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How “Bonanza” Broke New Ground in the Sixties
It was a socially progressive TV show that reinvented the Western
TV critics and viewers often acclaim the 1971 TV show, All in the Family, as the first to introduce such social issues as antisemitism, homosexuality and racism to a television audience. But more than ten years before All in the Family premiered, Bonanza was breaking new ground.
The Western was a very popular genre in the early days of television. Most Westerns presented similar views of the Old West: Typically, rowdy cowhands would get drunk, gunslinging bad guys would terrorize a town, Indians would be depicted as marauding savages, and sheriffs would keep the peace. There were always lots of gunfights between good guys and bad guys.
Many of these shows were aimed at children during the infamous Saturday morning time slot, but two of the most successful ones — Gunsmoke and Bonanza — were adult Westerns that were shown in the evening.
From the very beginning, Bonanza aimed to be innovative. The show was the brainchild of David Dortort, a writer/producer who already had achieved success working on a TV Western, The Restless Gun. He pitched NBC on something different — a series that would depict the “real” West. “The gunfighter played a small, inconsequential role in the story of the…
