THE JOURNAL NEWS. SUNDAY. AUGUST 15. 1982
His heart still back at Walton's mountain By MIKE HUGHES Gannett News Service
His life these days is rooted midway between Waltons’ mountain and Hollywood’s glamour, but his heart still seems back at the mountain. This is Earl Hamner Jr., the gentle soul who presides over all those ungentle characters in TV’s “Falcon Crest.’’ For years, he was the producer and chief writer for “The Waltons.” It was a story carved from his own boyhood in Depression-time Appalachia. Now he has the same job with “Falcon Crest,” the series about social climbers in wine country. And now that he’s a big-time Hollywood writer, shouldn’t it be easy to do a story about upper-class life? I\
“Actually, we don’t live in Hollywood,” he said. “We lead an almost monastic existence on a hillside, where I raise tomatoes. I read a lot I of books; we talk a lot.” In short, Earl Hamner’s like those peaceful Waltons. At 59, he seems to be a serene sort. He has thick glasses, a carefully proper way of talking, a nicely self deprecating humor. He seems like your favorite English lit teacher, the one who kept taking the Latin Club on field trips. And he doesn’t seem at all like the boss of a TV soap opera. “That’s what people keep asking me,” Hamner said with a chuckle. “What’s a nice guy like you ...” What he’s doing, he says, is trying to make “Falcon Crest” as classy as possible. “I’ve often said that Lillian Heilman would be a marvelous writer for ‘Falcon Crest,’ because I want it to be that kind of a character story. Of course, the last person I told that to said: ‘Ain’t seen no proof of it yet.’”
Hamner’s own background is pure John-boy. He grew up in Schuyler, Va., the oldest of eight children in a farm family. That was during the Depression; as a teenager he already was writing warm stories about his family and his roots. Next came the big cities -University of Richmond ... the Army ... Northwestern University ... jobs writing for radio and for the early days of TV theater. His break came with “Spencer’s Mountain,’’ a novel about his youth.That became a best-seller, then a movie. Then, in 1971, he put some of the characters into a TV movie called “The Homecoming: A Christmas Story.” Critics raved and CBS loved the show. Times were simpler then and the network was willing to stick with a series version called “The Waltons.” “I don’t think that would happen today,” Hamner said with a touch of sadness. “The competition for ratings has become so intense that I don’t think you could convince people to put on a show about a penniless family growing up near the North.”
But the show did get on, and slowly triumphed. It won six Emmys and a prestigious Peabody award. By the time it folded, his boss had become the king of primetime soap operas. So Hamner was asked to develop a new show in the soap style. The result is “Falcon Crest,” tucked into a cozy timeslot after “Dallas” on Fridays. Still, Hamner insists the show is only mildly related to its schedule mate. “I know we’re often grouped with shows like ‘Dallas’ or ‘Dynasty,’ but I like to think of this as more of a gothic mystery.” A moment later, however, he’s outlining plot changes for the next season: Chase gets his halfshare of the winery ... Maggie sells a screenplay ... There are questions about who’s the father of Melissa’s baby ... There are questions about who’s the mother of another characters ... Carlo is found murdered ... Cole “foolishly incriminates himself” ... Emma disappears .
But doesn’t all of this sound like a soap opera? Hamner nods. “But in projects I work with, 1 think the characters are dimensional enough.” Still, he grants that nothing comes out perfectly. With last year’s writers’ strike, the stories were particularly rushed. “You just don’t have the time to put all the love and work into it that you would like. Often we will go to the sound stage, still doing rewrites.” Meanwhile, Hamner has supervised one more Waltons TV movie, which will be on NBC next season And after that? “I think that show has had its time. I'm a Falcon now."
By
Paul Raven ·
