The Waltons

Will Geer was an American actor and social activist. He is known for his portrayal of Grandpa Zebulon Tyler Walton in the 1970s TV series, The Waltons. Geer was born in Frankfort, Indiana, the son of Katherine , a teacher, and A. Roy Ghere, a postal worker. He was deeply influenced by his... grandfather, who taught him the botanical names of the plants in his native state. Geer started out to become a botanist, studying the subject and obtaining a master's degree at the University of Chicago. While at Chicago he also became a member of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity. He began his acting career touring in tent shows and on river boats. He worked on several left-oriented documentaries, including narrating Sheldon Dick's Men and Dust, about silicosis among miners. Geer was also the lover of gay activist Harry Hay. In 1934, Hay met Geer at the Tony Pastor Theatre, where Geer worked as an actor. They became lovers, and Hay credited Geer as his political mentor.
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Ellen Corby was an American actress. She is most widely remembered for the role of "Grandma Esther Walton" on the CBS television series The Waltons, for which she won three Emmy Awards. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Aunt Trina in I Remember Mama. Corby was born... Ellen Hansen in Racine, Wisconsin, the daughter of Danish parents. She grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. An interest in amateur theater while in high school led her to Atlantic City in 1932 where she briefly worked as a chorus girl. She moved to Hollywood that same year and got a job as a script girl at RKO Studios and Hal Roach Studios, where she frequently worked on the Our Gang comedies, next to her husband, cinematographer Francis Corby. She held that position for the next twelve years and took acting lessons on the side. Corby began her career as a writer working on the Paramount Western Twilight on the Trail and 1947's Hoppy's Holiday. She landed her first acting job in 1945, playing a maid in RKO's Cornered.
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Michael Learned is an American actress known for her role as Olivia Walton on The Waltons and Bruce Lee's racist mother-in-law in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. Learned was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Elizabeth Duane "Betti" and Bruce Learned, a diplomat. Her maternal grandfather was... an attaché for the United States Embassy in Rome. She lived on a Connecticut farm with her five sisters for the first ten years of her life. She was named Michael because her father, a diplomat, had wanted and expected to have a boy and had selected the name Michael in advance. When it was clear he had a daughter rather than a son, he decided to keep the name he had chosen. When she was 11, Learned moved to Austria, where her father worked for the U.S. State Department. At this time, she attended Arts Educational School, Tring now Tring Park School for the Performing Arts in Tring, Hertfordshire, England. During this time, she discovered the theatre and decided to make acting her life's work. In a 2002 article she wrote for Daily Word, a publication of the Unity Church, Learned states that at the time she was cast in The Waltons, she had "hit rock bottom".
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Richard Earl Thomas is an American actor, arguably best known for his leading role as budding author John-Boy Walton in the CBS drama The Waltons. During his career, Thomas won an Emmy Award, and received nominations for another Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. Thomas was born Richard Earl... Thomas in New York, the son of Barbara and Richard S. Thomas. in 1951. His parents were dancers with the New York City Ballet and owned the New York School of Ballet. He attended The Allen Stevenson School and The McBurney School in Manhattan. Thomas was seven when he made his Broadway debut in Sunrise at Campobello playing John Roosevelt, son of future U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Thomas soon began his television career. In 1959, he appeared in the presentation of Ibsen's A Doll's House with Julie Harris, Christopher Plummer and Hume Cronyn. He then began acting in daytime TV, appearing in soap operas such as The Edge of Night and As the World Turns , which were broadcast from his native Manhattan.
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