According to www.tvshowsondvd.com this show's first season will be released on DVD May 11th.

I might buy this just to see if it really was as good as I (all too vaguely, sad to say) remember it being.

Who's excited about this, and who isn't?

My first thought was, Meh; but I liked this show and had a mad crush on John Boy. I remember begging my parents for the children's book (wish I still had that). I think I'd be willing to buy the dvds. How many seasons were there?

Nine, according to the site mentioned in my earlier post. Which is about three more than I thought there were.

I used to watch this show as a kid with my folks when it first aired and almost until it went off the air. CoraBeth Godsey was such a drama queen and the Baldwin Sisters were such a trip!

Oh, even though my friends give me strange, sideways glances when I say this-- but The Waltons is one of my very favorite shows! I admit it! I used to watch it in re-runs after school and now sometimes catch some of it on TVLand in the mornings. The characters were really well-observed and I love the period detail of the Depression and WWII. My family's small and I always wanted a huge one, so this gave me a good feeling for that as well. The show had so many good recurring characters too: Rev. Fordwick (pre-Jack Tripper John Ritter), the Baldwin ladies and their secret recipe, Yancy Tucker, Verdie, Ike Godsey, but yeah Cora Beth was a real pill.

I have too many favorite episodes, but my least favorite is the one where the wandering minstrel comes to Walton's Mountain, woos Mary Ellen and she runs away with him. The minstrel is too flower-power hippy-dippy. There's also an episode where Elizabeth develops powers of mental-telepathy that's pretty bad. That one doesn't even make sense. Other than that, though, great, great show.

Can't wait for the first season to came out on DVD in a couple of weeks! Yay!

I never liked this show when it came out originally when I was a kid. Then, I caught it in reruns when I was an adult and warmed to it. The one thing I found remarkable was the way they treated Ellen Corby (Grandma). She had a major debillitating stroke well into the show's run that left her virtually unable to speak. (She could squeak out a few words, but that was about it.) So what did they do? They gave Grandma a bad stroke. They sent the character to a nursing home or something while Corby was recovering, then brought her back home with the same disability as Corby's. Her part was reduced, but she was still very much a part of the show and went on to do some remarkable work.

I love this show, and I'm only 24. I started watching reruns in high school. I think my goal was to snark on it, but then I started really liking it.

I liked John Boy, but I also had issues with him being the all-knowing big brother. That is why I've always hated Matt Camden. (7th Heaven I do watch occasionally, but only to laugh at) Anyway, I loved the grandparents. The episode after Will Geer died and they went to Grandpa's grave made me cry like a baby. I do admire the show for keeping Ellen Corby on, and I thought they treated her with dignity. Also, did anyone else ever feel bad that Jim Bob couldn't fly planes like he wanted?

Okay, I may have to get the DVD's.

I used to love The Waltons when I was little! Weird part of that is that I'm still in high school. I used to watch the reruns almost everyday. I always liked John-Boy (the original!) and Elizabeth the best. I always felt bad for her in the later seasons because she seemed to get left out a lot. I loved the Baldwins sisters and their recipe. Cora Beth I could do without, and their little adopted daughter Amy was pretty annoying, but otherwise it was a very good show. I never saw the episode right after Will Geer died, but I've always wanted to, and I agree that they treated Ellen Corby very respectfully after her stroke.

I didn't like the later seasons to much because the John and Olivia were always gone and they had that weird Rose lady and her annoying brat kids that she was in charge of. Also, the not-John-Boy guy just wasn't that good. While it was nice to see the other kids growing up and getting plots, Mary Ellen and Erin had hair that was waaaay to '70s for 1940 or whatever. But I still liked the show.


But didn't he get to in a tv movie that they did? Or maybe I'm remembering incorrectly. I thought he took Mary Ellen's kid, Kurt Jr. or something, up in a plane and she got all upset. But maybe I'm recalling incorrectly. Not that I actually watched any of those....

