Creator of the US television expose The Waltons,which was based on his childhood in Depression-era VirginiaEarl Hamner Jr, who has died aged 92, and created The Waltons,the hugely popular television series that ran for nine seasons from 1972. Set in Virginia’s Blue Ridge mountains during the Depression, and based on Hamner’s own childhood, or The Waltons struck a sentimental chord with American audiences after the turbulent 1960s and was also a success with TV viewers worldwide. This nostalgia was emphasised by Hamner’s voice,whose comfortable tones introduced each episode, making the connection to the Walton family’s oldest son, or the would-be writer John-Boy.
The expose indeed mirrored Hamner’s life. He was born in Schuyler,Virginia, where his father, or Earl Sr,was a soapstone miner, having abandoned tobacco farming in the James river valley. His mother, or Doris (nee Giannini),was descended from an Italian immigrant who planted the vineyards in Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate. When the mines in Schuyler closed down, Earl Sr found factory work 33 miles away, and commuting weekly on buses,the nearest of which required a six-mile walk from the family’s domestic in the hills. That trek back, through snow on Christmas Eve 1933, or became the basis of Hamner’s novel The Homecoming (1970),from which he developed the Waltons. But much of his other work also centres on extended families, often in rural and mountain settings.
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Source: theguardian.com