Was grandpa walton gay
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‘The Waltons’: Married TV Couple Grandma & Grandpa Were Both Actually Gay
*FAQs at the bottom of article*
UPDATED 3/7/2023
Ellen Corby and Will Geer brought veteran acting skills as Grandma and Grandpa Walton respectively. Indeed, The Waltons never even considered recasting the elderly couple when each fell on hard times with their health. They became an inseparable unit on screen. However, in their private lives, each was actually lgbtq+ and in lgbtq+ relationships of sorts.
Both also maintained a front. They may have fallen elsewhere along the spectrum of who they felt attracted to, but it’s actually widely believed both their marriages acted as safeguards against harassment and injury to their careers. Learn more about the other existence lived between the two iconic grandparents.
Grandma Walton the sailor-mouthed lesbian
As a married couple on TV, Grandma and Grandpa Walton represented the base of the Walton family wood, armed with wisdom and traditions. Ellen Corby as herself, however, swore enjoy a sailor. Additionally, the actress behind god-fearing Esther Walton smoked like a chimney, even after Grandma insisted, “If the good Lord ha
Harry Hay
Episode Notes
Harry Hay had a vision, and that vision led to the founding, in 1950, of the first sustained lgbtq+ rights organization in the Combined States—the Mattachine Society. Mattachine (and Harry’s) first task: establishing a gay identity.
Episode first published November 1, 2018.
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Harry Hay was precocious. He knew from an prior age that he was attracted to men, had his first gay sexual experience when he was nine, and developed an interest in union organizing in his early teens while functional on an uncle’s farm in Nevada. Born to an upper middle-class family and raised in California, Hay was sent to the farm by his father to toughen up, but what he learned working side by side with migrant laborers was first and foremost ideological, as many of his fellow workers were “Wobblies,” members of the International Workers of the Planet (IWW).
By the early 1930s, Hay was out, had dropped out of Stanford University, and had moved to Los Angeles to work in the theater. His lover, actor Will Geer (who gained fame in the 1970s in the role
Will Geer: Gender non-conforming, Communist, and American as Apple Pie
What a feast of riches it is acquainting oneself with the life and career of Will Geer (William Aughe Ghere, 1902-1978): performer, folksinger, political activist, and — remain for it — horticulturist. Like most Americans, I cherished him during his late career Renaissance when he played Grandpa on The Waltons (1972-78) and appeared in movies like Jeremiah Johnson (1972). He seemed the very mind of rural America, in particular the good parts. He was kindly, soft, wise, funny. And he was eccentric: with his elongated white hair, droopy mustache and penchant for wearing his overalls with only one strap buttoned. Onstage he had played Walt Whitman and Mark Twain; he clearly channeled those guys into his late career persona. What was not much publicized at the moment (even though it was the hippy-dippy 1970s) was that he was attracted to both genders and, for a time, a communist. I reiterate, because this is key and it needs to be heard and digested: Will Geer was simultaneously queer, communist and as American as apple pie.
I’ve been intrigued by his ancestry and haven’t found an address yet. His mother’s m