The Waltons

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Television series
German title The Waltons
Original title The Waltons
Country of production United States
original language English
Year (s) 1972-1981
length 45 minutes
Episodes 221 in 9 seasons
genre Family series
Theme music Jerry Goldsmith
idea Earl Hamner Jr.
production Robert L. Jacks ,
Andy White
music Alexander Courage ,
Arthur Morton
First broadcast September 14, 1972 (USA) on CBS
German-language
first broadcast
January 12, 1975 on ZDF
occupation

The Waltons (Original title: The Waltons ) is an American family series that describes the difficult, simple life of an extended family during the period from the Great Depression to the end of World War II . The television production company Lorimar (including Dallas ) produced the series. It ran from 1972 to 1981 with a total of 221 episodes, many of them on German television. First they were broadcast on ZDF , since the late 1980s also on Sat.1 , most recently on kabel eins and currently on Sat.1 Gold .

action

The Waltons are a large Baptist family . Together with his wife, his seven children and his parents lived John Walton in a large house on its wooded lot in Walton's Mountain in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia . Both Jefferson County and Waltons Mountain are fictional locations. According to author and producer Earl Hamner Jr. however, both are based on his hometown or district (he is from Schuyler , Nelson County , which is south of Charlottesville , Virginia). There are also a lot of real-world locations in the series, especially Virginia.

The Waltons run a small sawmill that also had a mortgage for a while . Family cohesion is always more important to them than money. Conflicts usually only arise from the outside when a family member leaves the property or a stranger brings a "threatening" influence (usually something that puts the family financially in distress) from outside, or when it comes to people with a different way of life, such as artists or actors.

The stories are told from the perspective of the eldest son of the family, John-Boy Walton, who wants to become a writer and who fulfills this dream after college. The life of the Waltons is recorded by him in a diary . Each episode ends with the lights going out in the house and a brief bedtime dialogue between family members. The Goodnight, John-Boy - Good night, Elizabeth is indeed famous, but not often heard.

characters

John-Boy Walton

John-Boy, played by Richard Thomas and later by Robert Wightman (spoken in German by Hans-Georg Panczak and Andreas Fröhlich ), is the main character of the series. He keeps a diary of his life and that of his large family. He is an ambitious young writer and seems rather shy towards girls, but can show great courage and assertiveness. He loves his siblings as dearly as he sometimes wishes they would be quiet. He admires and loves his parents, but often acts contrary to their orders and wishes in order to gain his own experiences. He later attended Boatwright College in Charlottesville and became a journalist. As a war correspondent, he does not return from a special mission and is declared missing. At times he lives in New York City and London .

John Walton

John-Boy's father is played by Ralph Waite and dubbed in German by Jochen Schröder . He owns a sawmill and works tirelessly, sometimes to the point of collapse, to keep his family afloat. He loves his wife as he did on the first day, but is sometimes quite alienated when Olivia develops a hint of emancipation (Season 1, episode: Das Fahrrad ), but does not prevent her from developing. He demands obedience from his children and punishes the wrongdoings of his children, according to the times strictly but justly. Unlike many fathers of the time, he is also capable of dialogue with his children and explains his decisions in general. There is no reason for him to let the children miss school unless they are really sick or there is a similarly important reason. If his children are in trouble and need his help, he is always there for them and also stands before them against all power to protect them and do them justice - which sometimes gets him into trouble. He goes to church very rarely and is unbaptized, but he firmly believes in God and lives this faith in his life and with his family.

Olivia Walton

The mother Olivia Walton is played by Michael Learned . She is dubbed by Bettina Schön . It is, so to speak, the family's conscience. She is very strict on questions of morality, above all she is strictly against all forms of alcohol and a regular churchgoer. As an adult (episode 24) she had managed to defeat polio. She often uses this experience to motivate downcast family members. She has a good heart, loves her family, and is extremely helpful. Later she broke out of the family idyll, took a painting course and got her driver's license. When Learned left the series, the role of Olivia Walton was rewritten as a chronically ill woman who lives permanently in a sanatorium.

Samuel Walton (Zebulon Walton)

Will Geer plays John Boy's grandfather. Heinz Theo Branding speaks it in German . He works in the sawmill and likes fishing and hunting. He especially likes to lend a hand to the Baldwin sisters, as they give him something from their father's “recipe” (homemade whiskey) as a reward for his work. In the original it is called Zebulon "Zeb" Walton , in the German version it was changed to Sam (uel) because the dubbing editors were of the opinion that Zeb sounded too much like the cliché "Sepp". He's a lovely old man and a grandfather of the kind that children want him to be. Like his grandchildren, he is also a constant support and friend to his son, although he has also given him the role of head of the family with the management of the sawmill and often takes it back. Zeb Walton is extremely close to his homeland and nature, which was reflected in Will Geer's real preferences in the role. He loves his wife Esther very much, who not infrequently reacts piqued to his mostly humorous advances. Will Geer's death in 1978 followed the serial death of Sam Walton in the summer of 1941 and was deeply mourned by his family.

