On Little House on the Prairie, Michael Landon cast Melissa Sue Anderson as his on-screen daughter, Mary Ingalls, in 1974.
Anderson opted to leave the program as her character's storylines grew troublesome in the later seasons of the historical drama and recalled her parting moment with her longtime co-star. Melissa Sue Anderson's role on 'Little House' was hard.
Landon adapted the Little House novel series by Laura Ingalls Wilder into a television series. Little House, set in the 1870s, incorporated several factual themes from Wilder's works, including Mary's blindness.
Whilst Anderson regarded the plot of the fourth season to be a good acting opportunity, she felt constrained by the character in subsequent seasons due to the time period and her blindness. The graduate of Little House felt that Mary became a target for misfortunes. In 2010, Anderson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "What you could or could not do was severely restricted."
"I used to claim that I was blind and dull. Either I was there accomplishing little or I was experiencing a disaster. I could no longer handle it. It became excessively soap operatic." Mary wed Adam Kendall (Linwood Boomer) during the fifth season of Little House. With Adam also becoming blind, Anderson observed that their plots began to lose their luster.
In her autobiography, The Way I See It, she writes, "I could tell the writers were struggling to come up with concepts for Mary and Adam." "You are in trouble when your protagonist endures more tragedies than a soap opera. It was either a period of plenty or of starvation." In Little House's eighth season, Mary and Adam move to New York.
In Season 7, a bizarre event restores Adam's vision, prompting him to pursue a law degree. By the seventh season of Little House, Anderson was ready to move on. Mary and Adam were written out of the series due to Adam's law job in New York City.
In her memoir, she detailed her final interaction with Landon. She explained, "We were ready to depart Walnut Grove for good and are saying our farewells." "Papa's (Landon's) turn: 'Don't let those city people influence you too much, okay?'"
Mary said, "I will not. I'll eat barefoot at least once every week." "He tells me 'I love you,'" Anderson remembers Landon saying during their embrace. "And my response is, 'I love you too.'"
The Little House actress cried in her final scene.
Anderson revealed she was overcome with emotion during the concluding moments of her eight-season run in the role. She stated her fondness for Landon and acknowledged that she would sense a void without him on screen.
Anderson wrote, "Mike and I were not acting in this scene." After more than seven years of working together, we knew we were going to miss working with each other. The former Little House star said, "My face was drenched in tears, and my nose was running." It was difficult to say goodbye.
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