Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Party Time!
As you may already know, in September we will celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the premiere of "The Waltons." When I was a boy growing up in the backwoods of Virginia during The Great Depression I could never have dreamed that those days, those times, that little village and the events we experienced as a family, would become material for stories to be broadcast, over something we had never heard of called television, all over the world.
Not long ago I looked through some of the early reviews of the series when it first went on the air over CBS. I thought it might be interesting to see how we were first perceived 40 years ago.
In The New York Times, a writer named Anne Roiphe wrote the following:
"A bobwhite cry breaks the quiet of night among the firs and pines of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia "Goodnight Ma." "Goodnight John-Boy" "Goodnight Pa" and the lights of the Walton house on Walton’s Mountain somewhere in the early nineteen-thirties dim, and a million viewers turn away from their television sets, eyes wet, souls heavy with false memory and hopeless longing. C.B.S has filled another Thursday night with nostalgia, bathos, soap opera, formula plot, tear-jerking junk, and I and all those other viewers share a moment of tender shame at having been so painfully touched by such obvious commercial exploitation."
Commercial exploitation! Bathos! Tear-jerking junk! At this point I was so offended I was ready to cancel my subscription to The New York Times and write a scathing note to the lady. And then I read on:
"Since every Thursday night I am reduced to ridiculous tears, I had to ask these questions and explore the program’s skill at piercing touch hides, revealing sentimental ooze that can no more be than controlled than the shift of dreams that sill wake us screaming every now and then."
Sentimental ooze! Come on, Miz Roiphe?
You keep on this away I am liable to forget that I am a Virginia gentleman and say something I might regret!
A few lines later she continues, "The Waltons" may be romantic nonsense, may bear only superficial and misleading resemblance to real life, but it is very good magic. It is a good, workable dance to scare away the evil spirits of loneliness, isolations, divorce, alcoholism, troubled children, abandoned elders, - the real companions of American family life, the real demons of the living room."
Romantic nonsense, Miz Roiphe?
There was nothing the least romantic about the Great Depression of the 20’s and 30’s and we never portrayed it that way. It was a time when we were tested as a people, and we came through with courage, persistence, and faith in our country and our leaders. Poverty was just one of our challenges. It was a time when prejudice still stained many areas of the country, some racial and some religious, and we examined those issues too. The threat of Nazi Germany was becoming clear to many of us and one of our finest episodes dealt with that sport so beloved to the Nazis’ - book burning.
But more than that, we told stories about two people who loved each other and were dedicated to raising a family. We told stories that were dedicated to the strength of the American people that brought us back from the brink of ruin.
Romantic nonsense! Nonsense!
To make matters worse the writer illustrated her piece with photographs by Walker Evans showing emaciated children, haggard women, defeated men, people in rags, filthy shacks, which prompted my sister Marion Hawks (Mary Ellen Walton) to write an outraged letter to The Times" pointing out that the photographs only added to the inaccurate portrayal of our family. I think she was even a little threatening, but you know Mary Ellen.
After The New York Times piece it was a relief to find a review that I could relate to. It was written by critic Val Adams and his review goes as follows:
"Circumstances surrounding the Waltons provide one of the more interesting situations of this fall’s television series. It is different from any other show on the air which does not necessarily make it good. "The Waltons" has no excitement and no glamour. It is a story about simple people – a large family of three generations living at the foot of The Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia during the Depression of the 1930."
A little more favorable, but still it fell in the category of many other reviews which asked "Who will want to watch a series about poor people eating possum, swilling moonshine, and scratching out a living in the backwoods of Virginia during The Great Depression?"
The answer? Huge number of viewers. You – the audience. You found the series, liked it enough to come back the following week, liked it enough to tell your friends, liked it enough to write letters of support to CBS, and by the end of the season the series had risen to the Number One position in the ratings.
We went on the air in September. Most of the TV critics predicted a quick cancellation. Who, they continued to ask would watch a sprawling poverty-stricken backwoods family, swilling moonshine, feuding, and fighting, marrying each other and singing old Baptist hymns? Who would watch?
THE PEOPLE WATCHED!
And by December we were the Number One show in the ratings and we stayed there for several years.
Beginning in 1972 the series was seen on Thursday nights on CBS by an average of fifty million viewers in the United States. It was also seen in Canada and Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Fiji and in Ecuador, to mention only a few of the countries where it became popular.
The series was awarded six Emmy awards, six Christopher Awards, The Golden Globe Award from the Foreign Press Association, The People’s Choice Award, and the highest award given in broadcast journalism: The coveted Peabody Award from the University of Georgia. The series received commendations from the Council of Christians and Jews, The Society of Southern Baptists, The Religious Public Relations Council of the United Methodist Church, and the Church o0f Latter-Day Saints. One Sunday we went beyond my wildest expectations. In a magazine called "Twin Circle," which is the voice of the National Catholic Press, a picture of the cast of The Waltons was given equal space with a picture of the Pope. At that point I began to worry that we had gone too far
For each of us who were involved in the series it has changed our lives. The series became the building block for a brand new production company called Lorimar which went on to produce such memorable series as Dallas, The Blue Knight, and Eight is Enough and another of my long running series, Falcon Crest. For the actors, writers, directors and crew it meant more than ten years of steady employment, dependable income in an industry where such good fortune comes to few people. And even though the series caused some of the actors to be type cast, known only for their Walton roles, it did opoen doors, bring them to prominence in the industry and made their names and faces known wherever in the world there was a television set.
The show also provided a special kind of relationship to those of us involved. Because of kind of stories we told and because we were all portraying members of a family, we came together as "family" – a relationship that continues right down to today. We attend each other’s wedding, anniversaries, birthdays, funerals, christenings, bar mitzvahs. And so it was that we mourned as a family when we had to say goodbye to such special members of the cast, such beloved actors as Ellen Corby and Will Geer.
None of us had thought ahead to the effect the show would have on my family. Because the series was based on the character and structure of my own family it was important that I be true to the way my family members they were portrayed. This required my being in my office near the set all during the day attending casting sessions, network meetings, screenings, story meeting, and then at night writing or rewriting scripts to insure that they gave a honest representation of my family members. This became a burden on my own family when I realized that I was devoting more attention to a television family than my own and that I had not been home for dinner in months. It was a sober and shocking revelation. Believe me I was home for dinner from then on.
It was a bit of a family affair. Both my daughter, Caroline and my son, Scott were extras in "The Homecoming." And then my son, Scott, a writer, came aboard as a regular contributor to the series. His script, "The Reunion," became the last scheduled episode when we finished our first run.
To the audience The Waltons brought an hour of television each week that supplied a very personal and intimate experience to a vast number of people here at home and in every country of the world. Even today, forty years after the original first run, the series is being shown on three different cable channels, Hallmark, INSP, and GMA. I receive mountains of mail, sadly more than I can ever answer, and most of the letters say either "Your stories remind me of my own life." Or "This is how I wish my own life had been."
Change also came to my own family back in Virginia. Because the character were based on my mother and father, my brothers and sisters, they became known by their television names - my brother Cliff as Jason, my Sister Audrey as Erin, Brother Jim became Jim-Bob and so on.
And my hometown became a tourist destination! Fans from other countries and many other states came looking for the locations we had mentioned on the show such as Rockfish, The Dew Drop Inn, Drusilla’s Pond, the Baldwin residence and The Baptist Church and The Walton Museum.
