Bio of earl hamner biography
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The real life John-Boy, Earl Hamner Jr., who created 'The Waltons,' dies at age 92
LOS ANGELES — Earl Hamner Jr., the versatile and prolific writer who drew upon his Depression-era upbringing in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to create one of television's most beloved family shows, The Waltons, has died. He was 92.
Hamner died in Los Angeles and had recently been battling pneumonia, said Ray Castro Jr., a friend of Hamner's who produced a documentary, Earl Hamner Storyteller, about the writer. Castro said he learned about Hamner's death from the writer's daughter, Caroline. A Facebook post by Hamner's son, Scott, stated his father died surrounded by family at Cedars Sinai Hospital while John Denver's Rocky Mountain High was playing.
Although best remembered forThe Waltons, which aired for nine seasons and won more than a dozen Emmys, that show barely scratched the surface of Hamner's literary accomplishments.
He was a best-selling novelist (Spencer's Mountain), the author of eight episodes of the classic 1960s TV show The Twilight Zone and, as a screenwriter, adapted the popular children's tale Charlotte's Web, into a hit 2006 film. He also created the popular, long-running TV drama Falcon Crest and wrote for such other TV shows as Wagon Train, Gentle Be
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By Martyr Brosi
Woman, Appalachian Heritage
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Earl Hamner was born and raised in Schuyler, Virginia. He was one of eight children and the son of a stone quarry worker. Although they were poor, education was extremely important in their family. His father used to say, “You will go to school until you can whip me.” All eight children graduated from high school. Each succeeding Hamner would help the others financially, and that is how six Hamners were able to obtain college educations.
Hamner attended the University of Richmond and later transferred to North Western University. He worked as a census-taker, a truck driver, a dispatcher for a transfer company, a typewriter for civil war diaries, and a radio actor. He worked as a writer for WLW in Cincinnati and a staff writer for NBC New York. In 1962 he moved out west and began writing works for Rod Sterling’s “Twilight Zone.” After that he wrote for nearly every major television series during that time period and did film adaptations for “Charlotte’s Web” and “Where the Lilies Bloom.”
Legacy
Hamner’s biggest success was The Waltons, a television series concerned with a poor but upright family of three generations living together during the Depression era. He poured many of his childhood memories a