Bonanza: Sam Hill (1961) (TV)

*SPOILERS*
This was meant to spin a different show off, but didn't. It is plainly the best Bonanza episode so far, and one of the greatest things ever in television. My sixth sense tells me that this must have been based on previous material, either from literature or from folklore. I may be wrong, of course, and there is no actual reference to an external source anywhere that I have seen. Then all the credit should go to the screenwriter (well, some of it to the director as well), who happens to be the show's creator. If anyone recognizes this to be a version of anything from literature or tradition, please tell me. It is the story of a man who visits his mother's grave once a year and won't sell the land she is buried in. In one of these visits he encounters his father, who had abandoned him in his early childhood. The father is a drunkard and sells the land to a colonel whom Sam dislikes. It turns out this colonel is responsible for Sam's mother, whom he coveted. There is also a tree brought from the Orient which grows by her grave, and thrives thanks to a subterranean hot air current.

I rank this as a film, and place it among my favorites of that year (15th entry).
Rating: 72