more on the Dream Bowl from a 1967 TV Guide article on Michael Landon, in
which the venue is indeed described as a bowling alley:
http://bonanza1.com/library/tvguide4.htm
TV Guide July 22, 1967
HE PLAYS COWBOYS AND INDIANS FOR $13,000 A WEEK
After eight years as Little Joe, Michael Landon is a bit
bored by the whole game -except for the money
BY RICHARD WARREN LEWIS
The news last March caught the television industry completely
by surprise. Mighty Bonanza, the show that had
dominated the Nielsen ratings like none other in a decade,
had slumped to 15th position in the biweekly popularity poll,
its lowest ranking in years. There were nervous looks in the
Paramount Pictures commissary. The bewildered producer
of the series shook his head. Columnists were already
anxiously listening for even the faintest soundings of the death
knell.
Michael Landon couldn't care less. The deeply tanned actor
sat naked in a boxlike cubicle
near the Bonanza set, enjoying his daily sauna bath. Next
season would be his ninth time
around as Little Joe Cartwright, the baby-faced heart-throb
of the Ponderosa. He would
be earning an estimated $13,000 an episode, making him one of
the most highly paid actors
in a series. Even if Bonanza suddenly expired---a remote
possibility at best- Landon could
well afford his insouciance. Investments had multiplied his
total worth well into the
millions.
The heat rose to 150 degrees as Landon reclined on a wooden
slat inside the bathhouse.
"For nearly one-third of my life, I've been doing this same
show," he observed, wiping the
moisture dripping from his chin. "That's a long time, when
you stop and think about it. To
get very excited about playing cowboys and Indians at my age
is ridiculous."
When producer David Dortort first tapped him as the show's
$500-a-week juvenile lead back in 1959, the 22-
year-old Landon was just another name in the phone book. In
fact, he had appropriated his stage name from the Los
Angeles central telephone directory. Somehow it seemed more
appropriate on a marquee than his real handle, Eugene
Orowitz.
At the time, Landon probably was best remembered for a
sensitive portrayal of the title role in "I Was a Teen-age
Werewolf." Collectors of trivia will attest that he sank his
teeth into the throats of three nubile young lovelies and a
dog who once stood in for Rin Tin Tin, before the film
mercifully came to a halt. Between sporadic acting jobs, Landon
landed such eclectic employment as heating up glue in a
ribbon factory and running a machine that sealed hot cans of
Campbell's tomato soup.
In the sauna, Landon blotted the
perspiration from his forehead with a towel. Still a
youthful-looking 30, he had in recent
years become the vice president of the Eon Corporation, a
California manufacturer of automobile
seat belts. He was one- third owner of the Merrill
Produce Corporation, an Oregon
potato-packing plant. His widespread real-estate holdings
included an 11 story condominium
apartment development in Laguna Beach, Cal.; an office building
in downtown Los Angeles; and shares in a
10,000-acre ranch near San Francisco. Along with
co-stars Dan Blocker and Lorne Greene,
he purchased a half-mile of Malibu beach-front, for
nearly $2,000,000.
Landon had also found time to parlay his
tremulous baritone, boyish smile and winning personality
into an attraction which grosses him
nearly $175,000 annually on the lucrative
personal-appearance circuit. "Mike knows
he can't sing," says Blocker, who served as best man
at Landon's second marriage five years
ago. "He's flat. He's off-key. Michael's not kidding
himself. But if those jerks'll pay for
it, he'll sing."
The enterprising actor has traded his
quick smile for the quick buck at rodeos and horse shows
from Vineland, N.J., to Pecatonica,
Ill., to Malmo, Sweden, to the Dream Bowl, a bowling alley in
Vallejo, Cal. On rigorous weekend
journeys to such picturesque locales, he has worked with
fevers as high as 103 degrees, fainted
on stage and passed out in several planes. Foul weather has
stranded him thousands of miles from
home, compelling him to charter planes (a breach of his
contract), hop trains and ride buses in
order to return to Hollywood in time for Bonanza shooting
schedules.
"I am so deeply invested," Landon admitted, as he walked from
the steam room to a shower, 'that I have to work in
order to keep the money coming in. I must keep investing to
take advantage of lower tax rates on long-term capital
gains."
Eight years before, his abiding concern was an undernourished
physique. During Bonanza's initial season, Landon
weighed a puny 132 pounds. He wore a heavy sweatshirt beneath
his costume of twill and corduroy so as to appear more
formidable around the chest and shoulders. Workouts involving
push-ups, chin-ups, punching bags and lifting weights
built him up so he could discard the padding.