The Hamner home is today listed on the Register of Historic Homes in Virginia and is owned by a local family. The house was a "company house" built in the 20’s and needed repair. Pam Rutherford, the present owner, renovated it and refurnished it and today there is a tour of it for a modest fee.
One of my favorite memories came one day after the series has become a hit. I often phoned my mother on Thursday nights right after the show to see how she felt about what she had seen, and her responses were always favorable. And then one day when I called, she spoke with me for a moment and then said, "I can’t talk long. There’s this nice young couple here. They’ve come all the way from Ireland and they just love the show!"
There’s even a Walton Mountain B and B directly in front of the old home place, an excellent home away from home if you are staying overnight in Schuyler. It is attractive and comfortably furnished, the food is great and an extensive collection of Walton memorabilia is available (including autographed copies of "Good Night John Boy"
There are two celebrations of the 40th Anniversary coming up in September. On Friday, September 28th there will be the traditional reunion of the Walton International Fan Club, hosted by President Carolyn Grinnell. As usual many cast members will be in attendance giving fan and actors an opportunity to mingle and Carolyn has promised a surprise or two. The party will be held at:
6:oo pm at The Holiday Inn
Burbank Media Center,
The South Pacific Ballroom
150 East Angeleno Avenue
Burbank, Ca. 91502
The dinner is sold out, but occasionally there are cancellations. To see if any spaces do become available call Carolyn at 336-993-2752 or her e-mail at
thewaltonsinternationalfanclub@mail.com
The following evening, Saturday September 29th there will be another celebration of our 40th Anniversary. Celebrating Family and Education, the proceeds will go to Kami Colter’s Environmental Charter School. Hosted by William Keck, Senior Editor at "TV Guide," the event will be held at The Wilshire Eubell Theater beginning at 6 o’clock.
For ticket or further information visit the event’s website
www.waltons40th.com
So come and join us at either or both of these celebrations. Some of you have already made arrangement to be with us. People are have already made plans to travel from Australia, Canada, Germany and England as well as many of our own states. Many cast members will appear at both parties. I will attend both of these events and look forward to seeing you.
Warm Walton Wishes
Earl Hamner
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Twinkle Twinkle Movie Star!
In 1939 an unlikely event came to our part of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Hollywood visited the Spencer’s Mountain area and for the first time we back country folks came face to face with the rich, the famous, with movie stars whose faces and names were known all over the world!
I was fifteen years old. Paramount Studios was making a film called "Virginia," a highly romantic and utterly unreal picture of rural life in our area in the late thirties. The location filming was being shot about six miles from my hometown in a village named Howardsville. I knew Howardsville pretty well. It was the meeting place of the James and the Rockfish River and the bridge at the edge of town led to Buckingham County where my father’s people, as tobacco planters, had settled originally and where cousins to the second and third degree still lived. We often spent our Sundays over there visiting relatives and always stopped in Howardsville to see a novelty – an albino squirrel which was kept in a big wire cage in the yard of a home along the main street.
Another family coincidence was that at the top of the mountain above the town was an area called Mount Alto. My Uncle Curtis Gianinni, my mother’s oldest brother, had a farm there which was destined to be immortalized in the film "Virginia."
Once news that the filming was underway, a whole pack of us youngsters hitchhiked down the Rockfish River Road to see what was going on. What was going on was HOLLYWOOD! And there were STARS!
An encampment had been set up consisting of private dressing rooms for the cast, limousines to deliver them from the Farmington Country Club in Charlottesville where they were housed, camera trucks, costume trucks, food trucks, make up trailers.
And - Oh the stars! In that part of the country we were just coming out of the tail end of The Great Depression. It had been a grim time and our day-to-day lives had seldom encountered such glamour and luster as the movies had celebrated. And suddenly right there in front of us were stars and they were giving off a glow. We country folks were in awe of such beautiful people. When they were not on camera they took it easy sitting in directors chairs, chatting among themselves, studying their scripts, giving autographs or going back and forth to their individual dressing rooms. There was an air about them. They moved with ease and grace. They were dressed in fashionable clothing. The ladies were gorgeous, the men were handsome. To those of us Blue Ridge folk they could have been gods and goddesses.
Madeleine Carol, a stunningly beautiful actress was being filmed supposedly arriving by train from New York.
Miss Carol was of British birth. In her time she was one of the highest paid female actors in the business. At one point, after the death of her sister during a German air raid, she gave up acting to entertain troops in the European Theater of Operations.
In the movie "Virginia" she was portraying a member of an aristocratic family returning to the old plantation to dispose of it. She had planned to make quick work of it until she fell in love with a local gentleman farmer, Fred MacMurray.
MacMurray in his career starred in over one hundred films, the most famous being "Double Indemnity" in which he starred with Barbara Stanwick. He is best known today as the father in the long running television series "My Three Sons."
In "Virginia" soon after falling for Fred MacMurray, Miss Carol meets a rich northerner, Sterling Hayden. She wavers between the two men, as one reviewer notes, "while the audience settles in for a good long nap."
In real life Madeleine Carol was to marry Sterling Hayden, according to studio publicist known as "The most beautiful man in the movies."
A man of action, he was always in love with the sea and ran away from home at seventeen to join the navy. He distinguished himself for his military service during World War Two.
Day after day we country folk flocked to Howardsville to watch the filming. At one point my Uncle Curtis and some of the local men were hired to work as extras, portraying farmer types sitting on a bench outside a county store. Curtis also made another extra couple of bucks by allowing the crew to film a sow in his pigpen that had just given birth to eighteen piglets.
When the film premiered in Charlottesville we all were there. Sadly the shot of Uncle Curtis had been edited out of the movie, but there was still occasion for elation. When the shot of Curtis’s pig came on screen, we rose in a body and shouted, "There’s Curtis’ pig!"
TWINKLE TWINKLE MOVIE STAR!
Part Two
During my early years at NBC radio I worked with a good many stars, especially on the showcase NBC THEATER OF THE AIR where we adapted classic stage plays to a radio format. Most of the stars of our shows tended to be actors from the New York stage, often not well known except to the theater going public. But when I came to Hollywood I became exposed to a good many film stars.
Fred MacMurry, Sterling Hayden and Madeleine Carroll, the first movie stars I ever laid eyes on, were stars of the old school. It was a lifetime later before I came into meaningful, personal contact with Hollywood stars.
During the filming of "Spencer’s Mountain" I was introduced to Henry Fonda and Maureen O"Hara but I cannot say we actually worked together. I would run into Fonda at Delbert and Ann Mann’s Christmas Party each year. Later when we were casting "The Waltons" I offered him the role of John Walton, but he rightfully pointed out that the star of the series was John-Boy and in his words "I’m too old to play second fiddle to a fifteen year old boy."
One star I later came to know well was Patricia Neal. She was a joy to know and to work with, and there is a story about her in the archives of this blog that you might enjoy.
On "The Waltons" each and every actor was a star, but they were and are still young people and I am talking here about a special group of actors. Most of them tended to have some special quality that set them apart, a kind of luminous quality that the camera liked. Most of them were under contract to one of the major studios, their lives and reputations closely attended and guarded, their careers carefully crafted. The studios groomed them to be stars, paid them outrageous salaries, nurtured, and exploited them all the while their image was being carefully built by publicity agents. Bette Davis had that star quality, so did Barbara Stanwick, Katherine Hepburn, Lana Turner, Dame Judith Evans, Joan Crawford, Jane Wyman and Ingrid Bergman, to name just a few. John Wayne had it and so did Jimmy Stewart, Ronald Regan, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable and Lawrence Olivier.
