The Making of
"Little House:
The Last Farewell" (1984)
Little House: The Last Farewell
1984 - USA - 96 min. - Feature, Color, (First aired on NBC in February of 1984)
Produced by Ed Friendly Productions / NBC Productions
Little House: The Last Farewell was the third and last Televison movie based on the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder (which also inspired the long-running TV series), though it was telecast out of sequence, shown before the second film Little House on the Prairie: Look Back to Yesterday. This valedictory adventure of the Ingalls family finds their home town of Walnut Grove being purchased by an evil miner (the ancestor, no doubt, of the Evil Land Developers seen in all those Spielberg-produced films). Rather than allow themselves to be thrown off their land, Pa and Ma Ingalls (Michael Landon and Karen Grassle), in concert with the rest of the townsfolk, take arms against a sea of troubles. But when ordered to evacuate the premises by the Law, the Walnut Grove residents exact a more spectacular method of getting even with the miner. The "surprise" ending of The Last Farewell, in which Walnut Grove is dynamited into oblivion, was the worst-kept secret of the 1983-84 season.