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Dan Blocker's background helped him with his role in Bonanza
Blocker was wild about the Old West.
Dan Blocker played the role of one of classic TV fans' favorite characters. His character, Hoss Cartwright, was known as the big, gentle giant who helped keep the Cartwright family together in Bonanza.
It seemed like Blocker was a natural for a role in a Western, and as it turns out, there was a reason for that. According to a 1961 interview with The Grand Rapids Press, long before his acting career started, Blocker was a student of Western history.
"I guess that while I was growing up in West Texas, I was learning Western history without knowing it," Blocker said. "But of course, as I went on into teaching, I became even more interested in the subject."
He became fully immersed in Western history through his teaching and his background in Texas. There was no one more Old West than Blocker, and it showed in the series.
Bonanza lasted 14 seasons on-air, and was one of the top-rated and most loved Westerns on TV. Blocker was a big reason for that. His teaching background gave him even more knowledge to share.
According to the interview, he worked in Los Angeles as a relief teacher for quite a while. While he used his Western knowledge to his advantage in both careers, he also used his large stature in his teaching profession.
"I found out what they wanted was not a teacher but a disciplinarian," Blocker said. "What they would do is send me to schools where discipline had been a problem. In other words, I was supposed to shake a few heads among that certain element that had been giving the regular teachers a bad time."
Blocker said he loved working on the series for a variety of reasons: the money, the co-stars, the acting, and, of course, his interest in American Western history. He was doing what he loved in more ways than one.
"It is fantastic, the impact that short-lived period of time we call the 'Old West' has on American culture," Blocker said. "It's hard to realize that virtually all of the history we write about over and over again and portray in pictures and TV actually took place within the 10-year period between 1858 and 1868."
He appreciated and loved Bonanza because it portrayed some of the history of the development of the West. And the West was his home both on and off screen.
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