Will Geer died suddenly during the summer hiatus between seasons six and seven. His last episode filmed was actually the first that Ellen Corby did after her stroke. In the season seven premiere (the one txm79 posted about), the family visitis Grandpa's gravesite on his birthday and they each have a private moment where they say something to him at his grave in the mountains. When it's Grandma's turn, she says "Old Man, you live in our hearts." Its a real heartbreaker. This isn't all from memory, btw. I consulted my handy-dandy fan book, Goodnight John-Boy. (Yes, I really am that big of a geek. Hard to imagine, I know.)

I have to agree about not liking Cousin Rose, her kids and her gentleman caller. Bo-ring. The new John-Boy didn't bother me so much, mostly because he's so blah I'm able to ignore him. Also, those are mostly the WW2 eps and I like them a whole lot. However, he does have one of the all-time worst introductions of a new actor replacing an old: Some people, Ike Godsey, I think and someone else, are looking at a picture of John-Boy in the paper and someone says, "Gee, John-Boy sure looks different than the last time I saw him." Cut to a photograph of new John-Boy.
Does anyone else remember this? But Richard Thomas' last episode is a really good one. His book gets published and he has to move to NYC. He stands in the yard and says, "Goodnight everybody." Awwww!

The original John Boy was worlds better then the the Boring 2.0 version. Although I did kind of like that episode where he remembers the plane getting shot down and how his friend died.

The Cousin Rose days weren't very good, I agree with that also. Those kids got on my nerves.

sevhevcracksmeup, I've never seen any of the TV movies so I don't know if Jim Bob got to fly. I always thought it would've been interesting for Jim Bob to go off to war like the rest of the boys.

The Baldwin Sisters and their recipe was cool. Grandpa was always drinking it. Heh.

One episode I remember liking a lot was the one where Jim Bob and Ben were fighting over those girls. It was during the spring, and everyone was doing their spring cleaning chores. It ended with Jim Bob and Ben getting in a huge fight, and then they were over it. I don't know why I liked that one so much, but I did. I hated the episodes where Mary Ellen's husband was found alive. I've blanked on his name. He died at Pearl Harbor and it was very sad, and then later in the series he was actually found to be alive and living somewhere else. I think they should've just left it as it was.

That was the poltergeist episode (I was into that supernatural crap at the time it first aired).

There was this one ep that creeped me out as a child involving Elizabeth having nightmares and sleepwalking. I no longer remember the details, but I think it was the result of her seeing some carnies kill a guy at the county fair.

I recall this other ep that freaked my sister out featuring this mute German guy who hid in the woods and whistled at people passing by. For some reason I want to say he was a Nazi but as this was in the first or second season, that doesn't make any sense.

Oh yeah, who can forget John Boy 1.0 witnessing the Hindenburg accident?

There's a good site with detailed summaries.


Elizabeth was riding the Ferris Wheel when it hit a robber in the head and knocked him out. The Ferris Wheel

Supernatural episode: The Changeling


This might be the seventh season episode The Spirit.

I believe Mary Ellen's husband's name was Curtis, and didn't they name their son John Curtis? Yeah, they should have left him dead at Pearl Harbor. That was perfect because before he got stationed there, we the viewers got to see Mary Ellen saying how great it was that he was going to Hawaii, and didn't 'Pearl Harbor' sound like such an idyllic place, etc., and of course we know what will happen there. But then then go and ruin it later by saying he survived, shellshocked? and started his life over. So basically, he abandoned his family. Bleah.

One inherent problem with The Waltons, just as with LHotP, is that the kids were cute when they were little, but once they got older it became painfully apparent that they weren't good actors. Watching adult/adolescent Mary Ellen, Erin, Ben, Jim Bob, or Elizabeth try to carry a scene was often cringe-inducing. Jason, for some reason, didn't seem to suck quite as bad.

I always wanted Will Geer to be my grandpa, although grandma was a little scary with all her cranky piousness. Anyone else think grandpa was growing a secret crop for his own personal use somewhere on the mountain?

Nope, it was this one: The Nightwalker

Yeah, that was really cheap. I never really like Curt that much; I liked the guy she originally intended to marry a lot better. Plus Curt always looked really pissed off to me. And what a jerk he turned out to be! Wasn't it that he had amnesia and moved to Florida and had a new family? Is that even close?



