Oh wow that is really cool info. I love hearing this kind of stuff about the show.

Very interesting stuff! Thanks, Alex.

It's always fun to hear about all the behind the scenes stuff. I only wish there had been more pictures taken.

Thanks for the info! I actually only knew the second trivia you mentioned, about Melissa Gilbert being allergic to the bees. She must have been scared to death!

Vanesa.

• Melissa Gilbert found out she won the role of Laura Ingalls while standing in the lunch line at school from Michael Landon's daughter Leslie. Leslie got grounded for doing it.

great info thanks for putting it on

I have a Trivia for ya--- What was the name of Rev. Alden:'s Horse???
thanks for playing its a lot of fun.

Jehoshaphat

Season 2 trivia...

• In this episode, Mary is ridiculed by her classmates when she starts wearing glasses. In real life, Melissa Sue Anderson (Mary)'s son Griffin had to get glasses as a child, although he didn't experience the teasing that his mother's character did on Little House. Still, in a 2005 interview, Anderson said that she wants Griffin to view this episode, because she wants him to understand how getting glasses can be difficult for some kids, and she hopes it will help him see why it is never okay to join in on such teasing.
  
  
• When Mr. Mumford throws his first practice pitch, it hits Mr. Edwards square in the face and knocks him down. In reality, a baseball going at that speed would have probably killed him--sadly, it has happened to other people before. Mr. Edwards, however, didn't even get so much as a measly bruise!
  
  
• Michael Landon authored the "Remember Me" poem that was read at Julia's funeral. Years later, at Landon's own funeral, Melissa Gilbert (Laura) read the poem out loud.
  
  
• This is absolutely the only Little House episode where the Oleson family is seen as dirt poor, and it is only in Laura's dreams! Also, in these dream scenes, we see the Ingalls family filthy rich, walking around Walnut Grove in gorgeous, fancy white clothing that is topped by nothing else that the family wears in the entire series, even when they've got their Sunday best on.
  
  
• Mr. Hanson tells Charles that the school board unanimously agreed to finance Mary's trip for the math competition. Mrs. Oleson was on the school board, and it's surprising that she voted "yes" for this decision, especially since she really gave the Ingalls family a hard time with most things.
  
  
• Major Goof: When Mary tells Miss Beadle she is forfeiting her spot at the math competition, and Laura is waiting for her in the back of the room, notice the girls' clothes. Mary has on a solid purple dress, and Laura is wearing a greenish, flowered calico. When they are walking home, though, Mary suddenly has on a blue pinafore over her dress. Then, when Laura runs back to the school suddenly and gets back into town, screaming Miss Beadle's name, she is wearing a white pinafore that she didn't have in the previous scene a few seconds earlier!
  
  
• This is the first episode where Laura and Mary outwardly express their jealousy for one another. In a 2005 interview, Melissa Sue Anderson (Mary) admitted that there was a little bit of rivalry between her and Melissa Gilbert on the show, but only when it came to competition over who had more to do on-screen at the given time. Laura was always the center of the series from the very beginning, and Anderson acknowledged that there was a bit of rivalry about that--but then on the other hand, as Mary grew up, went blind and became an adult, her character had more mature material to work with, whereas Melissa Gilbert's character remained childlike for a couple more years.
  
  
• This is the first time Mary expresses an emotion that is probably obvious to many viewers as they watch the show: Charles' apparent favoritism toward Laura, who is so much like him in many ways. Even though it isn't true, some fans may feel for Mary as she talks about this.
  
  
• When Nellie is tormenting Laura, Mary says to her, "You say that again, and I'll slap your face!" Laura said the exact same line to Christy Kennedy in Season 1's The Voice of Tinker Jones, when the two girls were arguing about their fathers.
  
  
• Charles' corn crop ("higher than your head") is destroyed by a tornado. It seems that he has continued to plant corn (as suggested in Season 1, "Money Crop"), rather than switch back to the wheat he first planted (such as in the episode "100 Mile Walk").
  
  
• Mary and John Jr express their romantic feelings in this episode, when the character of Mary is only 13 years old. In a 2006 interview, Melissa Sue Anderson stated that she "couldn't really get into the idea of being in love at such a young age," and that actor Ramades Pera (John, Jr.) was "more interested in making our scenes work than I was."

Thanks for the name of Reverend Alden's horse. I knew it, but I've totally forgot it...

As for the girls rivalry, I wouldn't said there was any...What a good actress they were! I agree that Mary's character got a bit more interesting when she became blind, but sadly after a while the writers forgot her, and always gave her lines about her blindness and they rarely showed her as a "normal peson" who is blind. Another critic I want to do is about how the writers portrayed her when an adult. Totally different from she was in real life. I'm not bothered by the fact they've made up a husband and a son for her, but I disagree with the changes they did about her character. Mary sees to be always a little upset, angry with life for she became blind...in the books, Laura depics her sister as a gentle person who never complained about her blindness, and was almost always cheering up others and trying to accept her sad life...

Vanesa.

• Alison Arngrim originally auditioned for the role of Laura Ingalls, but was not successful. She then tried out for the role of Laura's sister Mary, to the same avail. However, when auditioning for the role of "Nasty" Nellie Oleson, she was hired on the spot for playing mean so convincingly.
  
