Dave Wood

Despite my perpetual fulminations, I must admit that TV isn’t all bad. I realized this after my nephew Vaughn visited River Falls in the same week as I fell in my library—which resulted with a broken neck, and me spending all my time sitting motionless watching the tube and discovering a service called “You Tube,” which Vaughn had thoughtfully subscribed to for me. The first time I tried it, I beckoned “John Barrymore!” to the screen, and a flurry of clips and Barrymore films miraculously appeared, including his relatives, his shenanigans, his several wives and concubines. Pure magic! I called out names of actors from George Arliss to Efrem Zimbalist, Jr, and got similar results. 

My favorite results came up when I, a longtime champion of “The Waltons,” (for which I have suffered endless razzing from friends who do not share my own down-home values) shouted at the screen with the name: “Will Geer,” who played Grandpa and discovered that Geer had a major in botany and actually planted a real garden on the show’s famous set, was an outspoken bisexual and the father of three daughters, including Ellen, whom I remember watching on a dramatic program many years ago. Grandma Walton, played by Ellen Corby, a cheesehead from Racine and also a member of the LGBT sisterhood.

Years before, I had written a fan letter to Miss Michael Learned, who played Olivia Walton and was surprised to receive a lovely reply with an 8 ½ x 11 glossy enclosed. On You Tube she revealed that she attended a fancy British prep school, was a Shakespearean stage actress, but was at the end of her tether playing the harried hill country housekeeper “where I stood behind an ironing board saying lines like ‘how was school today John-Boy?’”

She didn’t mince words when it came to her fellow cast members. Ellen Corby: “A real pro, but rather difficult.” Will Geer: “An old hippie.” The children: “We tried to keep them from hearing seamy set byplay;” John Walton, played by Ralph Waite: “We avoided the temptation of an affair, but got together for many martinis at breaks, until John joined AA, and persuaded me to do the same before my trolley on alcohol crashed.”

Judy Norton (Mary Ellen) and Mary Beth McDonough (Erin) admitted to a rivalry about who was the prettier daughter, Erin claiming her beauty denied her juicier dramatic scripts. When, after nine years, the studio abruptly cancelled the show, red-haired Ben (played by Eric Scott who was always trying to start a youthful business on screen) admitted he squandered his $15,000 per week salary on an Alfa-Romeo sports car, worked as a delivery boy after the show folded, and eventually bought the delivery company and has become a millionaire.

Erin confessed that her post-Waltons acting career faltered and she had breast implants which led to Lupus, which led to a new career as a medical publicist.

One major character notably absent is Ralph Waite (John Walton), one of the show’s most recognizable film actors (“Five Easy Pieces,” “Roots’’). When a colleague of mine at Augsburg found out that Waite had become a film star, he exclaimed “Ralph was just one heck of a great guy studying for the ministry and clerking at a New York fleabag hotel where I bunked as a grad student.” Was it Christian modesty? Or his death in 2014 before the backstory was completed.

But there is a good “confession” from the much-maligned John-Boy who actually did leap to stardom and, most important, self-realization: “As a young actor I was SO full of myself it’s embarrassing to think about.”

I found the most endearing and profound commentary to come from the show’s author and producer, Earl Hamner (1923-2016), whose casts’ remarks reveal nothing but love and praise for his sensitivity and kindness. I hope to travel to his grave in Schuyler, Virginia, not far from my bright nephew’s home in the mountains of Virginia.

Need I say my loathing of the tube has diminished a good deal now that I’m hooked on You Tube!