It was when we cast Miss Jane Wyman as Angela Channing, the owner of Falcon Crest, a prosperous vineyard in the Napa Valley that I came to know a star from that special galaxy. And from her I learned a little bit about stardom, what it is like to be a star, what makes them shine and how they guard that luminous quality.
Miss Wyman was born Sarah Jane Mayfield in St. Joseph Missouri on January 5, 1917. Raised by foster parents she dropped out of high school at age 15 and came to Hollywood where she found work as a manicurist and switchboard operator before she started obtaining small parts in films. Small roles led to more important ones and her big break came in 1945 when she appeared in "The Lost Weekend" with Ray Milland. A year later she was nominated for an Academy Award for her work in "The Yearling." She was now able to choose her own films and was finally on her way to true stardom in such films as "Johnny Belinda", "The Glass Menagerie" "Magnificent Obsession" and "The Blue Veil" to mention only a few.
Miss Wyman married Ronald Regan in 1940 and they became the darlings of the press with every minute of their lives documented by the reigning queens of show biz gossip, Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. They were divorced in 1949 due to what has been suggested as "political differences."
Miss Wyman was our first choice when it came to casting the matriarch, Angela Gioberti, owner of Falcon Crest Winery. I was already on location in the Napa Valley, but a day or so before we were to start filming, I went to the Sacramento Airport to met her and bring her to the valley.
To meet her in a manner commensurate with her stardom I had rented the longest, most impressive limo I could find. She smiled a greeting, stepped inside the limo, and after a few moments she launched into a discussion of her character that was right on target. Her remarks about the script were knowledgeable, informed and useful. Stars know what they’re doing! At one moment a gorgeous Napa Valley vineyard caught my eye and, I happened to look out of the window of the limo. She touched me on my arm and said, "Don’t look away when Mother’s talking. You might miss something!" From that moment on I knew she expected my undivided attention.
On the way to Napa I told her we had made arrangements for her to stay at the local country club. She said, "No, I want to stay where the crew stays." I rearranged her living accommodations so she lived at the Holiday Inn with the rest of us. It was a sound move. It put her in touch with the technicians, drivers, make-up people and costume people who would be looking after her. They liked her for being so democratic. That she was, but she in no time knew the name of every person on the crew and they adored her. It was a sincere gesture, but it was also a smart one.
Someone once asked why an actor of her standing, a woman who had once been married to Ronald Regan, someone who had no financial worries, would want to come out of retirement and take on the heavy burden of starring in a television series. For one thing Jane’s friends Barbara Stanwick and Loretta Young had already made such a move and it had not been professionally harmful. My own contention was that she was lonesome for the world she had known and probably bored with sitting alone in her luxurious apartment in Santa Monica gazing out to sea.
After the location filming was finished we returned to Los Angeles for the interior scenes, which we filmed at the CBS Studios in Studio City. Shortly I was to have a revelation about stardom.
I needed a private conversation with the lady so I called her and said that we needed to have a chat, and that I had made reservations at Jimmy’s, a restaurant in Beverly Hills.
"Good," she said, "They know me there."
I added, "And I asked for a table in the back so we could talk without interruption."
"Call them back and tell them to give us my usual table," she said. "I never sit in the back of the room." Star talk. Hollywood royalty.
At the dinner we were seated at the Number One table and managed not a word of the discussion we were supposed to have because of the friends and fans that stopped by to say hello or to ask for autographs. We discussed many things, but essentially Miss Wyman was a private person. Once when we were having dinner and I had more wine that then was wise, I asked "What was it like being married to a President of the United States." She answered, "I never discuss the gentleman."
"Falcon Crest" was fun and our cast was rich with great actors. Jane was without doubt THE star, but we also had such exceptional stars as Susan Sullivan and Robert Foxworth, David Selby, Ana-Alicia, and Lorenzo Lamas, Margaret Ladd, Abby Dalton and Chao-Le Chi. There was a feeling of camaraderie on the set, no professional jealousy over who gets the best lines, at least that I was aware of, and a sense of mutual respect for their fellow actors and members of the crew.
Excellent guest stars were attracted to the series. We were a hit, but big stars also came because Jane was our star and they knew certain standards would be set. Mel Ferrar became a running character, as did Caeser Romero. It became "the thing to do" for stars to take guest starring roles. Gina Lollobrigiga came over from Italy for a series of episodes. Kim Novak left her hide-away in Big Sur long enough to lend her enchanting presence.
One of the most controversial stars to join us was Lana Turner. Lana was a legendary actor in her time, first discovered at a soda fountain by the owner of The Hollywood Reporter. After his recommendation to a producer she soon became cast in a film. Known at first as "the sweater girl" she quickly became a major star playing opposite such male stars as Clark Gable and John Garfield. She was a skilled actress but she was equally known for her eight marriages and a messy affair in later life with a gangster name Johnny Stampano.
When Jane learned that I had cast Lana she said, "I wish you had mentioned you were casting her."
"Why?" I asked. "She’ll be good for the ratings. What’s wrong with casting her?"
"She’s not a lady," Jane replied.
Jane was polite, but distant when Lana came aboard. At one point the CBS photographer asked if he could take a shot of the two of them together.
Jane was in her chair on one side of the sound stage waiting for the next scene to be shot. Lana was seated clear across the stage some distance away. I explain to Jane what the photographer wanted and Jane said, "Sure, bring her over."
Trying a bit of hillbilly diplomacy, I next went to Lana and explained that the photographer wanted a shot of her with Jane.
"Sure," replied Lana obligingly, "Bring her over."
In the end the photographer got his picture. He took it just as the scene between the two of the ladies was ending and they were walking off the sound stage in chilly silence.
Although I enjoyed "The Waltons" it had been a demanding series. During its long run, in addition to Falcon Crest I had also created and produced two other series, "Boone" and "Apple’s Way" which had limited runs. I was tired and so I left "Falcon Crest" at the end of the fifth season.
Jane and I remained friends. I would stop and see her occasionally on the set, and we always visited at Harry and Pattie Harris’ Christmas party which was a tradition and which Jane always attended with her daughter, Maureen Regan. Toward the end of the series health problems made it necessary for her to miss some filming. It must have been painful for her because she had always been a "trooper," and dedicated to her work. When the series was over she moved to Rancho Mirage, and while we spoke occasionally by phone I was never to see her again. When I received the news that she had died I felt, not only that a star had fallen, but also that I had lost a friend.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
A Poem called "Earl"
Amigos!
Not long ago a friend sent me a copy of a poem that pleased me from the first moment I laid eyes on it. The title? "Earl" Well, how could I possibly not love it no matter what came after the title!
I was even more moved when I read the body of the poem. Many of us have seen the National Geographic documentary in which killer whales prowl the northern ocean shores hunting for seals. It a chilling thing to witness, even on film, especially if the seal is a baby and is often endlessly tossed into the air, flipped over and over as if for sport before it is consumed.
In accepting the Nobel Prize in Stockholm in 1950 William Faulkner said, in part, "I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure; that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock overhanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will be one more sound’ that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail.
The poet Louis Jenkins has articulated this same concept, in even fewer words, and what delights this old geezer especially is that his poem is called "Earl."
