‘Little House on the Prairie’ was shot with the 1970s in mind

On the season 2 episode of Little House on the Prairie called “The Talking Machine,” the quiet burg of Walnut Grove is blown away by the arrival of an Edison cylinder phonograph. To hear Melissa Gilbert tell it, the townsfolk would have grooved along and murmured “right on” if it played Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On.

In a recent appearance on Jennie Garth’s I Choose Me podcast, Gilbert explained how the famous Michael Landon-led show may have been set in the 1870s, but was actually tackling issues relevant to contemporary audiences of the 1970s. (We will now pause to allow you to scoop your brains up from off the floor following this revelation.)

“It’s wild to be a part of something that has that kind of longevity,” Gilbert said of the show that ran on NBC from 1974 to 1982, and is currently readying for a remake version on Netflix.

“It’s so beloved,” she continued. “People love that show. They love the stories that we told. They love the relevance of the stories that we told. Now people are looking back and going, ‘Oh, Little House. They told some pretty palpable stuff.’ 

Gilbert, who launched a clothing and lifestyle brand called Modern Prairie in 2022, added that the beloved series “was not exploitive. Michael Landon was consciously telling the stories of the 1970s through the lens of the 1870s. We were talking about civil rights and veterans coming home from the Civil War on our show, where [in our time] the veterans were coming home from the Vietnam War.”

She continued, “These were all topical and important stories, and unfortunately, so many are still things we need to discuss today. So that’s why I think Little House continues on.” 

With that Q.E.D. officially on record, she concluded by saying, “I mean, we, you know, did dumb, fluffy episodes where we just had fun, but it was pretty hard-hitting. We took on rape, arson, crib death, all kinds of horrible, horrible things on that show.”

Indeed — wasn’t there an episode where a school for the blind caught on fire and an infant died? Did we hallucinate that? It seems we did not.

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Netflix’s new version of Little House on the Prairie is currently in production in Manitoba, Canada. The cast includes Australian actor Luke Bracey as Pa Ingalls, October Road‘s Warren Christie as Mr. Edwards, and Jocko Sims as Dr. Tann, a character new to the show but a physician who Laura Ingalls wrote about in the original books.

You can listen to more of Melissa Gilbert’s chat with Jennie Garth by clicking play on the link below.