Project: Take a script of a Walton's episode. Use it as a basis for a Firefly fanfic. "Good night, Jayne."

I also watched the Waltons in its first three or four seasons. Much later in life, after I'd moved to San Francisco, I got to personally know the actress who had played Elizabeth. She was very very smart and cool, and teaching ESL. She was dating a friend of mine - a British cartoonist.

Before I was even formally introduced to her, she introduced herself to me on the train because I was wearing a Krazy Kat button.

Spencer's Mountain. It's a movie starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara and is sort of the mother of Homecoming and The Waltons. It was based on Earl Hamner's novel.

Here, wiki has a little more on it: [link]

It's just beautiful. And Henry Fonda is beautiful. Maureen O'Hara is beautiful. A very young, pretty frisky James MacArthur is just beautiful.

Mimsy Farmer. Oh goodness, I'd forgotten about Mimsy Farmer. And yes, young James MacArthur is beautiful.

I haven't watched it in ages, but Spencer's Mountain has this wonderful quality to it, I'm not sure I can explain, but it feels different from The Waltons. Maybe it's just the difference between a feature film and a serial drama. Some films and shows about country people (and really, maybe family drama in general) seem(s) to dull down the characters.

The Waltons was decent about respecting its characters' humanity, to be fair. But it seems to me that even in it, a certain sort of vitality is missing from many of them. I don't know how to put this. Maybe Beverly can help me out, because she often says things so well.

The country people I know well are differently alive, sharp, and I can feel this sort of lust-for-life thing going on, when I'm with them. A country lifestyle may be different from an urban or suburban one, but the people are no more innocent or unsuspecting, or simple, or wholesome. From what I recall of Spencer's Mountain, the characters are really rich in that way -- they really crackle on screen, you know?

I don't want to over-simplify all rural people in the other direction, and what I've already posted is probably a stereotype, in itself. Someone stop me, or help me.

I think the difference is, really? That the series--and The Homecoming--focused on the Depression era. I don't recall the Depression being mentioned at all in Spencer's Mountain. Plus, you cast a fiesty gorgeous Irish woman like Maureen O'Hara, you don't cast her for long-suffering, thrifty, stretch-a-dollar till the eagle grins sort of woman, you cast her for sex appeal and spunk.

Also, Spencer's Mountain was a theatrical release, in technicolor, and made in the early 60s, which really weren't as much "60s" as reflecting the values of the late 50s: optimism, having recently won a righteous victory in WWII, economic stability and growth for the middle class. People wanted to see movies where rugged, attractive 1950s people overcame movie adversity to Triumph at Life.

The Homecoming was made in the very early 70s, we were still mired in Vietnam, having come through the disillusion and upheaval of a war we'd never win and didn't want and were ashamed of. Hollywood no less than the rest of the country was affected by the greyness of reality. The Homecoming was made-for-tv, smaller budgeted, and a smaller vision. An interesting point to me was that even though it was filmed in color, there was a leached winter look to it, a bleakness that reflected the mood of the time the story was set in, as well as when it was filmed.

The series was planned to be long-term rather than a one-time spectacular movie, and focused on building long-term character studies and interactions, as opposed to a one-time all-family end-of-picture triumph of reaching the goal of building their house on the mountain.

And finally, I think Hamner had much more input into the series than he did into the movie, and he comes from the eastern mountains. The movie has always seemed more "western" than "country" to me. It may be totally a fabrication of my fevered mind, but eastern mountains and mountain folk are more subdued, their edges are softer, more blunted, whereas the newer western mountains are higher, sharper, more vivid, and the people who settled there tend to be a little larger than life, too.

Just my take on it.

I dimly recall Earl Hammer expressing some disappointment with how his initial story became hollywood-ized into "Spencer's Mountain." He didn't blast the movie -- he expressed gratitude for the film being made -- but the movie is not as true to his story as it could have been. I think he appreciated "The Homecoming" and then "The Waltons" for being closer to his original story.

Beverly -- I think you're right that Spencer's Mountain seemed more western than eastern.

Thanks for all the info on Spencers Mountain. Although one of the things I like about The Waltons is the rural eastern sensibility (and one thing that has been bugging a little bit on rewatch is the California landscape), I think I'll give this a try - it's on my Netflix queue now.

Speaking of the California landscape, when I was in SF for Nillyfest, a group of us drove to wine country. I was amazed at how homelike and familiar it all felt. There is a strong resemblence to the small towns along the Blue Ridge that exist on tourism, crafts, etc., and a resemblence between those landscapes. But the plants are wrong.

If you want southeastern forest with indiginous landscape and plants, watch Last of the Mohicans, or Nell, both filmed in the NC mountains. I really resented the Cold Mountain movie because it obviously was not filmed in NC--I know that country, and made my way through the book landmark by landmark. The film just...didn't. As well as its other problems. Anyway.

Even with the plants being "wrong", or different, the California hills were still just so comfortable and familiar, and I accepted that it was because of the topography.

Heh. One of the cable channels ran a Rifleman 24-hour marathon this weekend (in the first four episodes were Dennis Hopper, Michael Landon and James Drury!), and there, in glorious black and white, was the landscape I absorbed by osmosis week by week, episode by episode of all those tv westerns. Long after they were filmed and broadcast in color, my family still clung to our dependable b&w sets, so all my memories of those shows are in black and white. But there are the childhood memories that make those hills and grassy meadows strewn with olive and other trees as much a part of my memory as my own native landscape.