Posted on 09/15/2012 3:42:16 PM PDT by BigReb555
Do you remember when John-Boy Walton asked Grandpa Zeb “Do we got something to show we own Walton's Mountain?”…. and his Grandpa replied, quote:
“You can't own a mountain any more than you can own an ocean or a piece of the sky. You hold it in trust. You live on it, you take life from it, and once you're dead, you rest in it.” Unquote
Edgar Bergen, Father of actress Candice Bergen, spoke these words as Grandpa in the 1971 CBS Pilot movie “The Walton’s: The Homecoming: A Christmas Special.”
In 1972, however, Will Geer would become the wise, lovable and most remembered Grandpa Walton until his untimely death in 1978. The Walton’s reflected on God, family values and ancestral heritage of a family living in the rural community of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia during the Great Depression and World War 11.
The ambitions of the Walton children included: John-Boy who wanted to be a writer, Jim-Bob an aviator, Mary Ellen a nurse and Jason a musician who loved playing Grandma’s favorite song “Carry me back to Ole Virginia.” Olivia Walton played by “Michael Learned” could quote Bible scripture as well as Grandma Walton and raised her children as good Christians with compassion for others.
Has it been 40 years since…
Dirty Harry starring Clint Eastwood and the God Father starring Marlon Brando were hot at the movies; the song “I’d love you to want me” by Lobo went to No. 2 on the Billboard chart; Richard M. Nixon was re-elected President of the United States and….
The Walton’s premiered in September 1972 on the CBS Television Network?
The Walton’s was an American television series created by Earl Hamner, Jr. for Lorimar Productions that touched the hearts and souls of young and old for nearly 10 years. The show was based on the novel by Earl Hamner “Spencer’s Mountain” that became a Warner Brothers movie in 1963 starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O’Hara.
One of my favorite episodes is entitled “The Scholar.” Miss Verdie Grant, played by Lynn Hamilton, learns that her daughter will graduate from college but is embarrassed that she never learned how to read and write. She asks John-Boy to teach her; on the condition he keeps it a secret. The friendship and compassion between black and white country people and a Confederate Battle flag respectfully displayed in a school classroom as seen in this episode is not politically correct but is historically accurate.
We were invited everyday Thursday night into the Walton’s home where John and Olivia Walton, along with John’s parents “Zeb” and “Esther” Grandma Walton, raise their seven children. John Walton played by “Ralph Waite” makes a living with his lumber mill.
The Walton’s neighbors included: the Baldwin sisters, two proud Southern ladies who make moonshine liquor they affectionately call “Papa’s recipe”; Ike Godsey owner of the local general store and wife Cora Beth, Verdie and Harley Foster, Yancey Tucker and Sheriff Ed Bridges who keeps the peace in fictitious Walton’s Mountain, Jefferson County, Virginia.
At bedtime the Walton’s turned off the lights and said good night and on one occasion Elizabeth asked her Momma and Daddy to sing the old song “The Old Spinning Wheel” which begins with “There’s an old spinning wheel in the parlor, Spinning dreams of the long-long ago.” It has been a long time ago but re-runs of the Walton’s, distributed by Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution in syndication, can still be seen on such channels like the “Hallmark Channel.” Good night, May God Bless and…
Ya’ll come back now, you here!
Loved that series. I believe that it is set near Charlotesville in VA.
I always liked “The Homecoming” I think it was a Christmas special.
The grandfather does commercials for some diabetes product but haven’t seen him on lately.
That wasn’t Will Geer, it was Wilford Brimley - although Brimley did appear in a few episodes.
>>The grandfather does commercials for some diabetes product but haven’t seen him on lately.<<
I don’t seem them either but, bless him, Wilford Brimley is still alive at age 78 and was in a movie as recently as 2011: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000979/
I think the mother and father were different actors in the homecoming. I wondered if maybe it was one of the first they ever made... sort of like a pilot. I think it was actually a made for television movie.
I remember watching the show premiere. I believe it was on a Thursday night. I was only 10 years old but my mother let me stay up late to watch it as it was a wholesome show. Our family watched that show for years together. Hearing the theme song to the show brings back good childhood memories for me. We also watched Little House on the Prairie but I didn’t like that show as much - that was my sister’s favorite show.
Will Geer, Grandpa, and Ellen Corby, Grandma of this lovely family, and in real life both as queer as a three dollar bill.
Nothing today can match those old programs. I no longer watch TV (except for documentaries, Ghost Hunters, Dead Files)
I mostly listen to Old Time Radio 1930s - 1960
Just look at the photos on Google. You’re right. Will Geer was also the grandfather I remember. Good man! But who did Wilford Brimley play? I thought he was like a grandfather too?
Mary Ellen was hot.
Encore Westerns is a pretty good station. I watch, Have Gun Will Travel,Wagon Train and Rawhide quite often.
Patricia Neal played the mother in The Homecoming which was the pilot. I loved that show. Back then, we had much fewer choices or maybe I should say fewer channels so everyone watched the same thing and we all have the same memories of growing up with the same shows and characters. It’s fun to connect that way.
Ya mean like running home from school so you could see Dark Shadows?
“Loved that series. I believe that it is set near Charlotesville in VA.”
When the Waltons would got into town, that town was Scottsville, Va. I lived there one summer/fall, a couple years before the series started.
Patricia Neal was the mother in the Homecoming, which was the pilot episode. I don’t recall who played the father.
It’s set about 20-25 miles south of Charlottesville in Nelson County, Virginia. Walton’s Mountain doesn’t actually exist, of course, but Earl Hamner grew up in the tiny town of Schuyler and that is the general area where The Waltons is set. There is a “Walton’s Mountain Museum” in the old elementary school in Schuyler.
I grew up about 30 miles further south just outside Amherst (population 1100), which is Manhattan compared to Schuyler. :)
}:-)4
After she got a little older, she did a nude spread for some magazine, it may have been Playboy. I don’t know if she was still with the Waltons when she did it. Must not have helped her career, though. I don’t remember seeing her in anything else after she finished doing the Waltons.
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