If you think Little House on the Prairie was perfect in every detail, you should take a closer look!
This much-loved classic TV series, known for its warmth, heart-warming stories and spirit of adventure, wasn’t without its slip-ups either.
Despite the impression of an almost flawless production, a host of bloopers and errors somehow still slipped through the editing room.
I can still get completely absorbed in reruns of Little House on the Prairie, just as my parents once did. From the very first minutes, the series seems to transport us to the late 19th century and introduces us to the strong, resilient Ingalls family.
Today, when rewatching the episodes, it becomes particularly clear that the show’s message still resonates powerfully — to respect others, to be honest, and to value family and friends.
But keen-eyed viewers have long since spotted a whole host of errors and odd moments in the series, which make you want to watch the scene again — and sometimes even make you smile.
Laura’s Mysterious Pregnancy
Laura first announced her pregnancy towards the end of the seventh series — during the warmer months, when everything was in bloom and the prairie looked particularly beautiful.
But by the following summer she was still pregnant, and fans began to wonder: just how long were the writers intending this ‘prairie’ pregnancy to last?
To be honest, it looked as though the scriptwriters and the rest of the team simply weren’t on the same page. A clear example of a sloppily handled storyline.
Nellie Oleason wore a wig
Everyone remembers the main little troublemaker from Little House on the Prairie — Nellie Oleason, played by Alison Arngrim. But did you know that Nellie’s role in the TV series was much larger than in the original books?
This character’s expanded presence only goes to show just how much viewers loved to hate this mischievous villain – especially when she teamed up with her equally cunning on-screen mother, Harriet.
Many will no doubt remember Nelly’s iconic blonde curls, but creating this look was far from easy. Alison Arngrim’s own hair was transformed into her signature curls using an old-fashioned curling iron, which had to be heated in the oven. The process was painful, time-consuming and required immense patience.
In the end, a wig was the solution. To ensure it stayed securely in place, a large metal comb and dozens of long, straight metal pins were used.
Colonel Sanders’ Cameo
One of the funniest bloopers in Little House on the Prairie is the unexpected appearance of Colonel Sanders, the legendary founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, in an episode of the eighth series entitled ‘The Wave of the Future’. In the episode, Nelly’s restaurant is turned into a franchise.
But, as you might expect, things don’t go to plan at all, and Nelly soon begins to regret the whole venture. To get out of the contract, she teams up with Charles and Nels and opens a rival establishment.
And then there’s a completely bizarre twist: Colonel Sanders himself turns up and offers Harriet a deal to launch her own chicken franchise.
And this is where it gets really funny: the real Colonel Sanders wasn’t even born until 1890, and KFC didn’t appear until 1952. Yet the action in Little House on the Prairie takes place in the 1870s and 1880s! A true time-travelling entrepreneur.
And here’s another intriguing detail: rumour has it that whenever fried chicken appeared on the table in the series, it was actually from KFC. So perhaps Colonel Sanders’ cameo wasn’t quite so coincidental after all.
The missing coats
This has always struck me as odd — the obvious absence of winter coats in freezing weather. In the episode ‘Bless All the Dear Children’, Laura’s child is abducted around Christmas time in Minneapolis.
Anyone even slightly familiar with Minneapolis in December knows it can be incredibly cold there. Yet the characters stroll about without coats, a fact that Gilbert also pointed out.
Most likely, this oversight is down to the fact that the series was filmed in Tucson, Arizona, during the summer months.
A fashion faux pas
In some scenes, if Caroline moves at a certain angle, you can see her bra. Given that the series is set in the 1870s and 1880s, this is a clear anachronism — after all, bras did not appear until 1912.
Some of the women on set also sport permed or curly hairstyles that are far more reminiscent of 1970s fashion than that of the 1880s.
The situation is similar with the men: you may have noticed that most of the male characters in the series are clean-shaven, although historical photographs from that era tell a very different story. In reality, most adult men at that time had moustaches or beards — facial hair was very popular. What’s more, Charles Ingalls himself wore a beard for most of his adult life. It seems that decisions regarding the characters’ appearances did not always align with the actual fashions of the time.
A mannequin instead of a real person
In an episode of the fifth season of The Odyssey, there is a tense moment when an unknown assailant tries to throw Albert off a moving train.