Earl
A poem by Louis Jenkins
From His Book
"North of the Cities"
In Sitka, because they are fond of them,
People have named the seals. Every seal
is named Earl because they are killed one
after another by the Orcas, the killer
whale; seal bodies are tossed left and right
into the air. "At least he didn’t get
Earl," someone says. And sure enough
after a time, that same friendly
bewhiskered face bobs to the surface.
It’s Earl again. Well, how else are you
to live except by denial, by some
palatable fiction, some little song to
sing while the inevitable, the black and
white blindsiding fact, comes hurtling
toward you out of the deep?
Mr. Jenkins graciously gave me permission to reprint the poem here. I hope it will encourage you to read more of his work for he is an exceptional man. He is a prose poet from Enid, Oklahoma and has lived in Deluth, Minnesota for over thirty years with his wife, Ann. His work has been published in many literary magazines and anthologies. If you were lucky you might have even heard him reading one of his poems on A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION. The poem "Earl" is from his book "North of the Cities" and is available from Amazon.com.
Until next time when this bewhiskered face bobs to the surface It’s Old Earl!
Monday, April 30, 2012
Paradise On Five Dollars a Day
April 30, 2012
Amigos!
Sorry to have been out of touch for a bit but I have had several distractions. There were some short stories that wouldn’t let me alone until I got them down on paper. I attempted a huge writing project but I got in over my head and had to face the fact that I wasn’t man enough for the job. One other, a more pleasant chore, was to gather and organize “my papers” which the Library of Virginia has consented to house and to nurture and to make available to one and all. There is pride!
So back to BETWEEN YOU, ME AND THE LAMP POST. I’m calling this entry:
Every writer yearns for an inexpensive place were he can enjoy privacy and where he can write without interruption. Aware of that need, at this time of year, writer’s magazines arrive, not only with helpful tips on how to find an agent, how to conquer writer’s block, or the surest pathway to publication, but also with advertisements for writers retreats. Descriptions of such havens tend to sound more like poetry than invitations to a place to get some serious work done.
Recent ads that I came across were: “Private room on the banks of the river Seine, only an hour from Paris!” “ Come to our mountain cottage for silence, solitude, and the sight of deer grazing in the meadow!” Or my favorite - “Old Virginia farmhouse on the James River in the Blue Ridge foothills, explore nearby vineyards and local history.”
I once rented such a retreat. Following my graduation from the University of Cincinnati I had the good luck to land a job as a radio writer at WLW, the major radio station in the state.
It was a terrific time in my life, a transition from student to professional writer, a time of growth, of learning, of forming friendships that would last a lifetime. Cincinnati was home to some of the most beautiful girls in the country and I fell in love with each and every one of them.
WLW paid handsomely, and I led a frugal life that allowed me to save a sizeable nest egg.
I once had the good fortune to interview Katherine Anne Porter. When I asked her to describe her writing process, she said, “Somewhere out of experience, out of travel, life, the past, or just imagination, an idea seizes me and won’t let go. I don’t act on it immediately but put it away to cook. After a while faces, language, customs, traits, colors, events, all come together around that idea like iron filings around a magnet. Even then I don’t begin writing, until one day the book tells me it is ready to be written and that is when I begin.”
I knew what she was telling me. I had reached that point. The novel I had dreamed for years was clamoring somewhere in my brain - demanding to be written.
I quit my job at WLW and rented a small cottage I found advertised in the “Writer’s Digest” column called “Paradise on Five Dollars a Day.”
I rented “Paradise” sight unseen through the mail from the owner, a lady named B. B. Caverly. The ad described a small stone cottage at the foot of Rich Mountain in the heart of the Ouchita Mountains of Arkansas. The ad went on to mention that the cottage had neither electricity nor indoor plumbing. To compensate for the lack of such amenities, Miss Caverly informed me that food has a special flavor when cooked over an open fire and there were fish in the stream nearby for the price of a worm.
I traveled by bus to the small town of Mena, Arkansas, and spent the first night in a charming old hotel called The Antlers. Miss Caverly, my new landlady, called for me there the next morning. There was a Texas twang in her speech and her dark hair and chinquapin eyes made me think she might be partly American Indian. Many folks in that part of the country do have Indian ancestry and will quickly and proudly boast of what percentage of Osage or Cherokee or Comanche blood runs in their veins.
After a stop for groceries, Miss Caverly drove a distance out of town until we came to a deserted stretch of highway. She parked her pickup truck on the roadside and led the way down a narrow path through some underbrush. I carried my duffel bag and the groceries. She carried my portable typewriter. We crossed an abandoned railroad track where weeds grew up to our knees between the rusted rails and the rotting wooden ties.
Past the railroad tracks she led me to a fallen tree trunk. It turned out to be the only access to the other side of a small creek. I wobbled across the log after her and made it successfully to the other side where a six foot long black snake reared up in the path ahead.
I recoiled, ready to abandon “Paradise” and rush back to civilization, but the lady said, “Don’t be scared. It’s a good snake. They eat the poisonous ones! Practically wiped out the water moccasins!”
Slightly reassured I followed her up the mountain to the cottage. It really was as charming as promised. There was a wide veranda across the front that afforded a fine view facing Rich Mountain. There was a kitchen, a living room with fireplace and a bedroom. A suitable distance out in the woods was an outhouse and in the side yard was the cooking facility – a barbeque grill made of the same native stone as the house.
Before she left, Miss Caverly suggested that I not go out after dark, or if I did to carry a strong flashlight. She then went on to say that the cottage was in the middle of something called “a snake run.” She explained that the snake population at the top of the mountain had no water supply, and they came down to the creek whenever they got thirsty, and that the cottage happened to be right smack in the middle of their path.
At that point it crossed my mind that I might be sacrificing my life in order to write my book, but I bravely decided to risk a week or two before returning to civilization.
Being an old country boy I was accustomed to the shrill and creepy sounds that come to life as soon as the sun goes down. But I had usually snuggled under the covers with the comfort of being surrounded by a sprawling family of brothers and sister, a protective mother and father. Now I was alone in strange country and the sounds were not familiar like the old hoot owl from back home, or the sleepy lowing of a cow. Out here in nowhere the night sounds reached a crescendo of screams, screeches, and howls. On top of that I was convinced there was a water moccasin under the bed. I slept not a wink.
Gradually I grew used to being a hermit and facing the challenges of my paradise. I received my mail by tetter-tottering across that cursed log to get to a mail box on the highway. I hiked the four miles into town once in a while when supplies ran low. No matter how many times I made the trip I was never comfortable walking across the fallen log and the risk of falling into the moccasin-infested water.
As primitive as my cottage was, it provided a perfect atmosphere in which to write. I had no human visitors. Occasionally a deer would wander across the property or a cottontail would hop by going about its business. There was no telephone, no radio and the only sounds were the songs from a variety of birds that came and went.
By the end of that summer I had finished more than half of a manuscript that I had first conceived in the hedgerows of Normandy. It was to become my first published book and to this day I have to thank Miss Caverly for placing an ad in “The Writer’s Digest” titled “Paradise on Five Dollars A Day.”
Amigos!
Sorry to have been out of touch for a bit but I have had several distractions. There were some short stories that wouldn’t let me alone until I got them down on paper. I attempted a huge writing project but I got in over my head and had to face the fact that I wasn’t man enough for the job. One other, a more pleasant chore, was to gather and organize “my papers” which the Library of Virginia has consented to house and to nurture and to make available to one and all. There is pride!
