Bonanza - Legacy

Legacy

• The film Twin Town alludes to, or even parodies Bonanza. Some of the central characters are members of a Cartwright family, and live in home called Ponderosa.
• In the film Tin Men character actor Jackie Gayle hilariously provides his own take on Bonanza as a "ridiculous representation of the West' and the even more preposterous premise that the Cartwright sons could be brothers.
• In American Desperado, co-authored by Jon Roberts (née John Riccobono) and award-winning journalist/author Evan Wright, Roberts shares in Chapter 3 that he missed his "Sea Hunt and Bonanza, favorite TV shows", when his mother sent him to Palermo to live with his father, Nat Riccobono. (Roberts confides in the book that Riccobono - a mobster and illegal alien - had been deported to Sicily following the Apalachin Meeting.) After returning to the United States ("after a few weeks"), Roberts found that, "Watching Bonanza on TV was one thing I had in common with normal kids. But when I listened to how other people talked about Bonanza, I was amazed. My way of seeing it was different. To me the Cartwrights had the might and power, and they used it to take over all that land on their Ponderosa ranch. From the way I saw it, the Cartwrights were the same as my father and uncles in the Mafia. They understood force." Roberts further discloses that, upon his return to the United States: "Because of all the stories in the news about my family, Riccobono was a bad name. My mother told me I had to change my last name. I changed my name to John Pernell Roberts, after Pernell Roberts, who played the oldest son on Bonanza. I liked him best because he wore black. His hat, his vest, his gun belt were all black. He was the top enforcer for the family. He was the kind of guy I wanted to be. I wanted to steal my own Ponderosa when I grew up." Roberts repeats this explanation for his name change in other media, as well, such as the documentary Cocaine Cowboys.
• In the film The Last Shot, main character Steven Schats has two relatives who portray Bonanza characters as part of a tourist attraction; his brother Marshal is a generic villain and his father is Ben.
• In the episode of Full House entitled "Subterranean Graduation Blues," the theme song to Bonanza played repeatedly in different situations and for different reasons, which caused Jesse to hold his mouth in pain because his dad would always hum the song while drilling his teeth as a kid.