film ever made in 1914. On the “Bonanza” series it is infrequently seen as the freight station. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

By the way, the last photo here shows Jerry Lewis filming “The Errand Boy” on this set.

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