Although Michael Landon pulled all the strings, Katherine MacGregor (1925-2018) expressed very specific ideas about how she thought the roles should be realized. As a veteran stage and television actress, who turned 50 at the start of The Little Farm, MacGregor gave unsolicited advice to everyone else on the show’s set to act out the scenes as they saw fit, Alison Arngrim recalls in her memoirs. “Some people didn’t mind”, the book says, such as Laura Ingall’s serial husband. “Dean Butler, when he first started playing Almanzo, seemed to be actively seeking her advice.” Karen Grassle, Charles Ingall’s wife Caroline, who was staged as a counterpart to the role of Harriet Oleson, was also happy to accept Katherine MacGregor’s acting tips, Arngrim continues.
“Katherine’s advice wasn’t bad, it was just constant and unsolicited,” Alison Arngrim describes the problem. “Sometimes I followed her, but many times I had already decided what I wanted to do. If I protested and tried to explain to her, she would yell, ‘He’s just the director! What the hell does he know?!'”