Laura quickly rushes to his aid and pushes the villain off, managing to save Albert. However, right in the middle of this dramatic scene, a rather amusing blooper occurs.
Attentive viewers may notice that a mannequin is thrown from the train, landing awkwardly in the grass. Meanwhile, a fearless stuntman rolls down the slope, creating a comical contrast with the motionless dummy.
Melissa Sue Anderson was described as ‘cold and aloof’
From the first to the seventh series of Little House on the Prairie, Melissa Sue Anderson won over viewers in the role of the beautiful, fair-haired Mary, the eldest daughter of Charles and Caroline Ingalls.
However, her co-stars found it difficult to get close to her. Both Melissa Gilbert and Alison Arngrim wrote in their autobiographies that Melissa Sue Anderson, known on set as ‘Missy’, often seemed cold and kept her distance. Although, looking at photos of the actors together, it is hard to believe there was any distance between them.
Rumours circulated amongst the crew that Missy’s overprotective mother might have been one of the reasons the girl preferred to keep to herself.
But Nelly and Laura became best friends
Alison Arngrim played the real ‘bad girl’ Nelly Oleason — the main rival of the kind-hearted Laura Ingalls, played by Melissa Gilbert. But behind the scenes, it was a completely different story! Alison and Melissa quickly hit it off and became best friends.
When the cameras stopped rolling, they behaved almost like real sisters: they laughed a lot, chatted and created memories that went far beyond the series.
Off set, they were real partners in mischief: they’d have sleepovers at each other’s houses and play pranks on their unsuspecting colleagues. Who would have thought that such a fierce on-screen rivalry would turn into such a fun and close friendship off screen?
The aftermath of grief in the episode ‘My Ellen’
One of the most memorable episodes of Little House on the Prairie is called ‘My Ellen’ and centres on the tragic death of Ellen Taylor, who drowned.
When Laura and Mary go for a swim in the nude with their friend Ellen Taylor, they suddenly find themselves in an awkward situation. Some boys appear nearby, and the girls hide underwater, waiting for them to leave.
Laura and Mary manage to resurface safely, but Ellen tragically gets trapped and drowns. The aftermath proves heart-wrenching: Ellen’s mother, driven mad with grief, blames Laura for what happened.
During Ellen’s funeral, her mother, completely overcome with grief, hurls at Laura: ‘It was you!’ This heavy accusation deeply wounds the girl, especially given that she already feels guilty about what happened. But the adults’ reaction seems particularly strange. Instead of stepping in to defend Laura, they merely exchange anxious glances and leave her alone to face her pain.
It’s quite a baffling moment. With so many adults present, including Reverend Alden and Dr Baker, one might expect someone to at least try to comfort Laura and explain to her that it isn’t her fault. Yet she is left to cope with those cruel words on her own. In My Ellen, the emotional power of the story is undeniable, yet some scenes feel disjointed from a narrative perspective.
Michael Landon used to pop frogs into his mouth
Pranks seem to have been an important part of the atmosphere on set, and it was Michael Landon who was often the main instigator of these funny antics. Rachel Greenbush, who played the youngest of the Ingalls children — Carrie — recounted one such story.
The mischievous duo of Greenbush and her on-screen sister Melissa Gilbert would often dash off to the stream during breaks to catch frogs. The girls would then return to the set with their slippery little ‘prey’ to surprise Landon.
In response, he would unexpectedly grab the unsuspecting frogs and pop them into his mouth, before approaching the actors and crew members. With a mischievous smile, he would open his mouth, letting the frogs jump out, which would provoke laughter, screams and a touch of panic amongst those around him.
Melissa Gilbert’s falling-out with Michael Landon
The actors had such strong chemistry that viewers could easily believe they were watching a real family. And off-screen, too, these colleagues did indeed play an important part in each other’s lives for a long time.
But the relationship between the actors wasn’t always smooth sailing, and one major incident led to a prolonged rift between Melissa Gilbert and Michael Landon.
It all began when the young actress learnt some news that would forever change her view of Landon. Whilst married to his second wife, Marjorie Lynn No, Landon began an affair on set with a much younger woman — the series’ make-up artist and stand-in, Cindy Clerico.
Gilbert recalled noticing how close Landon and Clerico had become on set, but she pushed those thoughts aside, unwilling to believe that Landon might be unfaithful to his wife.
