Those of you who keep up with Dean Butler’s Legacy Documentaries blog are probably as pleased as we are at the recent announcement that the Laura Ingalls Wilder project he has hoped and planned for is officially coming to fruition.
Dean Butler, whom many will remember as the actor who played Almanzo Wilder on the Little House on the Prairie television series, produced a Wilder-related documentary last fall, Almanzo Wilder: Life Before Laura, which can be purchased exclusively at the Wilder Farm in Burke, New York. Unlike the many movie and television adaptations of Laura’s books that leave many dissatisfied due to liberties taken, Butler’s production was impressively well-researched, historically factual as well as true to Laura’s stories, and of high quality, leaving even the most finicky Wilder fans pleased and wholeheartedly satisfied.
Judging from the itinerary Butler has shared thus far on his blog, it appears his Laura documentary will be just as wonderful. After all, how many Little House movie/television producers or directors do you think have visited the Rose Wilder Lane Collection in the archives at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library?
I have a sneaking hunch that Michael Landon never did.
This is AMAZING news. Leave it to Dean, one of the most sincere, in-it-for-the-right-reasons faces on the Laura Ingalls Wilder landscape.
I LOVE that Dean Butler has embraced the REAL Laura and Almanzo. I feel that Melissa Gilbert has begun to as well.
This is wonderful! I can’t wait to see this after the great job he did with the Almanzo documentary.