Dan Blocker TV Schedule
See when Dan Blocker is on TV tonight and this week. Browse upcoming airings, movies and TV shows at the American TV Listings Guide.
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Coming up this week
Dan Blocker on TV This Week
Upcoming TV airings featuring Dan Blocker. Times are shown for your selected ZIP code and TV provider.
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Sat 25
Bonanza: The Courtship — Dan Blocker
Hoss proposes to Helen Layton, despite Adam's warning that she's a compulsive gambler.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Sat 25, 4:54 am -
Sat 25
Bonanza: Blood on the Land — Dan Blocker
Greedy sheepherder Jeb Drummond will stop at nothing to fatten his animals on the Ponderosa grasslands.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Sat 25, 8:00 am -
Sat 25
Bonanza: Desert Justice — Dan Blocker
The Cartwrights step in when ranch hand Billy Walker is arrested by an enraged Marshal Dowd for killing the lawman's wife.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Sat 25, 9:00 am -
Sat 25
Bonanza: The Stranger — Dan Blocker
Ben's bid for the governorship is threatened by a vengeful New Orleans police inspector.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Sat 25, 10:00 am -
Sat 25
Bonanza: Her Brother's Keeper — Dan Blocker
Ben's romance with Claire Amory is complicated by her brother, an invalid.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Sat 25, 2:00 pm -
Sun 26
Bonanza: The Way Station — Dan Blocker
Adam and the other occupants of a remote way station are held captive by a desperate killer.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Sun 26, 9:00 am -
Sun 26
Bonanza: The War Comes to Washoe — Dan Blocker
Delegates to a statehood convention are divided on one issue: which side will Nevada take in the Civil War?
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Sun 26, 10:00 am -
Sun 26
Bonanza: Knight Errant — Dan Blocker
A romantic triangle develops when Hoss meets his friend's mail-order bride.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Sun 26, 11:00 am -
Sun 26
Bonanza: The Beginning — Dan Blocker
Billy Horn, who was abducted by Indians as a child, has difficulty adjusting to the Ponderosa.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Sun 26, 12:00 pm -
Sun 26
Bonanza: The Deadly Ones — Dan Blocker
The Cartwrights try to protect gold needed for the Mexican revolution from a schemer.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Sun 26, 1:00 pm -
Sun 26
Bonanza: The Mill — Dan Blocker
The Cartwrights try to end a disabled rancher's dependence on his corrupt hired hand.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Sun 26, 2:00 pm -
Sun 26
Bonanza: Gallagher's Sons — Dan Blocker
Two orphan girls drive Hoss to distraction when he tries to unravel the events that led to their father's death.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Sun 26, 2:00 pm -
Mon 27
The Restless Gun: No Way to Kill — Dan Blocker
A one-armed fugitive blazes a bloody trail of vengeance aimed at the bounty hunters who disabled him. Gerrard: Henry Corden. Marz: Jeanne Bates. Bonner: John Payne.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Mon 27, 1:00 am -
Mon 27
The Restless Gun: Take Me Home — Dan Blocker
Peter Breck plays Brett Dixon, a sadistic town boss who has a strangle hold on a lovely saloon hostess. Lee: Mala Powers. Bonner: John Payne. Lomer: Jeff Daley. Thomas: Sheldon Allman.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Mon 27, 1:30 am -
Mon 27
Bonanza: The Courtship — Dan Blocker
Hoss proposes to Helen Layton, despite Adam's warning that she's a compulsive gambler.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Mon 27, 8:00 am -
Mon 27
Bonanza: The Spitfire — Dan Blocker
Maud Hoad leads her revenge-seeking family against Joe, who was forced to shoot treacherous Jeb Hoad.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Mon 27, 9:00 am -
Mon 27
Bonanza: The Gunmen — Dan Blocker
Hoss and Joe become embroiled in a family feud.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Mon 27, 10:01 am -
Mon 27
Bonanza: The Fear Merchants — Dan Blocker
The town's Chinese citizens are the targets of a mayoral candidate's "hate outsiders" campaign.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Mon 27, 11:01 am -
Mon 27
Bonanza: The Spanish Grant — Dan Blocker
Two swindlers and a dance-hall girl join in a plot to grab Nevada land---including the Ponderosa.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Mon 27, 12:02 pm -
Mon 27
Bonanza: The Trouble with Jamie — Dan Blocker
The Ponderosa is disrupted when Ben's Eastern cousin brings his spoiled son for a visit.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Mon 27, 2:00 pm -
Mon 27
Bonanza: Death on Sun Mountain — Dan Blocker
