Rewriting History: Landon's Changes and Other Anachronistic Quirks

[DoughGirl]

Btw., if you've never read it, this website gives a fabulous overview of the show's inaccuracies.

Just read this. Loved the part about show Mary screaming like a banshee at adults, as in the Whisper Country episode. She so grated on me in this episode. "Are you going to call down the lightening?" Shut up!

I think that instinctively viewers of the show would know some things just weren't right (girls in their night attire in company, plastic hair combs, etc.) but most people, especially those not familiar with the books, just don't care all that much. They just want to be entertained. I hated the Cate Blanchett Elizabeth movies because of the historical innacuracies, but many people loved them.

[BatmanBeatles]

 

Just read this. Loved the part about show Mary screaming like a banshee at adults, as in the Whisper Country episode. She so grated on me in this episode. "Are you going to call down the lightening?" Shut up!

Real life Ma would have fainted hearing Mary scream like that.

[DoughGirl]

Real life Ma would have fainted hearing Mary scream like that.

Fake horrible crying from Mary too when she's telling Pa how she didn't like people telling lies about her. "She's going to be sorry she got my dander up".

[BatmanBeatles]

In RL both girls would never have acted that way. Even Laura who was considered a tomboy. She was mortified when two girl saw her catch a baseball on her first day of school.

 

In RL there was no way the Ingalls could afford to adopt all those orphans. They could barely feed their own kids.

[Ubiquitous]

The Real Life Mr. Edwards met them in Kansas so that part of the pilot was correct.  But, according to the books, at least, the family didn't see him again, but for one incident in De Smet where he showed up and left Mary some money without saying anything.  

 

Whether that incident ever actually happened or was added in for affect, I don't know.  But it is not true that Mr. Edwards was a consistent figure in their lives for years.

I must be conflating the shows and books b/c I remember them frequently bumping into Mr Edwards.

[moonb]

I thought book Mr. Edwards was another mix of a couple different characters the Ingalls family came across over the years, a la book Nellie Oleson. I could be wrong, though. I thought the only true part of the story was his meeting the Ingalls in Kansas.

[BatmanBeatles]

It used to bug me that Jack was a sheep dog rather than a bull dog.

[Jamoche]

From the article:

 

I loved the show madly when I was in 4th grade. But about that time, I bought my first of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, and quickly saw what a muddle the TV show was…

 

 

Second grade, but yeah, that was my experience too. I'd finished the books by the time the first season ended and never watched it again - from reading this forum, it's obvious I missed the chance to learn to snark at a very young age :)

[juneday]

I really love LHOTP but it makes it a little bit more fun to pick out inaccuracies every once in a while, doesn't it? :P :)

**Mary never almost got her sight back in real life like she did on the show. (The Enchanted Cottage.)

**Real life Almonzo and Laura were poor as dirt when they first got married, in debt, etc. Laura and Manly lived in that nice big white house that was Eliza Jane's when they first got married. (They had problems but not as many as in The First Four Years.)

**Besides Albert being their cousin and not their brother, I'm pretty sure he never dated a girl named Sylvia who got raped by the town blacksmith (scary episode btw).

There's some, :)

[scowl]

I bought the first season on Blu-ray ($20 for 24 razor sharp episodes with incredible color!). I haven't read the books but I've read a lot about the Oregon trail, mainly from our PNW hero Ezra Meeker who did a brilliant job of documenting his family's journeys around the same time. Watching the pilot/movie I've come across some nitpicky things that I don't think are accurate.

 

• People didn't ride in wagons for long distances. They carried supplies, lots of them. People even children walked outside of the wagon for hundreds of miles, through the rain and the snow and even the hot sun. No person would ever want to ride more than a mile in one of those. Just watching the wagon bounce and shake during the credits would make anyone jump out of the thing after a mile.
• I don't think they used horses to pull wagons. Meeker was very clear about this: never use horses to pull wagons through uncivilized areas. They need good food and they're not that strong. They used mules or oxen or even cows because they can eat anything. Meeker wrote more about his beloved mule when it died than when family members died.
• I love how they decide to start building their Little House on the Prairie when there isn't a tree in sight. Logs just appear out of nowhere! Didn't they build sod houses on prairies, at least until they could get decent lumber? And the huge stable which Pa put up in a couple of days has a high rock foundation!
• I love how Pa was appropriately unemotional when they lose Jack, but then anachronistically emotional when Jack appears. Then pouring his heart out to his little daughter! That's one of the running goofs of the series.
• Shovels didn't yet have a place to push them into the dirt with your foot. It took us hundreds of years to think of that.
• The "wolves" chasing Pa's horse would have given up after 500 feet of running.
• Jack could chew through that rope they regularly tied him up with in about fifteen seconds.

