The television Western Bonanza first aired on NBC in 1959.

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The long running program followed the lives of the Cartwright family, headed by Ben Cartwright. It was set on and around the Ponderosa Ranch, near Virginia City, Nevada. Ben’s three grown sons, Adam, “Hoss” and “Little Joe” were perpetually getting into scrapes, adventures, and romantic entanglements.
 
For a period of time in the 1960s, Bonanza was one of the most popular things on American prime time television. The program was well received by an international audience, too. It eventually was broadcast in dozens of countries around the world.

A long list of writers worked on the show. Mort R. Lewis was one of them. He wrote the scripts for “A Man to Admire” which aired in 1964 and “The Far, Far Better Thing” which aired in 1965.

For insight into the creative process behind the Bonanza scripts, see the Mort Reis Lewis papers at UW’s American Heritage Center.