Barry Sullivan portrays a greedy opportunist who kills antelope on Indian grounds and sells the meat at a large profit.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Mon 27, 7:00 pm -
Mon 27
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Mon 27
Bonanza: The Last Viking — Dan Blocker
Outlaw Gunnar Borgstrom interrupts his journey to Canada to pay a visit to his brother-in-law---Ben.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Mon 27, 9:00 pm -
Mon 27
Bonanza: The Trail Gang — Dan Blocker
Outlaw Johnny Logan plots revenge against his sheriff-father, who jailed him the year before.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Mon 27, 10:00 pm -
Tue 28
The Restless Gun: Multiply One Boy — Dan Blocker
A young Southern boy brought to live with Northern relatives is convinced that his uncle's a traitor. Dudley: Jimmy Baird. Uncle Tom: Jim Reppert. Bonner: John Payne. Michael: Ricky Klein. Gloria: Kay Stewart.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Tue 28, 1:00 am -
Tue 28
The Restless Gun: Peligroso — Dan Blocker
A vengeful woman puts a hired gunman on Bonner's trail. Lorry: Marcia Henderson. Fisher: Trevor Bardette. Bonner: John Payne. Bardeen: Robert Fuller.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Tue 28, 1:30 am -
Tue 28
Bonanza: Shining In Spain — Dan Blocker
Joe falls for Wendy Dant, who eagerly awaits the arrival of her highly successful---but long missing---father.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Tue 28, 2:00 pm -
Tue 28
Bonanza: The Paiute War — Dan Blocker
Sinister trader Mike Wilson sparks an Indian war when he assaults two Paiute women---and shifts the blame to Adam.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Tue 28, 7:00 pm -
Tue 28
Bonanza: Enter Mark Twain — Dan Blocker
Reporter Samuel Clemens spearheads a newspaper's fight against a corrupt judge.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Tue 28, 8:00 pm -
Wed 29
The Restless Gun: A Bell for Santo Domingo — Dan Blocker
Vint is asked to accompany a priest and two nuns to check on a mission in the middle of a hostile Indian territory, which he heard is forbidden to whites and they do not return alive.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Wed 29, 1:00 am -
Wed 29
The Restless Gun: The Way Back — Dan Blocker
Olaf Burland has finally saved up enough money driving cattle to return to his home in Minnesota and start a farm.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Wed 29, 1:30 am -
Wed 29
Bonanza: The Spitfire — Dan Blocker
Maud Hoad leads her revenge-seeking family against Joe, who was forced to shoot treacherous Jeb Hoad.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Wed 29, 4:50 am -
Wed 29
Bonanza: The Genius — Dan Blocker
Hoss tries to help poetry-spouting Will Smith overcome his craving for liquor.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Wed 29, 2:00 pm -
Wed 29
Bonanza: The Julia Bulette Story — Dan Blocker
Joe falls into the hands of a gold digger.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Wed 29, 7:00 pm -
Wed 29
Bonanza: The Saga of Annie O'Toole — Dan Blocker
Armed with a claim filed by her beau, Annie O'Toole struggles to protect her gold mine from schemers.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Wed 29, 8:00 pm -
Thu 30
The Restless Gun: The Painted Beauty — Dan Blocker
Bonner finds himself right in the middle of a town hassle. Two characters figure that the saloon needed a painting over the bar, and they import Stuart Woolsey, a St. Louis artist, to do the job.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Thu 30, 1:00 am -
Thu 30
The Restless Gun: Shadow of a Gunfighter — Dan Blocker
Ex-gunfighter Cal Winfield (Douglas Kennedy) comes out of retirement to kill the man who murdered his son. Jim: Robert Fuller. Bonner: John Payne. Della: Mara Corday.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Thu 30, 1:30 am -
Thu 30
Bonanza: Unwritten Commandment — Dan Blocker
A saloon girl tries to help a singer develop his talents---against his stern father's wishes.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Thu 30, 2:00 pm -
Thu 30
Bonanza: The Philip Diedesheimer Story — Dan Blocker
Philip Diedesheimer, a Pied Piper, is refused payment after he saves Virginia City's silver mines from a cave-in.
Air Time & Details for Dan Blocker, Thu 30, 7:00 pm
Filmography
Dan Blocker Movies and TV Shows
Browse Dan Blocker movies and TV shows, including upcoming TV airings, streaming availability, episode details and related titles.
Biography
About Dan Blocker
Big, burly Dan Blocker only did a handful of movies in his 17-year acting career, but he became one of the most beloved and popular television stars of the 1960s for his portrayal of Hoss Cartwright on the Western series Bonanza. Weighing 14 pounds at birth, Blocker was the largest baby ever born in Bowie County, TX. At 18, he stood 6'3" and weighed close to 300 pounds, and was legendary for his physical prowess.