So back to BETWEEN YOU, ME AND THE LAMP POST. I’m calling this entry:
”PARADISE ON FIVE DOLLARS A DAY!”
Every writer yearns for an inexpensive place were he can enjoy privacy and where he can write without interruption. Aware of that need, at this time of year, writer’s magazines arrive, not only with helpful tips on how to find an agent, how to conquer writer’s block, or the surest pathway to publication, but also with advertisements for writers retreats. Descriptions of such havens tend to sound more like poetry than invitations to a place to get some serious work done.
Recent ads that I came across were: “Private room on the banks of the river Seine, only an hour from Paris!” “ Come to our mountain cottage for silence, solitude, and the sight of deer grazing in the meadow!” Or my favorite - “Old Virginia farmhouse on the James River in the Blue Ridge foothills, explore nearby vineyards and local history.”
I once rented such a retreat. Following my graduation from the University of Cincinnati I had the good luck to land a job as a radio writer at WLW, the major radio station in the state.
It was a terrific time in my life, a transition from student to professional writer, a time of growth, of learning, of forming friendships that would last a lifetime. Cincinnati was home to some of the most beautiful girls in the country and I fell in love with each and every one of them.
WLW paid handsomely, and I led a frugal life that allowed me to save a sizeable nest egg.
I once had the good fortune to interview Katherine Anne Porter. When I asked her to describe her writing process, she said, “Somewhere out of experience, out of travel, life, the past, or just imagination, an idea seizes me and won’t let go. I don’t act on it immediately but put it away to cook. After a while faces, language, customs, traits, colors, events, all come together around that idea like iron filings around a magnet. Even then I don’t begin writing, until one day the book tells me it is ready to be written and that is when I begin.”
I knew what she was telling me. I had reached that point. The novel I had dreamed for years was clamoring somewhere in my brain - demanding to be written.
I quit my job at WLW and rented a small cottage I found advertised in the “Writer’s Digest” column called “Paradise on Five Dollars a Day.”
I rented “Paradise” sight unseen through the mail from the owner, a lady named B. B. Caverly. The ad described a small stone cottage at the foot of Rich Mountain in the heart of the Ouchita Mountains of Arkansas. The ad went on to mention that the cottage had neither electricity nor indoor plumbing. To compensate for the lack of such amenities, Miss Caverly informed me that food has a special flavor when cooked over an open fire and there were fish in the stream nearby for the price of a worm.
I traveled by bus to the small town of Mena, Arkansas, and spent the first night in a charming old hotel called The Antlers. Miss Caverly, my new landlady, called for me there the next morning. There was a Texas twang in her speech and her dark hair and chinquapin eyes made me think she might be partly American Indian. Many folks in that part of the country do have Indian ancestry and will quickly and proudly boast of what percentage of Osage or Cherokee or Comanche blood runs in their veins.
After a stop for groceries, Miss Caverly drove a distance out of town until we came to a deserted stretch of highway. She parked her pickup truck on the roadside and led the way down a narrow path through some underbrush. I carried my duffel bag and the groceries. She carried my portable typewriter. We crossed an abandoned railroad track where weeds grew up to our knees between the rusted rails and the rotting wooden ties.
Past the railroad tracks she led me to a fallen tree trunk. It turned out to be the only access to the other side of a small creek. I wobbled across the log after her and made it successfully to the other side where a six foot long black snake reared up in the path ahead.
I recoiled, ready to abandon “Paradise” and rush back to civilization, but the lady said, “Don’t be scared. It’s a good snake. They eat the poisonous ones! Practically wiped out the water moccasins!”
Slightly reassured I followed her up the mountain to the cottage. It really was as charming as promised. There was a wide veranda across the front that afforded a fine view facing Rich Mountain. There was a kitchen, a living room with fireplace and a bedroom. A suitable distance out in the woods was an outhouse and in the side yard was the cooking facility – a barbeque grill made of the same native stone as the house.
Before she left, Miss Caverly suggested that I not go out after dark, or if I did to carry a strong flashlight. She then went on to say that the cottage was in the middle of something called “a snake run.” She explained that the snake population at the top of the mountain had no water supply, and they came down to the creek whenever they got thirsty, and that the cottage happened to be right smack in the middle of their path.
At that point it crossed my mind that I might be sacrificing my life in order to write my book, but I bravely decided to risk a week or two before returning to civilization.
Being an old country boy I was accustomed to the shrill and creepy sounds that come to life as soon as the sun goes down. But I had usually snuggled under the covers with the comfort of being surrounded by a sprawling family of brothers and sister, a protective mother and father. Now I was alone in strange country and the sounds were not familiar like the old hoot owl from back home, or the sleepy lowing of a cow. Out here in nowhere the night sounds reached a crescendo of screams, screeches, and howls. On top of that I was convinced there was a water moccasin under the bed. I slept not a wink.
Gradually I grew used to being a hermit and facing the challenges of my paradise. I received my mail by tetter-tottering across that cursed log to get to a mail box on the highway. I hiked the four miles into town once in a while when supplies ran low. No matter how many times I made the trip I was never comfortable walking across the fallen log and the risk of falling into the moccasin-infested water.
As primitive as my cottage was, it provided a perfect atmosphere in which to write. I had no human visitors. Occasionally a deer would wander across the property or a cottontail would hop by going about its business. There was no telephone, no radio and the only sounds were the songs from a variety of birds that came and went.
By the end of that summer I had finished more than half of a manuscript that I had first conceived in the hedgerows of Normandy. It was to become my first published book and to this day I have to thank Miss Caverly for placing an ad in “The Writer’s Digest” titled “Paradise on Five Dollars A Day.”
Thursday, June 23, 2011
A BACKWARD LOOK
My roots in the Virginia earth are deep. My mother’s people came here from the walled city of Lucca in the Tuscany region of Italy. They came as indentured servants to Thomas Jefferson who intended to start a wine industry in Virginia. They brought cuttings from their vines but the grapes did not adapt to the Virginia soil, and withered away.
Not so the Gianinni clan. On land granted to them by Mr. Jefferson they became farmers in the shadow of Monticello Mountain. They prospered in Albemarle County and intermarried with a group of footwashing Baptists.
At the same time my father’s people had emigrated from Wales, leaving their village of Hanmer near the northern border of Wales and England. They had acquired land along the James River and were raising tobacco. They tended to be tall and thin, a sentimental crew, who loved their families, and their wine, and who had to be goaded by their wives to attend church, but once there they could out sing the clearest and loudest voice in the choir.
Somehow descendants of these two clans, in the Great American Melting Pot tradition, found each other, married, and their descendants, the families of my mother and my father, early in the new century moved to a small village in Nelson County to work in the soapstone quarries and mill. When my Grandfather Hamner developed polio, and was no longer able to take care of his family, my own father, at twelve years of age quit school, and took a job toting water to workers in the soapstone quarries at Schuyler. My mother graduated from high school but, as she used to claim, she went through high school eight more times while coaching each of her children through to graduation.
Of their eight children seven of them were normal, but one was strange. That was me.
I was an odd looking boy, leaping to six feet tall when I was fourteen, all long, skinny wrists, unruly red hair, shoulders slumped in an attempt to lean closer to my companions.
Earl and friends at Schuyler High School. 1939.
We were in the midst of the Great Depression of the Twenties and Thirties. Like our neighbors we were self-sufficient but cash money was almost non-existent. And I had a secret, strange and impossible dream.