Today Landon weighs in at a muscular 148 pounds. The only
padding he requires is the foam-rubber cushions he attaches
to his knees and elbows for fight scenes. He relishes the
opportunityr to leap from elevations onto galloping horses, to
monkey-flip adversaries over his head, to -roll down
hillsides and to wrestle in the dust. These chores are normally the
well-paid specialty of skilled doubles. But Landon prefers to
plot his own stunts.
On a nine-day tour of 18 Swedish cities several years ago,
Landon's enthusiasm worked against him. His realistic
repertory in a series of stage shows included a fistfight, a
sword fight and a barroom brawl in which he was whacked
over the head with a breakaway whisky bottle. The dueling
sequence became a little too realistic when his opponent's
sword skewered Landon's right hand, just below the wrist. "I
really started to bleed," Landon remembers. "The blood
was running down the microphone. After that, everybody in the
first five or six rows was convinced that everything was
on the level. I wound up with a broken wrist."
Another violent routine required Landon to take a head butt
in the stomach from his close friend, stunt- man Bobby
Miles. One night he and Miles got their signals crossed. They
collided head-on and both sprawled to the stage. Miles
was knocked cold. Landon suffered dizzy spells.
Until recently, nevertheless, Landon willingly performed his
Bonanza stunt work free-of charge, although his
participation in such activities was not specified in his
contract. Then he and producer Dortort began 'wrangling over
salaries Landon felt were due a group of musicians he had
taken on a personal-appearance tour. When management
continued to refuse payment, Landon cited his contract and
demanded compensation for his stunts. As he stood beneath
the shower, making certain to keep his shaggy hair dry, he
recalled completing a simple fight scene earlier in the day.
The cameraman needed two takes to get it right. Landon
promised that he would send Dortort a bill for $175.
There have been additional clashes with the front office over
scripts Landon has written for the show. To relieve the
tedium of waiting for his scenes to be filmed, the actor
characteristically sits off-camera blocking out scenes for
future episodes in long-hand on a lined tablet. Seven of his
scripts have been accepted for shooting and his writing
price has soared to $2750 a show. These extracurricular
pursuits, at the same time, have prompted an unusual number
of executiv.e memoranda.
In one script, Landon wrote a line of dialog which read:
"God, please help me!" The continuity acceptance department
balked. They insisted that "God" be replaced by "Lord," and
circulated an advisory which cautioned: "Be sure that the
word 'God' is always used in a reverent manner by Ben
[Cartwright] and Joe.- It was like telling the Ecumenical Council
to remember to say good-by to the Pope.
"It's a Lot of Bull," a Landon comedy script which will be
aired as a Bonanza episode next season, also caused
considerable upper-echelon concern. The story line features a
300- pound Indian girl, obviously a ploy for Blocker.
"Continuity felt it was inconceivable that Hoss and Joe could
speak to the Indians, since the Indians wouldn't
understand English," Landon complained on the way to the
masseur.
"How many years has Hollywood been making pictures where
cowboys and Indians speak to each other in English? We
certainly should be able to take this much dramatic license.
You begin to get the feeling that somebody's just trying to
think of something to write down, so they can send a
memorandum." Landon went on to mention his only recurrent
concern--growing old in the
Little Joe part. "At the beginning of the show I was supposed
to be playing a 17-year-old boy,' he recalled. 'I'm
getting gray already. How much of a youthful image can I keep
creating?"
His wife, a former model instructor who customarily trims
Landon's hair with thinning scissors, offered one answer to
that paradox at her husband's 30th birthday party last Oct.
31. As a gag, she gave him a can of hair coloring for his
prematurely gray tresses. Did Landon use the rinse? Not even
his fans know for sure.
The End
Posted to Bonanza...The Library February 22, 1999
-----Original Message-----
From: Dwight Holmes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2001 11:37 AM
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: 2/22/68
Reflecting on the fact the Tahoe shows were in a bowling alley (Kings Beach
Bowl, Kings Beach Lake Tahoe, CA / February 23 & 24, 1968), it suddenly
occurs
to me -- am i the last to know?? -- that quite likely the Dream Bowl in
Vallejo
(2/21 & 22/69) was not a surreal amphitheater, but, alas, a bowling alley??
Can anyone confirm or deny?
dwight