There was also Jewish family fleeing the Nazis that moved to the Mountain later on, right? They were German Jews, I think, because everyone was prejudiced against them for being German, not realizing that they were really persecuted Jews? And then wasn't there another boy who showed up in town that had family dying in the concentration camps and no one believed him, at least initially? That Mountain sure saw a lot of action.



ITA. Jason really grew on me as the show went on and by the show's end, I'd have to say he was my favorite. I liked a lot of the episodes that revolved around his musical career with the Haystack Boys (?) and playing at the Dew Drop Inn. From what I understand, the actor had a genuine love/talent for music and that's where a lot of those episodes come from. I also liked the episode where he decides he is a conscientious objector and then some drunks call him a coward. Can't remember how the episodes ends, especially considering he eventually goes off to war.

I think I remember the actor who played Jason played the Grand Old Opry once. That was when I was living in Tennessee, and I think there was an article in the paper about it.

I used to think Jim Bob was sooo cute. Then I saw a picture of him recently. It was...sad. I know there was some tabloid article about how the actress who played Elizabeth was reduced to waiting tables. Turns out "reduced" wasn't exactly the word for it: She was a college student, doing what most college students do. (Something along the lines of the money she made on The Waltons was put into a trust she could get into when she was an adult, but while she was college aged, she had to pick up extra bucks with summer jobs. In other words, emminently normal.) If I remember rightly, she was a math major.

Jon Walmsley was the guitarist in Richard Marx's band in the 80s.

So, it wasn't a German. That was a fifth season episode. I think a few episodes blended together for you. I told you that was a good site. ;)

That is true that the acting wasn't exactly earth shattering when the kids grew up. I always had a soft spot for Jim Bob. I really liked Jason, too. Some truly bad acting that I just remembered was when they had to shoot Elizabeth's horse because it broke a leg, and all the men were off at war so one of the girls had to do it. Ben's wife, I think. The women were crying, and it just wasn't good. I did see the actress who played Erin on ER one time, and I thought she did fine.



I always thought that was a good twist, although it may have just been bad writing. Jason really didn't want to fight, and then ended up leading men in the war.

I liked that episode with Jason and his friend, played by Ron Howard. They played music together, and the friend dies of leukemia. He leaves Jason his recorder. It was good, very sad.

Yay! A Waltons site! Heh. I have got to calm it down some.

This show has always been my "guilty pleasure". I actually taped them all in order when "The Family Channel" ran the series several years ago.(Does anyone know why syndicated shows are never shown in order? This has always puzzled me!) My favorite episode by far is the one where the son of Ashley Longworth, Miss Emily's oft spoken of long lost suitor comes to the mountain to tell Miss Emily of his fathers death. He is Ashley Longworth Jr. a Navel Officer, and is said to look just like his Dad.He is played by a very young Jonathan Frakes, and sweeps Erin off her feet. Miss Emily believes he is Ashley Sr. and gives Erin a run for her money for Ashley's attention.The chemistry between Erin and Ashley sizzles and makes this episode very special. I cannot believe how much I like this show,it is so out of character for me.It's nice to "come out" among friends who don't think me deranged. (Right?)

Cut me some slack; I'm an old man. :-)

I vaguely recall seeing the episode with Jonathan Frakes on TVland fairly recently and realizing who it was near the end.

Didn't they always have VSE (Very Special Episodes) for every little holiday? There was a Thanksgiving, a X-mas, a Mother's Day, and it would not surpirse me if there was one for Arbor Day.

What about the VS Polio Episode where Livvie gets cured when she hears Elizabeth cry out during a nightmare. See, if you get polio, it's just a mind over matter thing. Or something.

Some of my favorite scenes:

1. John-Boy ripping Rev. Fordwick and the townspeople new orifices at the book-burning, capping it off with Flossie Bremer reading - and translating - one of the books to be burned and it turned out to be a German bible.

2. When John-Boy got his scholarship after having to take the test in the hospital. Instead of showing it, all you see is exterior the house. You hear John-Boy gallumping down the stairs, shrieking, "I GOT IT!" and the happy commotion following.