 

The details in the Ingles' house in Plum Creek are fantastic. The simple random-width board-and-batten siding, the unornamented window casing and the simple beveled window stiles (without glazing putty) are all the most inexpensive items at the time. I love how the plaster just roughly ends above Carrie's bed. Plaster was expensive! It make sense that they just ran out decided to plaster the rest of the lath when they could afford more. I don't know why that wasn't on the list when they were preparing to spend the profits from Pa's first harvest. The wind blowing that wall in the winter couldn't have been fun for Carrie.

 

And upstairs must have been even worse. Not only is there no plaster, there's not even lath for plaster. Another smalll detail that surprised me is how they show the loose wood shingle roof from the upstairs loft. Even though the house was on a set, they shined "sunlight" onto the outside of the roof to show just how loose a loose-shingled roof was. Laura and Mary didn't even need a window up there! Just imagine those shingles scooping the cold Minnesota winds and sending them right down into the loft. Plus the wind blasting through the siding.

 

And paint? They correctly left everything unpainted except the best, most public areas. Lead and linseed oil were expensive and painting with the crude tools (brushes weren't much better than brooms) was not a simple task. Even if you could apply it well, exterior paint would fail just in three or four years.

 

The house has one touch of elegance: the front door has a porcelain door knob.

[Maherjunkie]

I don't know how Ma could create more children in peace with the open exposure of their bedroom door.

[Pepper the Cat]

I don't know how Ma could create more children in peace with the open exposure of their bedroom door.

Maybe that was why she was so eager to get them off to school!

[scowl]

Maybe that was why she was so eager to get them off to school!

And maybe that's why little Carrie always had a funny look on her face. The things she saw after her sisters went off to school!

[BatmanBeatles]

It must have struck her dumb as well.

[scowl]

As I'm finishing the first season, the episode "Money Crop" is confusing. Corn is introduced as a new, exotic and promising replacement to the wheat all the farmers are growing (They all grew the same stuff? No wonder they hated each other!). When newcomer Joseph Coulter reveals this "corn" to the farmers, they're amazed that it's so much larger than "Injun corn" they remembered. They couldn't wait to cook it and see how it tasted.

 

But the Ingalls had been eating corn on the cob in every previous episode.

 

Also, no smart farmer would have completely switched crops in one season much less everyone in the area. Even as Ezra Meeker was getting rich from growing hops here in the PNW, it never became his only crop. This was a wise decision because the local insect life eventually discovered it and destroyed it. It seems like Walnut Grove has some of the dumbest people of the 19th century.

[scowl]

Just another very small anachronism: nails. The box nails with the round flat heads that we all know and see Pa hammering into things arrived in the 20th century. Before that we had cut nails and they were expensive. Even my sister's house built in 1890 had nothing but cut iron nails. They were very difficult to pull out.

[Maherjunkie]

As were teeth.

[BatmanBeatles]

What about birthday candles? I can't imagine a lower middle class person buying candles to use only once.

[Dobian]

I can't believe believe this show has its own board when Breaking Bad doesn't.  That said, the two things I remember most about this show are Nellie Oleson being like Eddie Haskell in drag, and Michael Landon with his perfectly permed and feathered hair...in the 1800s.  That actually was kind of awesome, lol.

[FormerMod-a1]

The Breaking Bad forum is right here.

[Dobian]

The Breaking Bad forum is right here.

Yay, wonder why it never appears in my browser, just missing it I guess.

Edited October 27, 2014 by Dobian

[stopeslite]

Mr. Edwards makes a third appearance of sorts in Silver Lake - when Charles is telling the family about how he got his land claim, he says that there was a scuffle at the main county office but that he was saved by the sudden appearance of Mr. Edwards, who attacked the men trying to attack Charles and created enough of a distraction that Charles could run in and file the paperwork. I always found that story to be a bit sketchy.

[Kat From Jersey]

I always thought that it was interesting that Laura always considered Mary prettier than herself. In photos of the real Ingalls family Laura was clearly the prettiest of the sisters.

 

I always wondered about that myself, since it's obvious that real-life Laura was the prettiest in the family!  Grace also grew up to be quite a beauty as well, judging from family picture of the time.  But she unfortunately got rather large as an adult.

[camom]

It's a silly thing, really, but the "Ma cuts her leg off" episode bugs me because, well, wouldn't her legs have been quite hairy?  Women of that day weren't shaving their legs.

[PrairieSmoke]

It's a silly thing, really, but the "Ma cuts her leg off" episode bugs me because, well, wouldn't her legs have been quite hairy?  Women of that day weren't shaving their legs.

