Not to get all existential about it, but if every person is a combination of every experience that they’ve ever had, we should probably make our mission in life to become a better person with each experience.
Oddly enough, nowhere is this lesson more exemplary than in that of the cast of Bonanza…well, most of the cast of Bonanza. In many interviews, many cast members like Lorne Greene have actually credited the series with making them better people.
According to Greene’s childhood friend, Hy Soloway, Greene wasn’t too far away from being a real-life Ben Cartwright at a young age. “I watch him on TV every Sunday,” Soloway said to The Sacramento Bee. “And I see or imagine I see certain characteristics in Ben Cartwright that Lorne always had, a courtliness, a gentleness, a doggedness. He was a kind young man, impulsive and restless at times, but always responsible and reliable, a solid citizen.”
Once Greene had taken on the role of patriarch Ben Cartwright, however, the transformation was completed. David Dortort, creator of Bonanza, was able to witness Greene’s growth firsthand and was profoundly impressed. “It’s positively amazing to see how Lorne Greene has become Ben Cartwright in the past six years,” he said.
“For example, he and Dan Blocker and Mike London used to fool around on the set, actors kidding together. Now, both Blocker and Landon, when they have problems, approach Greene and talk to him as if he were really their father. He’s taken on, almost chameleon-like, the mantle of a Solomon.”
Dortort explained that Greene had become so much like his Cartwright counterpart that sometimes it was difficult to tell the two men apart. “He’s become a man whose opinion is worth listening to, a sage,” Dortort said. “It’s difficult for any of us to determine where Lorne Greene ends and Ben Cartwright begins.”