Former “Little House on the Prairie” cast members recalled fainting and other difficulties while filming the series in Simi Valley, California, describing the heat during a podcast discussion hosted by fellow cast member Patrick Labyorteaux.
Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson, said her first day began in confusion because she had not realized she was expected to arrive with her character’s curled hairstyle. After calls and a hurried effort to curl her hair, she said, she went to the location and fainted.
Arngrim later described the heat as so severe that cast and crew came to associate the start of summer with her collapsing. She said she had warned the director that she felt faint, then lost consciousness. According to her account, child actor Sean Penn also passed out and did not return to work that day. Arngrim said the incident helped others recognize that the heat, rather than an issue specific to her, was a factor.
The cast also discussed filming scenes at sporting events, which Arngrim said could require sitting in bleachers for hours while the crew filmed audience reactions. She recalled that actor Charlotte Stewart, who played teacher Eva Beadle Simms, fainted while seated and remained upright, leaving others unaware she had lost consciousness.
Dean Butler, who played Almanzo Wilder, said performers had to find their own ways to cope with the conditions. He noted that women’s period costumes included dresses, petticoats and stockings, and sometimes wigs, while the men wore shirts, trousers and boots.
Pamela Roylance recalled that Michael Landon, the show’s star and an executive producer, writer and director, allowed her to film a scene with her blouse open and sleeves rolled up because of the heat. Roylance said Stan Ivar, who played her husband, also gave her a small fan that she could secure around her leg beneath her skirt.
Jennifer Donati, who played infant Rose Wilder alongside her twin sister, joked that she had been spared the discomfort and was the most pampered cast member because the adults kept her from getting hot. The podcast conversation also included Tracy and Victor French, children of the late actor Victor French.
“Little House on the Prairie” was a Western family drama based loosely on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s semi-autobiographical books. The story follows the Ingalls family in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the late 19th century. Landon played family patriarch Charles Ingalls; Karen Grassle played Caroline, and Melissa Gilbert portrayed Laura. NBC premiered the series in 1974. It ran for nine seasons, ending in 1983, and was followed by three television movies.
