AMERICAN MASTERS: Laura Ingalls Wilder
The virtual press tour continues as AMERICAN MASTERS entered the world of the “Little House” books and its unlikely author, a Midwestern farm woman who published her first novel at the age of 65, transforming her frontier childhood into a best-selling series.
While Laura Ingalls Wilder emphasized real life and celebrated the simple and stoic, she omitted the grimmer and contradictory details of her personal history: grinding poverty, government assistance, death and deprivation. Wilder’s racist portrayal of American Indians and Black people in her books has made her less appealing to some contemporary readers, teachers and librarians, yet a rabid fanbase exists across generations.
This documentary draws on never-before-published letters, interviews with Wilder experts, fresh perspectives from readers and writers, and never-before-seen photographs and family artifacts to explore the context in which she lived and wrote, as well as the true nature of her personality. The documentary will premiere on December 29.
Session panelists include:
Melissa Gilbert, actor and producer; Laura Ingalls Wilder on the TV series, Little House on the Prairie
Alison Arngrim, actor, comedian and author; Nellie Oleson on the TV series Little House on the Prairie
Mary McDonagh Murphy, Emmy®-winning director and producer
Lizzie Skurnick, film interviewee, author (“Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We’ll Never Stop Reading”)
And Michael Kantor, series executive producer
