The bond between Melissa Gilbert and Michael Landon went far beyond their association on Little House on the Prairie.
She was immediately taken to the former Bonanza actor when Gilbert first met him. When Gilbert needed to shed a tear on set, Landon would exploit their bond to induce Gilbert to cry.
According to Melissa Gilbert's memoir, Prairie Tale, "the lines blurred between Mike and me" when their "special bond" with Michael Landon first developed. Gilbert and Landon were as close as Charles and Laura Ingalls were.
During the pilot's filming, they became close.Our unique connection "began on the pilot when we repeated the scene I'd read in my audition, the one after we've lost the dog while crossing the river and Laura apologizes to him for thinking he didn't care about Jack being lost," Gilbert recalled.
It was a precious father-daughter moment, and I felt it deeply. Thinking of Mike as my father wasn't at all out of the ordinary. Such a discussion with him is something I could readily picture.When Melissa Gilbert was unable to cry, Michael Landon encouraged emotion via their connection.
Laura Ingalls frequently cried when watching an episode of Little House on the Prairie. Gilbert's tears sometimes came easily, other times they were a little harder to access.
The Sylvester actor remembers finding it challenging to access her feelings when filming the "The Love of Johnny Johnson" episode.She wrote, "Putting myself in Laura's shoes didn't work." "Nor did recalling a dreadful recollection from the Dungeon. Mike then assisted me.Landon embraced Gilbert and led her away from the set so they could be by themselves.
Gilbert penned, "In the time it took him to walk fifteen to twenty feet, he got himself crying." "Then he turned to me and asked, "Do you know how much I love you?" as tears streamed down his face."
Gilbert shed tears like magic.
"My heart swelled with similar feelings, and a moment later tears poured from my eyes," she wrote. "Mike gave me a few seconds to cry before asking, "Are you ready? " I nodded as we began filming the scenario.Actor who played Laura Ingalls says that it was "bizarre manipulation."
Gilbert claims that Landon frequently "employed that technique" during filming.
"Looking back, yes, it was a bizarre manipulation, a kind of twisted way to get a kid to perform," she admitted in her essay.Gilbert was adopted soon after birth by actor/dancer Barbara Crane and comedian Paul Gilbert. She was troubled and full of questions about "the mythology of my existence."
Gilbert immediately regarded Landon as a father figure. And after Paul Gilbert's passing at the age of 11, he went even further.
Although Landon's trick to make Gilbert cry for Laura Ingalls tapped into the genuine hurt Gilbert felt for her birth parents, she ultimately believes that it was "therapeutic." It also produced outcomes.
There is no doubt that it was therapeutic; she said, "By crying, I was able to release some of my own emotions I kept bottled up."
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