Bonanza (TV Series) The Mountain Girl (1962) User Reviews

A Pygmalion job

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 20 August 2020]

Michael Landon finds a dying Will Wright on the trail and brings him back to Wright's home in the high country where he's a sheepherder. He exacts a promise from Landon to take his granddaughter to her rich other grandfather out in San Francisco.

It turns out to be a major undertaking as all the Cartwrights pitch in to help Little Joe turn this mountain Eliza Doolittle into a lady.

Nina Shipman steals this episode with her portrayal of the shepherd's granddaughter who discovers she's the closest thing we Americans have to princesses. Good performances from Carl Benton Reid as the other grandfather and Warren Oates as the shepherd who was courting Shipman before learning of her wealth.

A frontier My Fair Lady.

The endearing Nina Shipman steals the show and your heart

[georgeredding · 10/10 · 22 September 2023]

In this excellent character study, the refreshing and appealing Nina Shipman performs excellently a mountain girl who learns from her dying paternal grandfather, played by Will Wright in the mountains, is also the granddaughter of a very wealthy man from San Francisco; the paternal grandfather there is a Hadley man portrayed by Carl Benton Reed.

It is brought out by reported action that the mountain girl was the daughter of the Hadley man who fell in love with, in turn, a mountain girl, and their union produced the pretty mountain granddaughter; the Hadley man had ousted his son from his home because he married a very poor girl.

The other granddaughter is an uppity, disgustingly conceited lady who scorns her cousin from the mountains. She also scorns the lover from the mountains, played very well by Warren Oates; the courageous mountain girl publicly renounces her sophisticated cousin strongly.

It does have a positive resolve and an excellent point.

Anymore, I do believe it is one of my favorite Bonanza episodes.