Dan Blocker: (Jerry Skinner Documentary)

take highway 30 west out of shreveport louisiana and when you get to 82 highway go west on it for about 12 miles and you'll come to a little town in north east texas called the cab this is the home of dan blocker uh who is better known as hoss cartwright on bonanza on television house was born here on the 10th day of december 19 and 28. now when you get to rules 82 will cross r-u-n-n-n-e-l-s reynolds street go south to number 600 now mary blocker dan's mother moved back here after dan's father died and after danny died she had been living in california to be close to him and she got home sick because this is their original home here so she stayed here now for several years until she got where she couldn't take care of herself and uh dolphia that's dan's wife come and guide her and took her back to california now dan had uh was as i said was born here and he uh i guess you probably heard but he was around 14 some people say 15 but i think it was around 14 pounds when he was born and he holds the record of being the biggest baby born in boy county texas and when he was born he was well he started growing and he just just didn't stop uh he ended up being uh about around six three six four usually around 300 pounds now uh this is the house this is the uh blocker house now actually the cab was was uh was their old their home i mean their his mother and daddy and they all of them uh the family was actually here and they all ended up being buried back here dan and his mother and his daddy and he had a he had a sister that died when she was 11 years old she was buried here and virginia was was what they call her and she she uh was well dan was about five years old when she when she died this is on the conor ronalds and west browning street i may not pronounce that right r-u-n-n-e-l-s now when dan was about six years old the family moved from here to uh o'donnell texas now o'donnell and this is leading into o'donnell o'donnell was a small uh well it's still a small place it's just a little over a thousand people there now and it's probably 40 miles on 87 highway i believe it is south of lubbock now i don't know what caused them to move out here but i know that uh dan's father had was in farming and he had actually went broke during the depression now this is going into o'donnell and o'donnell is a cotton they have a lot of cotton warehouses here it's a cotton and a ranching community and it's the center of town this is this is it right here it's sort of the crossroads but it's just a it's the center of town and right now most of the town is kind of uh boarded up and there's just really not much activity going on in o'donnell now this village you're looking at there was once when the blockers were here was a a bank but now it's a county museum but they did reserve a part of it for uh for dan because uh they considered dan one of their own just about everybody here at the time knew the blockers because uh because somehow another shack that's uh uh dan's daddy was named oral shack blocker but everybody called him shank somehow another he got enough money to open this grocery store here now it's boarded up now as you can see and it's been that way for years but uh when dan was growing up uh he used to toad out groceries and feed and stuff like that to the customers and he was just an overgrown um i guess a little gawky and they said it went one time that his daddy actually uh now he did this in a joking way asked one of his friends that i'll pay you a fuel hard and so that because i have got to get him out of my store he's wrecking the place and uh dan was always about twice the size of other boys and he was growing up and i used to wrestle right here in the streets that block the streets off and wrestle and he always sometimes he would wrestle two at one time so and in college he did some boxing and wrestling so he he was of course he is big enough to do it now the reason i'm going around behind the store is uh when the when shaq moved his little family here and got bought the grocery store they actually lived in the back of the store here and so so dan would play back here while his mother mary and his daddy would sell groceries out the front door now round to the side here is a little park and what happened they they uh made a monument to dan uh and what it is it's a life-size bust of his head with his bonanza hat on now um this was in a year or um i guess about a year after dan passed away um in 1973 when he passed away uh no he passed away in 1972 and 1973 is when they erected this uh monument to him and it says thanks to film hoss cartwright will live but all to seldom does the world get to keep a dan blocker now his mother uh his mother actually came back from hollywood and she uh uh she was at this uh the ceremony she come back to dedicate this thing believe it or not dan was the most educated one on the bonanza set he had a master's degree and he taught grammar school he also taught high school here in in texas and even when he went to hollywood the he went out there actually to try and finish up at ucla and get his phd he never did finish it because he got so involved in acting and so forth but uh the townsfolks was really surprised to see dan riding horses in the movies because they said that they knew him as an astute student and and he was more natural for him to have a book in his hand and be reading it than it was to be riding on a horse but any time that that it come on the the people in this town they found a television set somewhere because they they wanted to know what dan was doing he was their favorite son and as i said before everybody knew him now when when uh dan started making it big was begin to really