  
• Out of the many young girls who auditioned for the role of Laura Ingalls, Michael Landon was convinced immediately that 'Melissa Gilbert' was the perfect candidate. In fact, he was so certain that Gilbert's was the only screen test that he sent to the producers at NBC.
  
  
• Michael Landon had a unique way of inspiring child actors to cry when required for a scene. 'Melissa Gilbert' described how he would work himself up emotionally, face her with his eyes full of tears and ask her, "Do you know how much I love you?" to which she would get all teary and emotional in response.
  
  
• Since Walnut Grove had no jail of it's own, Nels Oleson's ice house served as such for anyone awaiting trial.
  
  
• Quite possibly the first TV show where male adults (and practically everyone else) would be seen crying in all seriousness (as opposed to for comical effect etc.). Because of this trend, once the show got aired in Iceland, it quickly got nicknamed "Crying in The Cornfield" by viewers and haters alike.
  
  
• Melissa Gilbert was impressed by Michael Landon's habit of putting out cigarettes on his gloves.
  
  
• Dean Butler remarked that the first kiss between him and 'Melissa Gilbert' (Laura) was so nerve-racking for everyone, that there were chaperones on the set to make sure nothing unseemly was going on. From the sidelines, Melissa's mother Barbara was wailing "My baby!" so much that she had to be consoled.
  
  
• In the "The Last Farewell", they really did blow up the town. Producer/star Michael Landon didn't want the bulldozers to crush the buildings. So he wrote a story which gave the inhabitants the chance to destroy their town themselves. They did not however destroy the home that the Ingalls had lived in. That was destroyed by the fires in California in late 2003.

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“Little House on the Prairie” star Alison Arngrim says competition between her, Melissa Gilbert and Melissa Sue was so high that she is amazed they “didn’t kill each other.”

In an appearance on FoxNews.com’s “The Strategy Room,” Arngrim said she became very close with Melissa Gilbert while working on the hit NBC show from 1974 until 1981, but the two did not bond with “prom queen type” Melissa Sue Anderson.

“Melissa Gilbert and I wound up bonding and becoming best friends like sisters and Melissa Sue became sort of the ‘frenemy,’” Arngrim said. “So we were with her all day but I guess she was like, ‘I’m not hanging out with you two. She was just sort of appalled by Melissa Gilbert and I.”

Promoting her new memoir “Confessions Of A Prairie #@!%,” Arngrim said “You have three teenage girls at the worst of the preteen years and you’re thrown into this thing and you’re in competition, we’re child stars …I’m amazed we didn’t kill each other.”

But the tension didn’t end between the teen stars; Arngrim also argued that it existed between stars Michael Landon and Katherine MacGregor.

“It was kind of wild because Michael was very much a control freak, in a good way, and then here you had this woman saying ‘I don’t want to do it that way, I think we should do this,’” she said of MacGregor. “It was kind of fun to watch the fireworks when that happened.”




And something from the pilot movie-

• Melissa Gilbert fondly remembers her first day on the set of Little House, with this episode. It was filmed in California, but it had just snowed, and on top of that, there were two toddlers on the set--the girls who played Carrie--and Gilbert says "There was snow, and there were babies, so I was in absolute heaven." Gilbert also vividly remembers how when she first met Michael Landon, he was so happy, and he was just in complete command of everything. She says she always called Landon "an upside-down triangle" because he was so tall, big and muscular, while Gilbert herself was just a tiny little girl who was 10, but was actually the size of a 6-year-old, according to her.
  
  
• This is the first episode where we see baby Carrie's rag doll, which she carried around for a long time when she was really little on the show. The doll's name is Debbie, and to this day, Lindsay Greenbush still owns it and shows it to fans when she makes appearances. The doll has a missing leg now, and Lindsay likes to joke that "Nellie Oleson must have gotten a hold of it."

Wonderful trivia, Alex! You're a mine of gold, truly! I already knew that Alison Arngrim had first auctioned for playing Mary, but I didn't know she tought in playing Laura Ingalls at first...Yes, Laura was the heroine of the series, but she wouldn't do a good Laura.

I've also read that Tracie Savage also wanted to play Laura...She was given the role of Christy Kennedy in which - I think - she was great. I wished she could remain on the show a little more time (in the books Laura and Christy Kennedy were friends until Kennedy family went away, shortly before the Ingallses themselves would travel to Burr Oak, Iowa, where they remained for a whole year). Sadly, Tracie only appears in nine LHOTP episodes...

Oh...I didn't know that Michael Landon and Katherine MacGregor were sorta of rivals!

Vanesa.

Good stuff!

Hey, Alex! You could write a book about LHOTP. You know so much details about it!

Yes; a thing that bothered me a lot is this odd Minnessota landscape...with mountains all around. I'ver ead that Walnut Grove people from today is not pleased with the depiction that the show does of their beloved land. Minnessota is quite a flat State with some little slopes here and there...but NO MOUNTAINS. Thereover, they have a lot of month of cold there, and most of the series shows a sunny , hot wetaher...

Vanesa.

Yeah although Harriet is a bit snobbish, she can be really funny with some of her lines, etc

OK Mr Trivia is back-

MSA(Mary) and Ramades Pera(John Jr) actually didn't really get along. In the Episode "Going Home" MSA didn't want to kiss Ramades Pera; she kept trying to put her fingers between their lips. Actually MSA had said in an interview around that time, she didn't like kissing boys.