3. When Jim-Bob tells Mary Ellen of Curt's death at Pearl Harbor.

4. Will Geer's final episode, when Grandma comes home from the hospital and she's miserable with being fussed over and shunted to the side. In their last scene together, he confesses to reading her diary and discovering her frustrations. He hands her a broom and tells her to "earn her keep." She takes the broom and swats him on the behind. The look between the two of them was wonderful. She felt alive, and he was thrilled to see his Esther's sparkle back.

Ooh! Ms Chicklet that's a really good one. I also love John Ritter's first episode as Rev. Fordwick. He's all hellfire and brimstone and John tells him he ought to tone it down a bit. The Rev thinks that's a bad idea until he gets a sip of the Baldwin sisters' Recipe and turns up drunk at some town function. The whole Mountain wants to turn him out, but John points out that they have to forgive and accept flaws and whatnot. Ritter changes his preaching methods a bit. Good stuff.

ubi, there WERE alot of holiday episodes, now that you mention it. I think a lot of the reunion specials were holiday themed as well- Mothers Day, Easter, a couple of Thanksgivings. Also, the Patricia Neal TV movie that lead to the weekly show was a Christmas one. Looking through an ep guide, there's a Christmas ep I've never seen where they take in a German POW (b/c a German boat had rescued John-Boy II). That place was seriously crawling with Nazis for a small mountain town.

Olivia had polio (first contracted during the Easter season-- naturally) and wasn't she written out of the show with tuburculosis? Poor woman.



Irons, I know! Why do I feel like my Waltons-love must be kept like a dirty secret? I always want to begin my post, "Hi, My name is Miss Kubelik and like The Waltons."

"Hi Miss Kubelik!"

One of the Christmas specials revolves around the Family taking in two children sent over from The U.K. during the blitz. The older sister keeps a stiff upper lip but her little brother is shell shocked and mute. Even Elizabeth is fed up with having her Christmas spoiled by his behavior.(Very Un-Walton like!). It all turns out fine in the end though, because Jim-Bob gets his Ham Radio up and running and (a Christmas Miracle!) manages to cotact the childrens Mother in England (Who has a Ham Radio too,another Christmas Miracle!) I see nothing contrived in this episode.

Michael Learned always struck me as too fragile as Olivia, especially compared to Patricia Neal. She should've been a tough, stoic mountain woman, but she always seemed to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

One thing they did perfectly was the sound of the back screen door creaking and slamming shut. I love that little touch.

You mean that wasn't a real door sound? It always sounded so real. I never even thought about it, but it really did sound very good. Huh.

Actually, Jim-Bob had been "chatting" with a female ham radio operator in England before the two English children came. He had them talk with her once, and they mentioned their names. The woman in England ended up tracking down the children's mother, who had been seriously injured in the Blitz, in which the father was killed.

The real Christmas Miracle of that episode would have been not noticing the 1970s cars and California freeways/landscapes in the background of the scenes of the airplane landing.

I was wishing that "Spotted Dick" could have been put into the dialogue somehow - if only to hear Miss Emily Baldwin remember the time Ashley Longworth served her Spotted Dick.

I thought she had a stroke?


More like a stroke from all the drinkin' and dancin' and carousin' everyone was doing. I recall she lived up to the fun-hating Baptist stereotype.

sevhevcracksmeup, I think it was the actual sound the door made. But it was such a cool sound, they must've found just the right door and rusted the hinges just the right amount.

Whenever I watch the reruns now, I wish I could go antiques shopping in their house. Remember all those iron headboards? And I want to go through all the cupboards and look at their dishes.

ETA: Olivia had polio and later tuberculosis; Esther (and RL Ellen Corby) had a stroke. Zeb had a mild heart attact and wouldn't get out of bed. Jim-Bob had appendicitis, John-Boy broke his arm, and Reckless got shot. But at least nobody went blind, got trapped in a burning building and had to smash a window with an infant, or was raped by a mime.