Years later, when I was writing the screenplay for my television movie “The Homecoming” I tried to put into words some of those alien, confused, and mysterious yearnings.
In the play, Olivia, John-Boy’s mother has just discovered a tablet the boy has hidden under his mattress. She demands to know what is in it. He replies:
“You know what’s in this tablet, Mama? All my secret thoughts- how I feel, and what I think about. Things I never told anybody ‘till now. What it’s like late at night to hear a whippoorwill call and its mate call back, the rumble of the midnight train crossen the trestle at Rockfish, watchen water go by in the creek and knowen that some day it’ll reach the ocean and wonderen if I’ll ever see the ocean. Sometimes I hike over to Route 29 and watch the people in their cars and wagons go by and I wonder what their lives are like. Things stay in my mind, Mama. I can’t forget anything. It all gets bottled up and sometimes I feel like a crazy man. Can’t sleep or rest till I rush off up here and write it in that tablet.
“I do vow,” replied Olivia.
“If things had been different, Mama, I think I could have done somethen with my life. What I would have liked, Mama, was to have tried . . .to be .. a writer!
“If that’s what you want, couldn’t you still try? “ Asked Olivia.
“It wouldn’t be right,” he answered. “Not in these times. It takes a college education to be a writer and even if we had the money it wouldn’t be right to risk it all on me. And anyway I can’t disappoint my daddy. He’s got his heart set on me taking up a trade.”
Olivia replied, “He just want you to know how to make a living.”
“I could sure never do that scribblen things down in a tablet.”
But time would prove me wrong. Through the intervention of Laura Horsley, the wife of our company doctor I received a scholarship to the University of Richmond. But that was only half the battle. The scholarship paid for tuition only. There was still food and board, textbooks to be bought, fees of several kinds. Through the generosity of three of my father’s sisters I was taken into their home in Richmond and given food and lodging. Our local Baptist minister gave me a crash course in Latin, one of the requirements the University needed before I could qualify to accept the scholarship. My father ruefully parted with the white shirt he had planned to be buried in, and my mother spent the money she earned from selling eggs and buttermilk to buy me a suit from Sears and Roebuck. She showed a picture of it to me in the catalogue before it arrived – “the fabric is of green herringbone, with vest to match and an extra pair of trousers.” And it cost nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents. Took every cent of my mother’s buttermilk money!
I entered the University of Richmond in the autumn of 1940. I was unsure of myself, in an alien world, among other boys who were obviously more sophisticated in their manner and dress. The largest city I had visited until now was Charlottesville, usually on a Saturday morning when country people clogged Main Street in their horse and buggies. I had never ridden a streetcar, driven a car, or talked on a telephone.
But I was on time for my first class, and the strangeness gradually went away. The tall boy with the red hair wearing the green herringbone suit was on his way! A writer was in the making!
That was the autumn of 1940. And just recently, decades later, I received the following stunning announcement.”
LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA ANNOUNCEMENT
Earl Hamner to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award
Nelson County native Earl Hamner, writer of novels, television shows, and movies and the force behind the semiautobiographical television series The Waltons, will receive the 2011 Literary Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Virginia at the 14th Annual Literary Awards Celebration on October 15, 2011.
Hamner grew up in Schuyler, Virginia, with seven brothers and sisters. From an early age he exhibited a love of words and writing. When he was six his poem, “My Dog” was published on the Children’s Page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. His potential was recognized and he received encouragement from his teachers and members of the tight-knit community.
Hamner received a scholarship to the University of Richmond, but midway through his sophomore year Hamner was drafted. He spent time learning to drive tanks and diffuse mines, but his ability to type landed him in the Quartermaster Corps. While in the U.S. Army Hamner began to submit stories for publication.
After his discharge in March 1946 he returned to Richmond and briefly worked for local radio station WMBG. In the fall of 1946 Hamner enrolled in the school of broadcasting at the University of Cincinnati and graduated in 1948.
Shortly after graduation Hamner went to New York City and found work as a radio writer for NBC. His first book, Fifty Roads to Town, was published by Random House in 1953 and in 1961 his novel Spencer’s Mountain was published by Dial Press.
He began writing scripts for episodes of the Twilight Zone and CBS Playhouse. The film rights to Spencer’s Mountain were purchased by Warner Bros. and Hamner was on his way as a success in Hollywood. In 1970 The Homecoming was published by Random House and became a CBS special starring Patricia Neal and later was the basis of the long-running and hugely popular television series The Waltons. Hamner garnered additional fame as a writer for Falcon Crest, a prime time soap opera, which aired on CBS from 1981 to 1990.
Hamner has received numerous honors including:
TV-Radio Writers Award (1967)
George Foster Peabody Award for Distinguished Journalism (1972)
Virginian of the Year Award from Virginia Press Association (1973)
An Emmy for Best Drama Series for The Waltons (1974)
National Association of Television Executives Man of the Year Award (1974)
Virginian Association of Broadcasters Award (1975)
Frederic Ziv Award from the University of Cincinnati for Outstanding Achievement in Telecommunication
P.S. I know I'm shameless, but I couldn't resist adding that my new book ODETTE, A GOOSE OF TOULOUSE, has just been published and is selling briskly on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com.
And I just received word that a new short story, 'The Woods Colt," has been selected for inclusion in an anthology of mystery and fantasy to be published in the fall.
Warm Virginia greetings by way of California!
Earl
Not so the Gianinni clan. On land granted to them by Mr. Jefferson they became farmers in the shadow of Monticello Mountain. They prospered in Albemarle County and intermarried with a group of footwashing Baptists.
At the same time my father’s people had emigrated from Wales, leaving their village of Hanmer near the northern border of Wales and England. They had acquired land along the James River and were raising tobacco. They tended to be tall and thin, a sentimental crew, who loved their families, and their wine, and who had to be goaded by their wives to attend church, but once there they could out sing the clearest and loudest voice in the choir.
Somehow descendants of these two clans, in the Great American Melting Pot tradition, found each other, married, and their descendants, the families of my mother and my father, early in the new century moved to a small village in Nelson County to work in the soapstone quarries and mill. When my Grandfather Hamner developed polio, and was no longer able to take care of his family, my own father, at twelve years of age quit school, and took a job toting water to workers in the soapstone quarries at Schuyler. My mother graduated from high school but, as she used to claim, she went through high school eight more times while coaching each of her children through to graduation.
Of their eight children seven of them were normal, but one was strange. That was me.
I was an odd looking boy, leaping to six feet tall when I was fourteen, all long, skinny wrists, unruly red hair, shoulders slumped in an attempt to lean closer to my companions.
Earl and friends at Schuyler High School. 1939.
We were in the midst of the Great Depression of the Twenties and Thirties. Like our neighbors we were self-sufficient but cash money was almost non-existent. And I had a secret, strange and impossible dream.
Years later, when I was writing the screenplay for my television movie “The Homecoming” I tried to put into words some of those alien, confused, and mysterious yearnings.
In the play, Olivia, John-Boy’s mother has just discovered a tablet the boy has hidden under his mattress. She demands to know what is in it. He replies:
“You know what’s in this tablet, Mama? All my secret thoughts- how I feel, and what I think about. Things I never told anybody ‘till now. What it’s like late at night to hear a whippoorwill call and its mate call back, the rumble of the midnight train crossen the trestle at Rockfish, watchen water go by in the creek and knowen that some day it’ll reach the ocean and wonderen if I’ll ever see the ocean. Sometimes I hike over to Route 29 and watch the people in their cars and wagons go by and I wonder what their lives are like. Things stay in my mind, Mama. I can’t forget anything. It all gets bottled up and sometimes I feel like a crazy man. Can’t sleep or rest till I rush off up here and write it in that tablet.
