Dean Butler suffered from anxiety after discovering he would be giving his co-star, Melissa Gilbert, 15, her first kiss – both on screen and in real life.
The actor, who played Almanzo Wilder on “Little House on the Prairie,” has written a new memoir, “Prairie Man,” which details his rise to fame and the age gap scene that still raises eyebrows today.
“You just couldn’t do it today,” the 68-year-old told Fox News Digital. “There would be far too much blowback. It’s remarkable that we haven’t had more blowback than we have had… But I think it was handled so tastefully that the people… have forgotten the age difference.”
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Dean Butler was 23 when he was cast as Melissa Gilbert’s love interest. She was 15. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)
“I think the audience had been watching Melissa for years and loved her so much,” Butler said. “They wanted to see when she declared her love for this young man in such an honest and innocent way. She fell in love the first time she saw him. The audience was ready to accept that.”
Butler was 23 when he appeared on the popular TV show, which aired from 1974 to 1983. Gilbert, who played Laura Ingalls, was “a 15-year-old.”
Dean Butler gave Melissa Gilbert her first real on-screen kiss. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)
“She was such a little girl,” Butler recalled. “She was very sophisticated in the methods of the industry. As an actress she was very talented. But as a young woman, she was very inexperienced. And I think it was a lot harder for her than it was for me… (And) I don’t know of any casting that was like that… our casting had an age difference of 15 to 23 years . »
Dean Butler wrote a memoir titled “Prairie Man: My Little House Life & Beyond.” (Citadel)
According to Butler, the characters in the original book series were supposed to have a 10-year age difference. He noted that Gilbert had “complete trust” in his father, who carefully supervised the scene.
“Melissa had a very strong relationship in her life, the one she had with Michael Landon,” Butler said. “When Michael said to her, ‘This is the man for you,’ she was ready to put aside all of her anxieties and go for it. And Michael never fooled anyone on the show. He really had it all figured out. He knew what he was doing. He believed very strongly in his creative instincts. He believed that it would work.”
“I’m just really grateful that I was the guy that he thought he could trust with that,” Butler added.
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Dean Butler (center) told Fox News Digital that Michael Landon (left) carefully supervised the filming. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)
Still, Butler and Gilbert had to overcome their fears to try to bring the scene to life.
“I think a lot of young actresses maybe buckled under the pressure,” Butler said. “Melissa had no experience. She’d never been on a date. She’d never kissed anyone. She’d never done anything like that. All of that was still ahead of her. So to ask her to take this on when she had no real experience? That’s a testament to Melissa’s courage and her guts. She did it. She put all of her anxieties aside and stepped up. She knew what she had to do to be the Laura she was supposed to be.
Dean Butler said he was determined to be a gentleman and put Melissa Gilbert at ease. (NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images)
“My job was to make his job as easy as possible for him by being the gentleman I was led to be,” Butler continued. “There hasn’t been a casting like the one they did with us since then. This casting simply couldn’t happen today. Certainly not on a mainstream television show. »
Melissa Gilbert and Dean Butler experienced some anxiety on set before their kiss. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)
The couple kissed in the episode titled “Sweet Sixteen.” Butler wrote that nearly 100 people surrounded them on set, but only one person broke down in tears: Gilbert’s mother, Barbara Abeles.
“I felt that Barbara was not fully supportive of my presence on the show,” Butler wrote. “Her displeasure culminated, perhaps, in her not being able to bear to see me kiss her daughter. It was a protective displeasure; Barbara knew her daughter. I did not, and in a sense I am glad of that.”
Although the scene was “beautifully staged”, Abeles was not the only one who had reservations about the script. Butler explained that shortly after he was cast in the role, an August 1979 article in the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain made a “disturbing prediction.”
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Several “concerned” mothers wrote to express their outrage at the age gap in casting. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)
“Dean Butler has perhaps the trickiest role of the 1979-1980 television season. He must convince viewers of the hit series “Little House on the Prairie” that it is normal for an adult man to fall in love with a pubescent girl. »
Butler attempted to clarify matters, telling a reporter, “I think this is going to be handled very cautiously.” » He was nevertheless aware that the network was “venturing into risky territory”.
Viewers noticed. Butler described how, after the episode aired, a distraught mother wrote to a Midwestern newspaper, calling for casting director Susan Sukman to be “burned alive” for pairing Gilbert with “a grown man.” The horrified matriarch asked how she could still convince her daughter to wait for the right moment when such “romantic depravity” was taking place on “Little House.”
Dean Butler wrote in his memoir that Melissa Gilbert’s mother made her feelings about the couple known on set. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)
“There have been letters…and comments about this age difference,” Butler told Fox News Digital. “The mothers were concerned… Seeing a visibly young Melissa Gilbert with someone much older than her in this romantic relationship was a challenge for some people. But, I think… people understood the spirit of the program. They understood where it was going. And people who were familiar with the subject, who read the books, knew that there was a 10-year difference between Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder when they got married.
In her memoir, Gilbert writes that after meeting Butler, she was faced with “a perfect storm of disappointment, fear, anger, and even nausea.” She later told Butler in a phone call, “How was I going to do that?” You were a man, a grown man with a car and an apartment. I was a very young teenager. I wasn’t allowed to wear heels. I still wore Mary Janes. I couldn’t pierce my ears. I wasn’t allowed to shave my legs and I never even had a date.”
The character of Dean Butler proposed to Laura Ingalls (Gilbert). However, she refuses, noting her father’s wish that she wait until she is 18. (NBC Television/Courtesy of Getty Images)
“The biggest problem I had during all of this was the issue of physical space,” Gilbert said, as quoted by Butler in his book. “I just wasn’t ready to have that kind of physical contact with anyone. As far as sex and physicality and all that, I was basically raised by a Puritan. . . . She was totally puritanical when she talked to me about this kind of physical contact and intimacy. I tried to have these conversations with her, and it inevitably came down to, “Good girls don’t do it.”
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Despite the awkwardness the kiss caused the couple, Butler stressed there were no hard feelings today.
Melissa Gilbert wrote the foreword to Dean Butler’s book. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)
“I think we’re now very respectful colleagues,” he said. “We know we’re part of something. We’re bonded by this experience, by having done this. . . . She knows I respect this special moment in her life and her career. . . . We’ll always be bonded by this experience.”
Almanzo Wilder (Dean Butler) and Laura Ingalls (Melissa Gilbert) got married and had children. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)
“Melissa is a very accomplished woman,” Butler said. “I’ve always had a great deal of respect for her and what she’s accomplished. . . . She gets that respect from all of us who were a part of ‘Little House.’ The relationship I have with Melissa today is important in my life because of the work we’ve done and how much it means to so many people. She’s good, I’m good, we’re good.”
Today, Butler is getting a different kind of feedback — from fans who now admit he was their first crush.
Dean Butler today. (Bobby Bank/Getty Images)
“It’s incredibly flattering,” he said. “It’s also a lesson in humility. I take this very seriously, being the man they fell in love with. . . . I am still that person. I will always be that person. And I’m happy about it. »