During the 1960s and 1970s, it’s hard to think of a pair of actors more prolific than Michael Landon and Lorne Greene. These two — who many people, myself included, first came to know these fellers through Bonanza, which ran for 14 seasons on NBC — routinely appeared on U.S. television screens on both shows and commercials.

On Bonanza, Lorne Greene played Ben Cartwright, the patriarch of the Cartwright clan, and Michael Landon played his youngest son, Little Joe. The Cartwrights embarked on amazing adventures and tackled weighty social issues on their ranch, the Ponderosa, which spanned over a thousand square miles on the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe, Nevada.