“I do vow,” replied Olivia.
“If things had been different, Mama, I think I could have done somethen with my life. What I would have liked, Mama, was to have tried . . .to be .. a writer!
“If that’s what you want, couldn’t you still try? “ Asked Olivia.
“It wouldn’t be right,” he answered. “Not in these times. It takes a college education to be a writer and even if we had the money it wouldn’t be right to risk it all on me. And anyway I can’t disappoint my daddy. He’s got his heart set on me taking up a trade.”
Olivia replied, “He just want you to know how to make a living.”
“I could sure never do that scribblen things down in a tablet.”
But time would prove me wrong. Through the intervention of Laura Horsley, the wife of our company doctor I received a scholarship to the University of Richmond. But that was only half the battle. The scholarship paid for tuition only. There was still food and board, textbooks to be bought, fees of several kinds. Through the generosity of three of my father’s sisters I was taken into their home in Richmond and given food and lodging. Our local Baptist minister gave me a crash course in Latin, one of the requirements the University needed before I could qualify to accept the scholarship. My father ruefully parted with the white shirt he had planned to be buried in, and my mother spent the money she earned from selling eggs and buttermilk to buy me a suit from Sears and Roebuck. She showed a picture of it to me in the catalogue before it arrived – “the fabric is of green herringbone, with vest to match and an extra pair of trousers.” And it cost nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents. Took every cent of my mother’s buttermilk money!
I entered the University of Richmond in the autumn of 1940. I was unsure of myself, in an alien world, among other boys who were obviously more sophisticated in their manner and dress. The largest city I had visited until now was Charlottesville, usually on a Saturday morning when country people clogged Main Street in their horse and buggies. I had never ridden a streetcar, driven a car, or talked on a telephone.
But I was on time for my first class, and the strangeness gradually went away. The tall boy with the red hair wearing the green herringbone suit was on his way! A writer was in the making!
That was the autumn of 1940. And just recently, decades later, I received the following stunning announcement.”
LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA ANNOUNCEMENT
Earl Hamner to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award
Nelson County native Earl Hamner, writer of novels, television shows, and movies and the force behind the semiautobiographical television series The Waltons, will receive the 2011 Literary Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Virginia at the 14th Annual Literary Awards Celebration on October 15, 2011.
Hamner grew up in Schuyler, Virginia, with seven brothers and sisters. From an early age he exhibited a love of words and writing. When he was six his poem, “My Dog” was published on the Children’s Page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. His potential was recognized and he received encouragement from his teachers and members of the tight-knit community.
Hamner received a scholarship to the University of Richmond, but midway through his sophomore year Hamner was drafted. He spent time learning to drive tanks and diffuse mines, but his ability to type landed him in the Quartermaster Corps. While in the U.S. Army Hamner began to submit stories for publication.
After his discharge in March 1946 he returned to Richmond and briefly worked for local radio station WMBG. In the fall of 1946 Hamner enrolled in the school of broadcasting at the University of Cincinnati and graduated in 1948.
Shortly after graduation Hamner went to New York City and found work as a radio writer for NBC. His first book, Fifty Roads to Town, was published by Random House in 1953 and in 1961 his novel Spencer’s Mountain was published by Dial Press.
He began writing scripts for episodes of the Twilight Zone and CBS Playhouse. The film rights to Spencer’s Mountain were purchased by Warner Bros. and Hamner was on his way as a success in Hollywood. In 1970 The Homecoming was published by Random House and became a CBS special starring Patricia Neal and later was the basis of the long-running and hugely popular television series The Waltons. Hamner garnered additional fame as a writer for Falcon Crest, a prime time soap opera, which aired on CBS from 1981 to 1990.
Hamner has received numerous honors including:
TV-Radio Writers Award (1967)
George Foster Peabody Award for Distinguished Journalism (1972)
Virginian of the Year Award from Virginia Press Association (1973)
An Emmy for Best Drama Series for The Waltons (1974)
National Association of Television Executives Man of the Year Award (1974)
Virginian Association of Broadcasters Award (1975)
Frederic Ziv Award from the University of Cincinnati for Outstanding Achievement in Telecommunication
P.S. I know I'm shameless, but I couldn't resist adding that my new book ODETTE, A GOOSE OF TOULOUSE, has just been published and is selling briskly on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com.
And I just received word that a new short story, 'The Woods Colt," has been selected for inclusion in an anthology of mystery and fantasy to be published in the fall.
Warm Virginia greetings by way of California!
Earl
Thursday, April 21, 2011
What’s That Goose Doing In Your Office?
Often when visitors come to my office they walk in and observe, “This isn’t an office. It’s an aquarium!” They aren’t far off except that the fish are not alive, but carved figures I have collected them from all over the world.
Lately visitors ignore the fish figures and want to know about the goose. It’s a noble bird that sits at a place of honor in the middle of my desk. Her name is Odette and her story that begins some years ago when our friends, John and Nota McGreevey invited Jane and me to join them on a barge cruse on the Canal du Midi that winds its way from Bordeaux to Toulouse.
It was autumn in France and I was back in a country I love. I first came to France as a soldier in World War Two. Now I was back as a tourist. It was autumn and the plane trees along the canal were golden yellow. The food on the barge was superlative and the scenery was magical. The canal wound it s way through small villages and farmland. Each view was memorable and unique.
It was at a small village along the canal where I came upon my first Toulouse goose. It was a gorgeous creature with gray feathers laced with whiter and its expressive eyes were huge and brown. Our guide from the barge pointed out that it was still young but later it would be force fed copious amounts of grain until its liver was huge and then the goose would be slaughtered and its liver made into pate, or as the guide described it “a culinary delight.”
And the guide said all these dreadful things right in front of the poor goose, and when she leaned forward toward me and looked at me with those big brown eyes I could tell that she had heard and understood every word.
That was when the inspiration came to write ODETTE, A GOOSE OF TOULOUSE. In the book Odette is destined to die for her liver, but because she is endowed with a special gift she saves her own life in a most surprising way.
The book is illustrated by the students in Judith Victoria Hensley’s 6th Grade class at Wallins Elementary and Junior High School in Wallins Creek, Kentucky. Judith Hensley is a teacher, writer, and photographer and under her guidance her pupils have created illustrations that are original, artful, and at times quite innocent and at other time most sophisticated. As far as I know this is the first time a book has been illustrated by school children.
“ODETTE, A GOOSE OF TOULOUSE” is available from Amazon.com as well as Barnes and Noble.com. It can be ordered through your local bookstore or directly from the publisher at:
BearManor Media
P. O. Box 1129
Duncan, OK. 73534-1129
Phone: 580-252-3547
Have a good read, and if you own a goose = be kind!
Lately visitors ignore the fish figures and want to know about the goose. It’s a noble bird that sits at a place of honor in the middle of my desk. Her name is Odette and her story that begins some years ago when our friends, John and Nota McGreevey invited Jane and me to join them on a barge cruse on the Canal du Midi that winds its way from Bordeaux to Toulouse.
