NBC’s Bonanza was a major success that still has a huge fan base today. The 14-season American Western featured fan-favorite actors like Michael Landon, Pernell Roberts, and Lorne Greene as members of the Cartwright family. It certainly helped many of the actors achieve even more success after the series ended. So, how much did the Bonanza cast make her episode?
How long did ‘Bonanza’ run? It almost didn’t make it beyond season 1
Bonanza ran from September 1959 to January 1973. In total, the NBC series had 432 episodes, and it stands as the network’s longest-running Western and one of the longest-running live-action series ever to hit TV.
Fans of the series can’t imagine the show barely making it when it first began. But, according to MeTV, the show, which centered on the Cartwright family, almost didn’t survive after its first season. Bonanza aired during the same time slot as Perry Mason, and it wasn’t one of the top 30 television shows between 1959 and 1960.
However, NBC decided to hold on to Bonanza because it was one of the first shows the network ever broadcast in color. Once the show switched time slots after its second season, the ratings soared. It later became the No. 1 show between 1964 and 1967.
Bonanza survived the initial purge of Western TV shows, but NBC eventually canceled the series in 1973. Gunsmoke outlasted Bonanza by two years before its eventual cancellation in 1975.
How much money did the cast members make per episode?
The Bonanza cast was stacked with notable talent. Michael Landon played Little Joe Cartwright, Dan Blocker played Eric “Hoss” Cartwright, Pernell Roberts played Adam Cartwright, and Lorne Greene played Ben Cartwright. According to IMDb, Blocker, Greene, Landon, and Roberts were paid upwards of $10,000 per episode by the time Roberts left in season 6.
Landon talked about how Roberts leaving the series made the other actors richer. “After he left, we took one leaf out of the dining room table and we all made more money because we split the take three ways instead of four,” Landon said.
In addition to their show salaries, the stars made even more money thanks to Bonanza merchandise and other business ventures, like the Bonanza steakhouse chain that Blocker started in 1963.
Adam Cartwright actor Pernell Roberts left ‘Bonanza’ and called his experience ‘very unpleasant’
While Pernell Roberts made a healthy living thanks to joining the Bonanza cast, he notoriously left the show after hating his experience.
“OK, so I threw away a million bucks. So what?” Roberts reportedly said about leaving the series. “All I cared about was my emotional well-being. That job was very unpleasant, and I never regretted leaving.”
Pernell felt particularly disappointed by the show’s scripts and the direction that the show creators took his character, Adam Cartwright.
“I was in the series for six years. I fought with the powers about the scripts, character development, and other things,” he told the Washington Post, according to Outsider. “It got so I was upset the minute I arrived for work. That’s no way to live. … I don’t have the psychological stamina to last under artistic compromises over a prolonged period of time. I get hostile and vindictive. It wears me down.”