Excellent point. Yeah, too much of an ewwwww factor for Ma to have 19th century hairy legs.

 

Anybody notice in that episode, after Charles found Ma and Doc Baker was tending to her and Reverand Alden was holding Carrie in the rocking chair, looking absolutely shell shocked at what happened. Charles gives him a look like he's really pissed at him! The only person who knew Caroline was hurt was Doc Baker, and he was at that other farm with a broken wheel on his buggy. They probably didn't cross paths, so Rev Alden had no idea Caroline was injured.

[Ilovemylabs]

It's a silly thing, really, but the "Ma cuts her leg off" episode bugs me because, well, wouldn't her legs have been quite hairy?  Women of that day weren't shaving their legs.

That episode was almost an exact copy of a Bonanza episode in which Little Joe (Landon) almost cut his leg off.  I recognized it right away as I was a big Bonanza fan way back when.  Wonder if ML wrote the original and then reworked it for LHOTP?

[MichaelaRae]

when Charles is telling the family about how he got his land claim, he says that there was a scuffle at the main county office but that he was saved by the sudden appearance of Mr. Edwards, who attacked the men trying to attack Charles and created enough of a distraction that Charles could run in and file the paperwork. I always found that story to be a bit sketchy.

 

As an adult, and "thanks" to the Internet, I have come to realize that most of what Charles Ingalls did was "sketchy." 

 

I always wondered about that myself, since it's obvious that real-life Laura was the prettiest in the family!  Grace also grew up to be quite a beauty as well, judging from family picture of the time.  But she unfortunately got rather large as an adult.

 

I agree that Laura was the prettiest, but then again, standards of beauty change from era to era. When you look at portraits from the 18th, 19th century of people who were supposed to be the absolute gold standard of attractiveness, they are often...not winning any beauty awards today, shall we say. 

[Fosca]

RL Almanzo Wilder was only about 5'4" tall.

 

I visited the Wilder House and Museum in Mansfield, MO a few years back, and noticed that everything in the house was a bit lower than expected.  When Almanzo built it, he scaled it for both himself and Laura (who was like 4'10", I think).  Being 5'3" myself, I liked that!

[Goshengir1]

How about the Ingalls go camping episode? Yeah, lets go sleep outdoors in a tent and cook over a campfire because it will be a chance to leave all this boring, modern life behind and get back to nature! For fun! And they travel for about an hour on the Minnesota prairie to get to these gorgeous, majestic mountains.

[Maherjunkie]

IS it the one with Nellie almost drowning?

[BatmanBeatles]

How about the Ingalls go camping episode? Yeah, lets go sleep outdoors in a tent and cook over a campfire because it will be a chance to leave all this boring, modern life behind and get back to nature! For fun! And they travel for about an hour on the Minnesota prairie to get to these gorgeous, majestic mountains.

 

Which is exactly what they did before Pa built their house. So what did they do for fun then?

[scowl]

Which is exactly what they did before Pa built their house. So what did they do for fun then?

 

They went to church and sang "Bringing in the Christian Soldiers". 

[killer.noona]

The episodes that have bugged me most recently are the ones with Charles and Caroline's high school reunion and the kids dressing up as Indians for Halloween. Reunions in the 1880s? Everyone knows that book Ma didn't like the Indians but TV Ma is fine with (stereotypical) face paint, buckskin, and feathers. Come on.

[BatmanBeatles]

TV Ma was also fine with hiding Indian refugees. She also had no problem with befriending a white woman who had a child with an Indian.

[Louise Vanessa]

Yes but some group looking for cheap headlines would have complained if they'd shown the reality of book Ma's attitudes and not shown white people anachronistically supporting the Indians. It's like those WWII movies where no one smokes, no one says "Jap" and men use obscene language in front of women (the last of which would have got them a punch to the jaw in real life).

[scowl]

I think Ma vs. the Indians was Michael Landon making the show more politically correct in later seasons. From what I've read the first LHOTP TV movie/pilot followed the book more closely and included the Ingalls's fear of being attacked by natives.

 

And barely related: I kind of miss the 1970's practice of testing a series' potential by airing the pilot as a "TV movie special". I loved the Six Million Dollar Man's TV movie and I still remember being excited when I heard they were going to turn it into a series.

[VCRTracking]

I watched the TV movie pilot of Emergency! "The Wedsworth-Townsend Act". It was directed by producer Jack Webb, and it shows. The characters are talking in that same clipped, monotone style as Joe Friday on Dragnet, giving these long speeches about the importance of paramedics. They loosened up a lot in the series.