‘There was nothing overtly inappropriate about it; they never shut themselves away in a separate room – at least, I never saw them do so,’ she wrote in her memoirs. ‘But Mike would walk around holding her puppy, and she was a beautiful young woman, wearing fashionable skinny jeans, leggings and heeled boots.’
Soon, the cast, including Gilbert, found out about the affair and were shocked by the behaviour of a man whom many regarded almost as a father figure.
‘For us children, it was a real blow,’ Melissa Sue Anderson later recalled in her biography. “Although we knew he could be a difficult person at times and had his faults, we never imagined he was capable of causing such pain to his real family.”
“For me personally, he held a much higher moral standard. He really let me down.”
The travelling blanket
Eagle-eyed fans with near-laser vision spotted another amusing blooper: the family blanket seems to have a life of its own! This elusive blanket appears in various places throughout the series — on the Olesons’ bed, on Charles and Caroline’s bed, and even on the beds of other characters.
Mostly white, with a cute pattern resembling a ‘double wedding ring’, it was clearly a prop that was reused for the sake of economy and convenience.
And whilst we’re on the subject of locations, have you noticed the Ingalls children’s odd route to and from school? Their route seems to change from episode to episode. Sometimes they cross the bridge and walk past the sawmill, whilst in other episodes they mysteriously end up on the road behind it.
Dean Butler nearly lost his life
Some actors joined the series in the later seasons. One of them was Dean Butler, who played Laura Ingalls’ husband, Almanzo Wilder.
Just a few days after finishing college, Dean arrived on the set of Little House on the Prairie. It was a day he was bound to remember for many reasons.
In his first scene, Butler was supposed to ride in a horse-drawn cart for about 200 yards down a hill. He had never done this before, and when Michael shouted ‘action’, everything went completely wrong. The wind caught his hat, and Butler instinctively let go of the reins as he tried to catch it. At that very moment, the horses, now out of control, veered off the track and hurtled straight towards an oak tree.
People on set screamed, but fortunately, one of the crew managed to run up to the horses before they crashed into the tree.
Dean’s first day on set could have gone much better, and Michael Landon decided to perform the scene in his place.
“Michael came up to me, chewing on a cigarette, and said: ‘Well, I suppose I’ll have to stand in for you,’ Butler recalled Landon saying. ‘I can stand in for you, but I can’t stand in for the horses in the series.’ ‘That was my first time working alongside Michael, but it was still great fun.’”
Did Albert die or not?
Albert Quinn Ingalls, played by the young Matthew Laberto, became one of the series’ key characters in 1978. The orphaned boy was taken in by the Ingalls family, but his departure from the story remained unclear to many viewers.
In the 1983 TV film Little House: A Look Back, Albert is diagnosed with leukaemia. But did he die or not? This remains unclear to this day.
‘He didn’t officially die in the episode, and I think they sort of left it open to interpretation… but there was something left unsaid; everyone understood that he was meant to die,’ the former child actor recalled in an interview years later.
A historical inaccuracy
In the grand finale of Little House on the Prairie, the television film The Last Farewell, there is a notable historical inconsistency. The story is set in 1901, and it is clear that by the start of the 20th century, most of the characters would already have been in their 60s or 70s.
For example, the real Charles Ingalls died in 1902. Younger characters such as Carrie, Jenny, James, Cassandra and Nancy should by this point have become young adults.
However, looking at footage from the most recent seasons, it seems as though the characters have hardly changed at all, as if time in Walnut Grove had simply stood still. Yet, historically, the Wilders had already moved to Missouri around the turn of the century.
She went on a pilgrimage to India
Did you notice that Catherine McGregor, who played Harriet Oleason throughout all nine seasons, was absent from ‘The Final Farewell’?
Various sources reported that she was on a pilgrimage to India due to her new Hindu faith, but there is another layer to her absence from the series finale. According to other reports, the reason may have been a long-standing personal conflict with Michael Landon over pay and the way her acting talent was utilised.
As we wrap up our journey through the bloopers and mistakes of Little House on the Prairie, we hope you’ve enjoyed this light-hearted peek behind the scenes at Walnut Grove.
If these unexpected moments made you smile, why not share that good humour with others? Spread the fun and share this video on Facebook! Let the good times roll!