Blocker attended the Texas Military Institute and studied for his B.A. at Sul Ross State College, where he initially majored in athletics. His build accidentally led him to the drama department for a production of Arsenic and Old Lace -- a stage hand was needed who was big and strong enough to quickly remove the dummies representing corpses on the set, between acts. While working on the production, Blocker was bitten by the acting bug and switched his major to drama.
He pursued his theatrical aspirations in earnest after graduation, working in one season of summer stock before he was drafted. Blocker served in combat during the Korean War, after which he earned a master's degree, married, moved to Los Angeles, and settled down to raise a family, earning his living as a high school teacher. It was his successful audition for the small role of a cavalry lieutenant on Gunsmoke during the 1956 season, in the episode "Alarm at Pleasant Valley," that rekindled Blocker's interest in an acting career.
Over the next three years, he took any work that he could get, on programs like Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, Cheyenne, Tales of Wells Fargo, Zane Grey Theater, Wagon Train, Colt .45, Zorro, Maverick, and Richard Diamond, Private Detective. Blocker also got some movie work, portraying a bartender in the offbeat murder mystery The Girl in Black Stockings and an android in Outer Space Jitters, a very late Three Stooges short.
His career took an upturn when he got a guest-starring role in an episode of the series The Restless Gun, starring John Payne, in 1958; his work was good enough to catch the attention of the producer, David Dortort. A year later, Dortort was putting together a new, hour-long Western series called Bonanza and cast Blocker in the role of "Hoss" Cartwright, the big-boned, good-natured middle son in a ranching family near Virginia City, NV, set in the mid- to late 19th century (the time frame of Bonanza was always vague, with stories shifting between the early 1860s to the 1870s and 1880s). Blocker's character's real name, incidentally, was Eric, but Hoss -- a nickname from his mother's Norwegian language that meant "friend" -- was what he was known as to everyone on the series and all viewers.
Despite the weaknesses in the scripts during the early seasons, the role was a dream part for the actor, who got a chance to display his gentle, sensitive side as well as his gift for comedy, and also work in a serious dramatic context as well on many occasions, and show off his brute strength as well. It is arguable that Blocker was the most popular member of the cast during the 1960s; he was especially beloved of younger viewers, in part because his character was always very sympathetic to children. In contrast to the other stars of the series, Blocker's big-screen career wasn't halted by his work on Bonanza.
He appeared in The Errand Boy, playing himself in an uncredited cameo, and played a role in the Frank Sinatra movie Come Blow Your Horn. Blocker got his first major movie part five years later in the Sinatra film Lady in Cement (1968), playing Waldo Gronsky, a burly, potentially murderous thug who hires private detective Tony Rome (played by Sinatra) to find his missing girlfriend. By the end of the 1960s, Blocker was taken seriously enough as an actor to star in two features, Something for a Lonely Man, a beautiful and poignant Western/comedy-drama, and the broader comedy The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County.
Some of Blocker's television appearances separate from Bonanza also reflected his personal side -- his politics were essentially liberal Democratic (in sharp contrast to the conservative Republican sympathies of his co-stars Michael Landon and Lorne Greene), and he appeared in several public service announcements promoting brotherhood and racial tolerance, as well as on one television special that gently satirized American popular culture, starring Henry Fonda. He was also part of the liberal contingent in the 1971 John Wayne-hosted patriotic special Swing Out, Sweet Land. In 1972, Blocker was chosen for what could have been the breakthrough role to a major movie career, when he won the part of Roger Wade, the has-been author in Robert Altman's revisionist detective movie The Long Goodbye.
In May of that year, however, he went into the hospital for routine gall bladder surgery, and during recovery he died suddenly of a blood clot in his lung. Sterling Hayden replaced Blocker in The Long Goodbye, which was dedicated to the actor's memory. Blocker's passing, immediately before the shooting for the 1972-1973 season of Bonanza was to begin, signed the death knell for the series.
The cast and crew were genuinely shaken by his sudden death; scripts had to be hastily rewritten to explain the passing of Hoss Cartwright, and Blocker's absence and the reason behind it removed any element of lightheartedness that the series had displayed. The final season, despite the best efforts of surviving stars Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, and David Canary, was characterized by grim, downbeat stories and a dark mood that seemed to repel longtime viewers. Coupled with this change in tone, the NBC network moved Bonanza from its longtime Sunday nighttime slot to Tuesday nights, where it died a quick death, cancellation coming halfway through the 1972-1973 season.
Blocker left behind a wife and four children, among them actor Dirk Blocker and director/producer David Blocker. He also left behind a legacy of good will that survives to this day, as Bonanza is in perpetual reruns on various cable channels, decades after its cancellation. Significantly, the final season, in which he did not appear, is the body of episodes that is shown (and requested) the least of its 14 years' worth of programs.