Esther Walton

Ellen Corby plays Sam's wife. It is dubbed in German by Ursula Krieg and Sigrid Lagemann . She is just as strict and hardworking as her daughter-in-law Olivia and is usually grumpy. However, under the rough skin there is a soft core. She has an extremely intimate relationship with her husband, although unlike his husband she cannot easily show her feelings openly. Often she can only shake her head at newfangled developments or the ideas of her grandchildren. Esther Walton is by far the most conservative person in the Walton family. Ellen Corby had a stroke in 1977 that affected her language center. This has been adopted for their role. She then plays with Will Geer in a single episode before he dies.

Jason Walton

John-Boy's younger brother Jason is played by Jon Walmsley and spoken in German by Ulrich Matthes and Timmo Niesner . He is a musician with body and soul, went to the conservatory and, to the chagrin of his mother, plays in a "disreputable" pub for a while.

Mary-Ellen Walton Willard

Mary-Ellen, played by Judy Norton-Taylor (German dubbing voices: Ina Patzlaff / Ina Martin and Marina Genschow ), is the oldest daughter. She has a penchant for independence and keeps getting herself into trouble. She is the first Walton child to marry, namely Dr. med. Curtis "Curt" Willard ( Tom Bower ). She works as a nurse. Later she also studied medicine herself. For a long time the family thought that Curtis had died in the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 , but he no longer dares to go home because he is afraid he might injure Mary-Ellen with his war damage. Curtis and Mary-Ellen have a son, John Curtis Willard (Marshall / Michael Reed, later David Friedman).

Benjamin Walton

Ben, played by Eric Scott and spoken in German by Torsten Sense and Simon Jäger , is the third son of Olivia and John. He doesn't really know where he belongs. He is a skilled craftsman, has an entrepreneurial spirit and later (in the follow-up films to the series) takes over the sawmill, since his two older brothers have different careers. He is the second in the family to marry, Cindy (Leslie Winston), who gets support from grandmother Esther in the wedding sequence to assert herself against her husband. Cindy and Ben Walton have a daughter named Virginia.

Erin Esther Walton

Erin Walton, played by Mary Elizabeth McDonough and dubbed into German by Madeleine Stolze and Bianca Krahl , is the second daughter. She is more reserved than Mary-Ellen and sometimes tries to dissuade them from rash actions. After finishing school, she first worked as a local telephone operator, later as a production manager in a company that was important to the war effort. Of all the women in the family, she is the most emancipated and the most independent. During the Second World War, a photo of her in tight shorts becomes a pin-up picture for soldiers, which her mother in particular does not approve of. She falls in love with one of the soldiers who is killed in the war.

Jim-Bob Walton

The youngest son James-Robert, called Jim-Bob, is played by David W. Harper . His German voice actors are Bernd Martin, Stefan Krause and Julien Haggége . He is rather quiet, but very talented with his craft. He built his own car and later became an aircraft mechanic. Jim-Bob is the only Walton to have a twin brother, who however died in childbirth.

Elizabeth Walton

The youngest sister is played by Kami Cotler and spoken in German by Katrin Fröhlich and Maxi Deutsch and does not always obey her parents, which sometimes gets her into trouble. So she climbs on a pile of tree trunks, which starts to slide and partially buries her under itself. And already in the first episode she accidentally locks herself in a box.

Ike Godsey

Ike Godsey, played by Joe Conley (dubbed into German by Gerd Duwner and Klaus Jepsen ), is the local shopkeeper and postman. He's the local news market, so to speak, a little curious and a friend of the Walton family. One day he marries cousin Corabeth Walton. He got into great trouble when he bought a large batch of refrigerators on credit, but they turned out to be inoperative. Of course, the Waltons will bail him out.

Corabeth Walton Godsey

Corabeth, played by Ronnie Claire Edwards and spoken in German by Barbara Adolph , is a cousin of John Walton. She always has a sense of higher values. Nevertheless, she falls in love with the simple general store owner Ike Godsey and marries him too. She often goes through crises of meaning and eventually becomes an alcoholic for a while. She later adopts a girl, Aimee Louise.