... a car fell on Elizabeth (due to some negligence of Jim Bob's) and she was crippled. They thought she might never walk again, but she was walking by the end of the episode. 'Cuz that's how they do it on Walton's Mountain.

...Bitch. Sorry. ;)

Wasn't it a pile of logs? Ben and Jim Bob went off to swim instead of doing their work, and I think Elizabeth climbed the wood pile to get a bird or something and the wood pile collapsed.

There was one episode where Jim Bob was working under a car and it slipped off the jack but I don't think he was hurt. I think he decided to be a preacher due to his near-death experience but snapped out of it by the end of the episode.

There was the episode during the WWII times when a mountain kid got killed and the dad was pissed at John for being on the draft board or something, and vowed to kill one of the Walton boys. He shot through the window of the living room, and also through the window of Jim Bob's car. Jim Bob bent down at the last second or he would've been killed. I think it ends with The Waltons receiving word that John Boy was missing, so they quit with their feud.

Everyone is taking me back to the good ol' days. My mom loved this show and we would watch it all the time.

Can anyone help jog my memory? Didn't the show end with Ben as a POW in a Japanese prison camp? Wasn't he presumed dead?

Did Olivia ever return to the show? I hated the housekeeper, Rose and those kids.

Ben was a POW in a Japanese prison camp toward the end of the series. I don't think he was presumed dead, just missing. The series ended after the war. I think the final episode was when John-Boy 2.0 went back to New York, thinking he'd have an easy time picking up his career. But he couldn't find a job, he ended up broke and miserable before he went back to Walton's Mountain in time for a sentimental party at the Baldwin sisters' house.

The whipporwills told a crazy mountain woman to kidnap Mary Ellen's baby. Overall, I think the show needed more crazy mountain people. And more recipe.

Yum!

I was just about to say something about that...

Wasn't there an ep where they had a famous (or soon-to-be) famous visitor?

sevhevcracksmeup, hee! That's exactly where I was headed! Glad someone picked up on it. :::tinkle, tinkle- Walton's Mountain, here we co-o-o-o-me!:::

txm79, you're completely right; I melded the two traumas-of-the-week into one.



Now, that's just plain funny. I loved the crazy mountain lady who was actually a Walton. She was played by Beulah Bondi, George Bailey's mom in It's a Wonderful Life, and a character actress from a million other movies. Didn't they want to build a highway through her land and she pretty much squatted and came at them with a rifle? Also,Sissy Spacek guested on a few episodes as a poor-mountain-girl with possibly-crazy-mountain parents. Anyway, John Boy I delivered her out-of-wedlock baby in an abandoned shack in the woods. Those are some of my favorite episodes and the first I ever saw.



There are two I'm thinking of: 1.) A.J. Covington, a famous writer who has somewhat fallen out of favor and bonds with John Boy and 2.) the actress (can't remember her name) whose car breaks down on the Mountain and the Walton's take her in. She had lost all her money and couldn't leave. She scandalizes the Waltons (mostly Olivia and Esther) with her Hollywood stories and celebrity ways. She earns money by putting on a show for the Waltons and leaves the mountain.

And they weren't famous per se, but anyone remember the Carny episode? Awesome! They live in the Walton's yard for some time and the Waltons are kind to them so the Carnies put on a show in the barn and then the Waltons help them ride the rails so they can get to their next gig.

Ooh, yeah, the carnies were pretty cool. Wasn't The Waltons written by some guy who had these real life experiences with his family, and he wrote a movie called Spencer's mountain, which The Waltons was based off of? Because I recall seeing that movie, and it was very similar to the show (the oldest son was called Clay-Boy) and my dad told me that the movie was written by the same guy and inspired the show. Is that true?

Earl Hamner, Jr. He's had a long career as a TV writer and producer. He went from writing and producing and narrating The Waltons to writing and producing Falcon Crest, of all things. I met him ages ago when I voluteered at the first Virginia Film Festival and he was a speaker. He's from the Virginia Blue Ridge, and what I think is his old house is now a Walton's museum, in Schuyler. (I was a reporter in the area at the time and we did some stories on the opening, otherwise I wouldn't know.)

