Hamner family biography interview

Pierre V. Comtois ,. Jason V. Brock Goodreads Author ,. John R. Fultz Goodreads Author ,. Thomas Ligotti. Dorothy Clarke Wilson ,. Paul Horgan. To add more books, click here. Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Spencer's Mountain by Earl Hamner Jr. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars.

Marion passed away on November 22, at the age of She has five children and six grandchildren. The model for Ben Walton came from two brothers. Bill Hamner l died in His wife, Brenda, lives in the Richmond, Virginia area.

Hamner family biography interview

Bill's three children are Harold, Hope and Gail. Paul and his wife, Etta, have two children, Paul Jr. James Hamner , the youngest brother died on April 1, Jump to ratings and reviews. Want to read. Rate this book. Karen Brewer. Loading interface About the author. Karen Brewer 8 books. Write a Review. Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews. Sadly, the composer died before finishing the musical. In , The Homecoming was published by Random House. The first year it received five Emmys, and it ran for nine years. As the producer and creator of the series, Hamner had other writers working under him. He describes his role as sometimes more of a re-writer than a writer, but points out that this position allowed him to attempt to provide a depth of character for his actors that is seldom achieved in television.

Hamner loves to tell stories about his interactions with actors. He told Alex Paige:. I remember once Michael Learned objected to the fact that she poured coffee all the time as her character. I changed it so the next episode the father was pouring the coffee. And I looked at it and I said, 'Ellen, I'm not going to let you do this. When she died, Michael Learned called me and said, 'We're putting Ellen's ashes in the mausoleum today.

Would you like to come? Then I thought, Ellen would hate flowers! And so I sat down and I wrote a beautiful scene which Ellen as Grandma dominated. It was put in the vault with her ashes. Of course, The Waltons has made an indelible impression on television audiences worldwide and deeply impacted Hamner's own family. He told Deborah Rieselman of the University of Cincinnati Magazine that once his brother Jim got a speeding ticket, and the police officer called him "Jim-Bob"!

While working tirelessly on The Waltons series, Hamner continued to write for film. White classic. When Hamner was invited to the University of Cincinnati in to receive the Frederic Ziv Award for outstanding achievement in telecommunication, he told his audience: "Writing is a very emotional experience for me. Once, when I was writing the film adaptation of Charlotte's Web , the phone rang and the caller said, 'You sound all choked up.

When The Waltons' run finally ended, Hamner had been working on two fairly distinct ideas which he combined in the Falcon Crest series. It was about an Italian family in the vineyard business, like his mother's people, the Gianninis, but set in California's Napa Valley. Hamner told Tony Albarella in an interview for Filmfax :. The matriarch of the family, played by Jane Wyman, was proud of her family, and, while she often was underhanded in doing so, she did everything she could to nurture the rituals, history, and customs of her family.

She was proud of her land, valued the continuity of it, and I suspect would have gone to any lengths to protect it. After five of its nine seasons, Earl Hamner quit the series. He told Paige:. I never even watched it again; I was not pleased with the direction it was going in. I also was not sympathetic to some of the people that were brought aboard.

And I was tired, and being in charge with whatever happens on the show, you take the glory and the credit as well, but I had taken that for so long, about fifteen years with both The Waltons and Falcon Crest , so I was very tired, and I didn't feel that I was coping as I might. And also I had become comfortable financially and didn't need to work.

Although now, I need to -- not for the money, but to prove to myself and to others in the business that age need not impair one's talent, but on the contrary can contribute the benefit of experience the years have brought and, if we've been lucky, even a small smidgen of wisdom. I think that's been the story of my life on television.

To try to tell a story, when networks have always insisted on the element of sex and some violence.