Earl Henry Hamner Jr. (July 10, 1923 – March 24, 2016) was an American television writer and producer (sometimes credited as Earl Hamner), best known for his work in the 1970s and 1980s as the creator of two long-running series, The Waltons and Falcon Crest. As a novelist, he is best known for Spencer's Mountain, which was inspired by his own childhood and formed the basis for both the film of the same name and the television series The Waltons, for which he provided voice-over narration. at the beginning of most episodes to set the scene and provide context and occasionally at the end of the program.
Hamner was born July 10, 1923, in Schuyler, Virginia, (Nelson County) of Doris Marion (née Giannini) and Earl Henry Hamner Sr. The oldest of eight children, Hamner had four brothers and three sisters. The other boys, from youngest to next-oldest, were James Edmund, Willard Harold, Paul Louis, and Clifton Anderson. The girls, from youngest to oldest, were Nancy Alice, Audrey Jane, and Marion Lee.[1]
The family of Hamner's mother, the Gianninis, were immigrants who came to the United States from Lucca, Italy, in the 1700s.[1] His father's family came to Virginia from Wales to the west of England on the island of Great Britain (modern United Kingdom).[1] Until the early 1900s, the Hamners were tobacco farmers near the James River, Virginia, when they moved further northwest to Schuyler, located in Nelson County at the Shenandoah Valley in the Appalachian Mountains / Allegheny Mountains chain on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains of the eastern United States.[1]
Schuyler was a company town where the economy was based in soapstone mining by New Alberene Stone, and the town was hit hard by the economic / financial hardships in the Great Depression of the 1930s when the company and its mines closed. Hamner's father worked in the mines from the time his eldest son was born until the company's closing. After losing his job, Earl Sr. could only find work as a machinist at the DuPont de Nemours Company chemical plant in Waynesboro, Virginia, about 30 miles away further north. Due to the distance between home and work, Earl Sr. lived at a boarding house in Waynesboro during the weekdays and traveled back to Schuyler and his family on the weekends. Taking a bus from Waynesboro to Charlottesville and another stop along the way, Hamner's father would walk then the six miles further to the family's rural home to complete his weekly journey. His walk on a snowy Christmas Eve in 1933 was the inspiration for Hamner's 1970 novel, The Homecoming, which became a Christmas holiday made-for-TV pilot film special, aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) television network in mid-December 1971, (starring Andrew Duggan and Patricia Neal and the inspiration for The Waltons series beginning broadcasting its first episode nine months later in September 1972.[1]
During Earl's childhood years, the family (all except Earl Sr.) attended a small white wood-frame clapboard church known as Schuyler Baptist Church.[2] In April 2014, the church honored Earl with a special worship service in connection with the filming and release of a film documentary titled Earl Hamner, Storyteller.
Hamner was in his sophomore / second year on a scholarship at the University of Richmond when he was drafted into the United States Army during World War II (1939/1941-1945). He was first trained to defuse landmines and then transferred to the Quartermaster Corps because he could type. He served in France after the famous D-day invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Following the war, he subsequently attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois (near Chicago) and then graduated from the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio with a degree in broadcast communications.[3][4]
In 1954, Hamner wrote "Hit and Run", an episode of the early legal dramaJustice. He reprised the theme a decade later in the 1964 "You Drive" episode of The Twilight Zone.
In the early 1960s, Hamner contributed eight more episodes to the highly regarded science fiction series The Twilight Zone. His first script acceptance for the series was his big writing break in Hollywood. He also wrote or co-wrote eight episodes of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) animal TV series Gentle Ben (1967–1969) and four episodes of the sitcom Nanny and the Professor (1970-1971) for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) TV network.
He also created two other short-lived television series of Apple's Way (1974–1975) starring Ronny Cox on CBS, and Boone (1983–1984). on NBC starring Tom Byrd
Hamner often used distant family names to title his projects: Spencer (Spencer's Mountain) is the maiden name of his paternal grandmother Susan Henry Spencer Hamner. The Waltons name derives from his paternal grandfather Walter Clifton Hamner and great-grandfather Walter Leland Hamner.[citation needed]
The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (December 1971 pilot film; for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) television network, for future The Waltons subsequent TV series the following year)
The Walton Hamner House The childhood home of Earl Hamner Jr. (1923-2016), on which he based the TV show "The Waltons" - Schuyler, Nelson County, Virginia
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