The Baldwin sisters

Miss Mamie Baldwin, played by Helen Kleeb and dubbed into German a. a. by Tilly Lauenstein , and Miss Emily Baldwin, played by Mary Jackson and dubbed by Gudrun Genest , are two elderly women who make a “medicine” based on the recipe of their late father, who was a judge by profession, using a machine he made himself . In fact, it's a particularly good whiskey , which everyone in the area knows, except supposedly the two ladies themselves.

The rather simple-minded and dreamy Miss Emily still cries after her lover Ashley Longworth, who was thrown out of the house by her father when she was still a girl. Miss Mamie is a rather resolute woman who is in charge of both of the somewhat naive sisters. While mother and grandmother Walton in particular are initially very cautious about the sisters, a friendship with the entire family develops over the course of the series, with help and counter-help being common.

More figures

Other characters include Flossie Brimmer (Nora Marlowe), the German-born pensioner, Maude Gormley (Merie Earle), an old woman who likes to sing, feed birds and develop a talent for painting, the scruffy Yancy Tucker ( Robert Donner ), who Teacher Rosemary Hunter ( Mariclare Costello ), who later marries Reverend Matthew Fordwick ( John Ritter ) and prepares John-Boy for college, Sheriff Ep Bridges ( John Crawford ) and Verdie Grant Foster (Lynn Hamilton), a black woman who struggled with racism and who only learned to read and write as an adult with the help of John-Boy.

Origin and production

The basic idea of ​​the otherwise fictional series is based on the childhood memories of the producer Earl Hamner Jr. The first-person narrator from the off, John-Boy Walton, who remembers the past at the beginning and end of each episode, was spoken by him in the original version (spoken by Claus Biederstaedt in the German version ). He had already published the material as a book beforehand and produced it for the cinema in 1963 under the same title Spencer's Mountain (German: Summer of Expectation ).

The role of grandmother Esther Walton was written off the series after actress Ellen Corby suffered a stroke. After she recovered from it, she was able to participate in the series again. The actor of the grandfather Samuel Walton , Will Geer , died after the completion of the last episode of the sixth season (1977-1978), his series character was then also let die. Richard Thomas left the series after the final episode of the fifth season (1976/1977) because he saw himself too committed to the John Boy, and appeared only a few times as a guest on subsequent programs. He was later replaced in this role by Robert Wightman (1979-1981). In the following television films, however, he took over his role as John Boy again. Even Michael Learned left the series in 1978 by Olivia Walton because of tuberculosis in a sanatorium had to move. However, Learned made itself available again for guest appearances at the beginning of the eighth season and the subsequent films.

Ralph Waite and Michael Learned had severe problems with alcohol during production . Learned explained years later that The Waltons had helped her get away from her addiction.

Waltons Mountain was created on the back lot of Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank . The house was later used as the exterior of the Dragonfly Inn in the television series Gilmore Girls (2000-2007) and was demolished in January 2016 and replaced with a new building.

The theme music comes from the film composer Jerry Goldsmith .

publication

The series was first broadcast in the United States from September 14, 1972 to June 4, 1981 by CBS . A total of 221 episodes were created, divided into nine seasons and another seven television films.

In the German version of ZDF, the episodes were shortened by around two minutes each in order to adapt the episodes to the ZDF time schedule. When the series came on private television, additional minutes and the credits were cut off. The missing pieces were then reinserted on DVD - the first season was released in 2004; the scenes that had never been dubbed were left in the original and provided with subtitles. In Germany, all nine seasons have been released on DVD.

reception

The character of the father John Walton Sr. came in a vote of an American television magazine on June 20, 2004 at number 3 among the 50 best television fathers of all time . US President George Bush's remark that you need a nation that is more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons also became famous .

From 2005 onwards, two sketches with echoes of the Waltons ran on the WDR radio program . These skits satirize the poverty under the laws of Hartz IV in application to an extended family.

The way each episode ends - you can see the window front of the house in the dark and hear the "good night saying" of individual family members - has been quoted and parodied several times, for example in Freitag Nacht News on RTL or on Switch on ProSieben or how with the Ludolfs at the end of each episode. The music also contains allusions to the end of the episode, e.g. B. in the piece Michi Beck in Hell on the album 4:99 of the Fantastischen Vier .

Web links

Commons : The Waltons  collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Bush, George HW (January 1992): Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters (PDF file, 25 kB)
  2. ^ "Good night, John Boy!", As part of the format "WDR 2 Pure Encore - The Satire Podcast". You can listen to a selection of these contributions here