The connection can be found in the friendship of Earl Hamner Jr. and Rod Serling. Hamner, the creator of “The Waltons” and a Nelson County native, first met Serling, who would go on to create “The Twilight Zone,” in the late 1940s. Hamner was working in radio at WLW in Cincinnati, and when he left to work for NBC in New York, Serling was his replacement. It was while in New York that Hamner began writing for “The Today Show” and other TV programs. He moved to Hollywood in 1961 and got his break by selling two scripts to Serling’s “The Twilight Zone.” In addition to writing eight “Twilight Zone” episodes, Hamner also wrote Heidi, the made-for-television movie that, when broadcast in November 1968, famously pre-empted the final few seconds of a live broadcast of a close professional football game. The Oakland Raiders won the game and Hamner won a Writer’s Guild award. In the end, Hamner became best known not for Heidi or “The Twilight Zone,” but for John-Boy and Grandpa Zeb. Based on Hamner’s own Virginia upbringing, “The Waltons” became an icon of 1970s television and won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 1973.
Further Reading:
James E. Person, Earl Hamner: From Walton’s Mountain to Tomorrow (2005)
This Vignette Provided By
Brendan Wolfe, associate editor of Encyclopedia Virginia