I didn't know it when I watched the show, but from living there I learned how rosy nostalgia can make people and just how piss poor the area really was in the 30's. Compared to the real life Blue Ridge life, the Waltons--and maybe the real-life Hamners--were almost wealthy. It's interesting the show never got into the Blue Ridge Parkway/Skyline Drive controversy, too. Where "Walton's Mountain" is is about where the two highways meet. A lot of the farmers in the area didn't want to sell out to the federal government so Skyline Drive could be built, and Roosevelt promised them he wouldn't force them off their land. So the state forced them off, burning a lot of the cabins, donating the land to the Feds (who I think had honestly dropped the matter by this point) and creating a resentment and paranoia about government that exists to this day. The Library of Congress has a bunch of pictures taken by government photographers in the 30s. Here's a sample.

I don't think she was pregnant; this is the one in which her crazy drunk father burns down the schoolhouse (and passes out inside after setting it) because they're teaching evolution, right?

Earl Hamner wrote for the Twilight Zone as well; you can probably guess what his eps were like...

Maybe that was the foundation for the episode where the Waltons' backwoods relatives (led by Martha Corinne and a younger Walton played by Richard Hatch) lose their cabin to a government highway project and decide to defend their land with guns. The Waltons get drawn into it and I think John-Boy got shot. In the end, IIRC, the backwoods relatives leave their land and move into government-built housing.

Was that the one where the Waltons gave their relatives a tour of the gubberment housing and pointed out all the modern conveniences, like running water, electricity, (and I think, indoor plumbing)?

Wow, I've seen the episode and I had no idea that was her. She was unrecognizably old, but now that I think of it there was a resemblance there.

You guys know Earl Hamner was the narrator of the series, don't you?

I knew he wrote a bunch of TZ eps, but I was disappointed that imdb doesn't list which ones he wrote. I think he wrote the one where a recently deceased hillbilly guy nearly enters through the gates of Hell (thinking it is Heaven) but he changes his mind when he finds out they won't take his dog. I'm guessing Earl wrote a bunch of the rural/hillbilly eps.

In The Odyssey, John Boy retreats to an abandoned cabin to get some alone time and ends up delivering Sarah Jane's (Sissy Spacek) baby. I thought the baby was out-of-wedlock, but actually Sarah Jane had run away from home and married a townie.

In The Fire, a crazy mountain drunk burns down the school for teaching Evolution to his daughter and dies in the fire.

All these crazy hillfolk running amok on Walton's Mountain is very confusing.

Yeah, he pretty much wrote all of the ones with "country folk".

Can you tell from my recollections? heh. The parents in the first ep (with the deaf girl and Elizabeth getting locked in a trunk) were kinda kooky too, weren't they?

Having never seen one episode of this show for the first 24 years of my life, I'm finally catching up. Watching the re-runs on TVLand at 7 a.m. has become part of my morning routine, after returning from the gym and before getting ready for work. The show itself has its ups and downs, but I'm a sucker for anything related to this period of American history. Plus, I love the strange looks my friends give me when I mention it's one of my favorite shows.



Spencer's Mountain was based on a book of the same name written by Hamner. I work for a college and shamelessly used the interlibrary loan service to obtain a copy. Although somewhat different from the show, it's easy to see how certain characters and episodes evolved from this first work. It's a good read. I recommend it if only for Clay-Boy's (i.e. John-Boy's) sex scene.



I've read a couple articles that say Kami Colter is now a school teacher in rural Virginia, not far from where Earl Hamner grew up. Probably living a happier life than most former child-actors.

The actress who played Erin (Mary McDonough??) got silicone breast implants after the show ended, apparently in order to get work in Hollywood. Then she had terrible health problems for years due to leakage, etc., and was too sick to work. I can't remember which childhood stars behind-the-scenes thingy I saw that on.

Yesterday or the day before in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Everyday section, there was a whole little article about The Waltons because the first season just came out on dvd. There were tiny little pieces of info on what the cast is up to now, and they were praising the first season of the show. It was pretty neat.

So.....What ARE they up to now?