The forged and crew of Little Home on the Prairie grew to become a household whereas filming 9 seasons of the basic collection. Filming in distant places, they typically solely had one another. Michael Landon was identified for taking part in pranks on the forged. One Halloween, he enlisted manufacturing supervisor Kent McCray to provide the children in the forged a great scare.
Melissa Gilbert, who performed Laura Ingalls on Little Home on the Prairie, shared the story of Landon and McCray’s Halloween prank. On the April 18 episode of her Gilbert & Busfield podcast, Gilbert advised her husband, Timothy Busfield, and listeners about the large scare.
Michael Landon inspired the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ children to exit for Halloween
Little Home on the Prairie filmed many scenes on location in Sonora, California. Pink Hills Film Ranch was one in all the present’s customary places, and the forged and crew stayed at a motel. There weren’t homes round for the younger forged to go trick or treating, however the manufacturing nonetheless gave the children a Halloween expertise. Then Landon had one other thought.
“This Halloween we did our trick or treating in the motel,” Gilbert stated. “Behind the motel in Sonora was this actually outdated graveyard on a hill with dilapidated, crumbling tombstones. So after we went to Michael’s room, he stated, ‘You guys should go up to the graveyard in the dark on Halloween. That would be really scary.’ And I used to be like, ‘Yeah, okay, let’s go! Come on!’
Michael Landon ready to scare the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ children
Gilbert described her Halloween tour. It gave the impression of a wonderfully quaint Little Home on the Prairie episode. It seems like it will have been a wonderfully spooky Halloween deal with even with out Landon’s further scare, however we’ll get to that.
“So we all went trudging up the hill towards the graveyard,” Gilbert stated. “As we got closer to it, you could start to see in the moonlight, it was really eerie. You could see the graves and the gravestones and all the adults stayed back watching because they knew what was going to happen.”
Kent McCray was Michael Landon’s henchman
Gilbert caught onto the ruse earlier than her costars did. She would have been older than Sidney and Rachel Lindsay Greenbush. Gilbert additionally acknowledged the crew member.
“We’re walking up towards these things and from behind one of the tombstones rose this huge white ghost going ‘Ooooooooh,’” Gilbert stated. “The ghost raised his arms and the kids started running, I mean like so fast some of them by me but I kind of kept going. I saw this stomach under the sheet. The sheet came up and there was this big Tummy. Kent McCray had a big tummy back then. It was McCray.”
Despite the fact that she acknowledged him, McCray nonetheless acquired Gilbert. She admits that recognizing McCray didn’t spoil the scare, or the enjoyable. This truly sounds moderately gentle in comparison with Landon’s pranks involving stay frogs and fireplace.
“Michael sent us up there to get scared,” Gilbert stated. “I still, even though I knew it was him, it was a combination of scared but I knew it wasn’t real but I still was. So I turned and ran. I got about three steps and went, ‘Wait, that was Kent.’ Then I just fell laughing.”
Supply: Gilbert & Busfield podcast