It was autumn in France and I was back in a country I love. I first came to France as a soldier in World War Two. Now I was back as a tourist. It was autumn and the plane trees along the canal were golden yellow. The food on the barge was superlative and the scenery was magical. The canal wound it s way through small villages and farmland. Each view was memorable and unique.
It was at a small village along the canal where I came upon my first Toulouse goose. It was a gorgeous creature with gray feathers laced with whiter and its expressive eyes were huge and brown. Our guide from the barge pointed out that it was still young but later it would be force fed copious amounts of grain until its liver was huge and then the goose would be slaughtered and its liver made into pate, or as the guide described it “a culinary delight.”
And the guide said all these dreadful things right in front of the poor goose, and when she leaned forward toward me and looked at me with those big brown eyes I could tell that she had heard and understood every word.
That was when the inspiration came to write ODETTE, A GOOSE OF TOULOUSE. In the book Odette is destined to die for her liver, but because she is endowed with a special gift she saves her own life in a most surprising way.
The book is illustrated by the students in Judith Victoria Hensley’s 6th Grade class at Wallins Elementary and Junior High School in Wallins Creek, Kentucky. Judith Hensley is a teacher, writer, and photographer and under her guidance her pupils have created illustrations that are original, artful, and at times quite innocent and at other time most sophisticated. As far as I know this is the first time a book has been illustrated by school children.
“ODETTE, A GOOSE OF TOULOUSE” is available from Amazon.com as well as Barnes and Noble.com. It can be ordered through your local bookstore or directly from the publisher at:
BearManor Media
P. O. Box 1129
Duncan, OK. 73534-1129
Phone: 580-252-3547
Have a good read, and if you own a goose = be kind!
Monday, August 9, 2010
REMEMBERING PATRICIA NEAL
How could one not adore Patricia Neal? I first met her when she arrived from London to portray a character based on my own mother in a television special called “The Homecoming.”
True to her dedication to her work she had memorized the script word for word. She asked for one change which I happily made. The character she was to play I had originally named Dorrie. Pat revered the role and asked if I would change the name to Olivia after the daughter she had lost. And the name remained Olivia through the long running sequel to “The Homecoming” when the series became “The Waltons.”
The scenes between Richard Thomas, who played the young mountain boy who aspired to be a writer and Patricia who portrayed his mother were especially moving. No one in the my family had ever gone to college much less to have an ambition so foreign to our backwoods way of life. Nevertheless Patricia captured just the right attitude of doubt and wonder and support of this unlikely son. Richard in turn was a stunning partner in the scenes.
Most adult actors would rather face a firing squad than work with a cute child. The youngsters who played the Walton children weren’t just cute. They were accomplished actors posing as children. Every one of them should have been arrested and sent to jail for scene stealing. But Patricia was a pro and she gave each of the children the same respect she gave to her fellow adult actors, and their scenes are extraordinary to this day.
All of the exterior scenes of “The Homecoming” were to be filmed in the Grand Tetons. Fielder Cook, the director, in making out his schedule, decided to lighten Pat’s work load when possible. So he arranged for Pat’s exterior scenes to be filmed on the CBS backlot here in town. Pat wouldn’t hear of it and insisted that she make the trip to Wyoming, and did several of the most demanding and compelling scenes there. In one scene, where Pat takes a long walk along a county road, the script called for snow. But the skies were clear. There was not a cloud in the sky. Fielder Cook, ever striving for miracles, bowed his head, and said prayerfully, “Now Sir, if You would be so kind!” And snow began to fall!
Another memory of Pat that I treasure came about when my son, during a college vacation was visiting London. I gave him Pat’s telephone, told him to call her and give her my love. When Scott phoned, Pat insisted that he come to tea. She sent Ronald Dahl down to London to pick up Scott and bring him out to Great Missenden. I doubt if Scott has had such a distinguished chauffeur since, or such good company at tea.
Some years later Pat was in town on her way to Vancouver to make a movie. She let me know that she was here and I informed her that my mother was coming to visit. “Oh, I want to meet her,” Pat exclaimed. But my mother was to arrive the day after Pat was to leave. “I’ll just have to change my schedule” declared Pat. So the day my mother arrived I took her over to the Beverly Wilshire where Pat was staying. Pat met us at the door and said to me “Shoo. I already know you. I want to know your mother. Come back later.” About an hour and a half later when I knocked on the door they were still in animated conversation.
My mother was a country woman who had spent most of her life having children and nurturing a huge family. Her life was a dramatic contrast to the life of a legendary film actress. I was curious.
“What did you and Pat talk about?” I asked my mother on our way home.
“Oh,” my mother replied, “Lots of things, but mostly about our children.”
Two great ladies whose lives briefly touched. It was a privilege to know each of them.
True to her dedication to her work she had memorized the script word for word. She asked for one change which I happily made. The character she was to play I had originally named Dorrie. Pat revered the role and asked if I would change the name to Olivia after the daughter she had lost. And the name remained Olivia through the long running sequel to “The Homecoming” when the series became “The Waltons.”
The scenes between Richard Thomas, who played the young mountain boy who aspired to be a writer and Patricia who portrayed his mother were especially moving. No one in the my family had ever gone to college much less to have an ambition so foreign to our backwoods way of life. Nevertheless Patricia captured just the right attitude of doubt and wonder and support of this unlikely son. Richard in turn was a stunning partner in the scenes.
Most adult actors would rather face a firing squad than work with a cute child. The youngsters who played the Walton children weren’t just cute. They were accomplished actors posing as children. Every one of them should have been arrested and sent to jail for scene stealing. But Patricia was a pro and she gave each of the children the same respect she gave to her fellow adult actors, and their scenes are extraordinary to this day.
All of the exterior scenes of “The Homecoming” were to be filmed in the Grand Tetons. Fielder Cook, the director, in making out his schedule, decided to lighten Pat’s work load when possible. So he arranged for Pat’s exterior scenes to be filmed on the CBS backlot here in town. Pat wouldn’t hear of it and insisted that she make the trip to Wyoming, and did several of the most demanding and compelling scenes there. In one scene, where Pat takes a long walk along a county road, the script called for snow. But the skies were clear. There was not a cloud in the sky. Fielder Cook, ever striving for miracles, bowed his head, and said prayerfully, “Now Sir, if You would be so kind!” And snow began to fall!
Another memory of Pat that I treasure came about when my son, during a college vacation was visiting London. I gave him Pat’s telephone, told him to call her and give her my love. When Scott phoned, Pat insisted that he come to tea. She sent Ronald Dahl down to London to pick up Scott and bring him out to Great Missenden. I doubt if Scott has had such a distinguished chauffeur since, or such good company at tea.
Some years later Pat was in town on her way to Vancouver to make a movie. She let me know that she was here and I informed her that my mother was coming to visit. “Oh, I want to meet her,” Pat exclaimed. But my mother was to arrive the day after Pat was to leave. “I’ll just have to change my schedule” declared Pat. So the day my mother arrived I took her over to the Beverly Wilshire where Pat was staying. Pat met us at the door and said to me “Shoo. I already know you. I want to know your mother. Come back later.” About an hour and a half later when I knocked on the door they were still in animated conversation.
My mother was a country woman who had spent most of her life having children and nurturing a huge family. Her life was a dramatic contrast to the life of a legendary film actress. I was curious.
“What did you and Pat talk about?” I asked my mother on our way home.
“Oh,” my mother replied, “Lots of things, but mostly about our children.”
Two great ladies whose lives briefly touched. It was a privilege to know each of them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)