make some money in hollywood well of course he wanted his mother and daddy out there close to him so so he come and he's he sent them but this was after well uh his daddy they his dad had only been out that only been out there six months before his daddy died he he only lived out there for six months now this is one of the houses we're going to and it's you know just right up the street from the store and this was the last house that the uh blockers his mother and daddy lived in uh before they moved to uh california now shaq and mary uh actually kept this grocery store uh they was in the grocery business for 26 years and uh and when they uh when they moved to uh california they uh they actually sold the grocery store to a nephew of mary's and then uh years later when uh grocery business got bad uh dan took the nephew and made him a manager one of the bonanza restaurants that was in lubbock now lauren greene and michael landon actually were were real good friends with dan i mean it wasn't just show they were actually good friends and they were in business they had a not only the bonanza restaurants but they had several other businesses and believe me uh you've got to like somebody to go into business with them and and trust them enough to go not into one business but several businesses like they did now this is the house that the people in o'donnell told us that the blockers lived in right before they moved on to california now while dan was here uh he married a girl that he went to college with and it was dolphia parker now uh it's it's been said that dolph as he called her uh and it's true that she always after dan's death she always remained loyal to dan's memory and in 2008 o'donnell was doing something to commemorate dan and she she wrote a letter thanking the people of o'donnell and la mesa and the people of texas for keeping dan's memory alive now this is dolph and uh and uh and dan and they're very few pictures of dolph and after dan passed away uh uh she uh she got out of the limelight and stayed out and i have to say that that dan i know that dan would have been really really pleased with her for the way that she's uh protected his memory and this is their four kids the girls are twins and then you've got the boys david and dirk now shank uh dan's daddy like i say was out there in uh north gate for a while now this is one of dan's son dave and uh and uh when he died in 1960 they moved uh shaq when they took him back to the cab to be buried now this is uh dirk you may have seen him on tv before but he is a he is an actor and the other one dave is a producer of some kind so they they're both still in the business now this is back in the cab and what happened was when dan passed away of course uh they uh they they brought his body back to the cab he's at the woodman cemetery along with his daddy his mother now uh because she passed away in 1998. and uh so there they are there's four of them there his uh aura virginia that was dan's sister so so there's four of them the family there now now when you go in the gate if you kind of look back you'll see the sign here and down at the bottom it says dan blocker but but if you'll sort of look to the right out there where these people are that's dan's grave where they're at right there now dan uh had a minor gallbladder surgery and uh in 1972 and uh was expected to be just fine it was supposed to be simple well uh uh un unfortunately well he stayed actually stayed in the hospital for 12 days and everything was really really good see this picture here that's they call it horsing around but uh when he got out of the hospital he was out one day doing just fine told his wife he was really happy to be be home and everything was and he was feeling so good and ready to go and do other things and and about four o'clock that morning he started hurting uh in his chest couldn't breathe so when dolph called the amulets got out there they actually thought it was a heart attack and so they sent him to another hospital not the hospital where he was operated on for gall bladder but they sent him to the daniel freeman hospital and of course uh they had a heart unit there that's the reason they took him there uh they first come out and told her that he was gonna be all right they had him stabilized and then they and then they told him told uh dolph just just a little while later that he had passed away so dan passed away well he was born on the 10th day of december 1928 and he died may the 13th 1972. now this is oral virginia's this is dan's sister she was 11 years old as i said when she passed away in 1933 dan was only five five years old at the time now he remembered her he said but you know we're just kind of vaguely now on dan's tombstone there you you'll notice it's got b dan blocker well the b stands for bobby now this is uh this is his mother may the 4th 1901 she was born and she passed away june 30th 19 and 98. none of the blockers really was much for the hollywood life uh his mother and daddy wasn't much for it and and his wife none of them were uh as a matter of fact they had a simple ceremony here there there's only about 20 people here family and friends so they didn't make a big to-do out of it now this is uh dan's daddy oral shack and he died december 19 1960. then blocker was 43 years old when he passed away do this is really just a sort of a community uh graveyard and uh if you didn't know of who dan blocker was he it looks just like all the rest of the the uh the graves dan blocker you are missed you

Channel: Jerry Skinner

Views: 2,393,897

Rating: 4.7254739 out of 5

Keywords: Dan Blocker, Bonanza, Hoss

Id: mC8T0pH-_fM

Length: 18min 28sec (1108 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 31 2012