Ellen Corby
This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (September 2012) |
Ellen Corby | |
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Born | Ellen Hansen June 3, 1911 Racine, Wisconsin, U.S. |
Died | April 14, 1999 Woodland Hills, Los Angeles California, U.S. | (aged 87)
Occupation | Actress |
Years active | 1933–1999 |
Spouse(s) | Francis Corby
(m. 1934; div. 1944) |
Partner(s) | Stella Luchetta |
Ellen Hansen Corby (June 3, 1911 – April 14, 1999) was an American actress and screenwriter. She is best remembered for playing the role of Esther "Grandma" Walton on the CBS television series The Waltons, for which she won three Emmy Awards. She was also nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe Award for her performance as Aunt Trina in I Remember Mama (1948).
Early life[]
Ellen Hansen was born in Racine, Wisconsin, to immigrant parents from Denmark. She grew up in Philadelphia. An interest in amateur theater while in high school led her to Atlantic City in 1932, where she briefly worked as a chorus girl. She moved to Hollywood that same year and got a job as a script girl[clarification needed] at RKO Studios and Hal Roach Studios, where she often worked on Our Gang comedies, alongside her future husband, cinematographer Francis Corby. She held that position for the next 12 years and took acting lessons on the side.[citation needed]
Career[]
Although she had bit parts in more than 30 films in the 1930s and 1940s, including Babes in Toyland (1934) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946), her first credited acting role was in RKO's Cornered (1945) in which she played a maid, followed by an uncredited brief speaking role as a kitchen cook in The Locket (1946). Corby began her career as a writer at Paramount studios working on the western Twilight on the Trail (1941).
She received an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as a lovelorn aunt in I Remember Mama (1948). Over the next four decades, she worked in film and television, typically portraying maids, secretaries, waitresses, or gossips, often in Westerns, and had a recurring role as Henrietta Porter, a newspaper publisher, in Trackdown (1957–1959), starring Robert Culp as Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman. In the episode entitled "The Vote", Henrietta Porter advocates for women's suffrage: "Women should have the right to vote. Women should be in politics. They can't do any worse than you men!" For her guest appearances in many Westerns, Corby in 1989 won a Golden Boot award.[1]
Corby appeared as the elderly Mrs. Lesh, the crooked car peddler, on CBS's The Andy Griffith Show. She guest-starred, as well, on Wagon Train, Cheyenne, The Guns of Will Sonnett, Dragnet (several episodes), Rescue 8, The Restless Gun (two episodes), The Rifleman, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Fury, The Donna Reed Show, Frontier Circus, Hazel, I Love Lucy, Dennis the Menace, Tightrope, Bonanza, The Big Valley, , The Virginian, Channing, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Batman, Get Smart, Gomer Pyle, The Addams Family, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Invaders, Lassie, and Night Gallery. From 1965 to 1967, she had a recurring role in the NBC television series Please Don't Eat the Daisies, based on an earlier Doris Day film.
Her best-known role came as Grandma Esther Walton on the made-for-TV film The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971), which served as the pilot for The Waltons. Her husband, Zebulon Walton, was portrayed by actor Edgar Bergen in the film. Corby went on to resume her role on the weekly television series The Waltons. (She was the only adult actor from the original Homecoming pilot to carry her role over to the series.) Actor Will Geer played her husband in the series from 1972 until his death in 1978, at which time the character of Zebulon Walton was also buried. The series ran from 1972 to 1981, and resulted in six sequel films. For her work in The Waltons, she gained three Emmy Awards and three more nominations as Best Supporting Actress. She also won a Golden Globe award for best supporting actress in a TV series for The Waltons, and was nominated another three times. She left the show November 10, 1976, owing to a massive stroke she had suffered at home,[2] which impaired her speech and severely limited her mobility and function.[3] She returned to the series during the final episode of the 1977–78 season, with her character depicted as also recovering from a stroke.[4]
She remained a regular on The Waltons through the end of the 1978–79 season, with Esther Walton struggling with her stroke deficits as Corby was in real life.[5] Although Corby was able to communicate after her stroke, her character's lines were usually limited to one word or one-phrased dialogue, such as "No" or "Home"; her role dropped to recurring during The Waltons' final two seasons, though she later resumed her role as Grandma Walton in five of the six Waltons reunion movies between 1982 and 1997.
Personal life[]
Ellen Hansen married Francis Corby, a film director/cinematographer who was two decades her senior, in 1934; they divorced in 1944. The marriage produced no children, and she never remarried. Francis Corby died in 1956.
Corby in 1969 trained as a teacher of transcendental meditation.[6]
She had a stroke in November 1976 from which she recovered and returned to her role on The Waltons in March 1978. According to Michael Learned, who played Olivia Walton, Will Geer may have saved her life. When she failed to show up for work, Geer immediately suspected something was wrong as Corby was a true professional who was never late. So Geer went with the show's producers to her home, where they found that she had suffered a stroke. Following the stroke, Corby was supported by her partner, Stella Luchetta, whom she met in the 1950s,[7] and who lived with her until her death.[8] Her final role was in A Walton Easter (1997). In 1999, following several years of declining health, Corby died at age 87 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. Her memorial site is in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.
Filmography[]
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Writer[]
- The Broken Coin (1936) (Original Story as Ellen Hansen)
- Twilight on the Trail (1941) (screenplay)
- Hoppy's Holiday (1947) (story)
- The Waltons (story, 2 episodes): The Separation (1973), The Search (1976)
Miscellaneous crew[]
- Swiss Miss (1938) (script supervisor) (uncredited)
References[]
- ^ Billy Hathorn, "Roy Bean, Temple Houston, Bill Longley, Ranald Mackenzie, Buffalo Bill, Jr., and the Texas Rangers: Depictions of West Texans in Series Television, 1955 to 1967", West Texas Historical Review, Vol. 89 (2013), p. 104
- ^ "Walton's Granny' suffers stroke". The Miami News. Ancestry.com#Newspapers.com. November 11, 1976.
- ^ "Ellen Corby return uncertain". The Orlando Sentinel. Ancestry.com#Newspapers.com. May 15, 1977.
- ^ "Ellen Corby 'Walton's' returning". The Ithaca Journal. Ancestry.com#Newspapers.com. December 19, 1977.
- ^ "Ellen Corby, 87, Grandmother In 'The Waltons' Series on TV". The New York Times. The Associated Press. April 18, 1999. Retrieved November 3, 2019.
- ^ "Ellen Corby". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
In late 1969, Ellen Corby and I, along with 120 others, spent some months in the jungles of the Himalayan foothills near Rishikesh, India, becoming teachers of Transcendental Meditation.
- ^ "Grandma Walton in Racine". The Journal-Times. Racine, Wisconsin: Ancestry.com#Newspapers.com. August 24, 1978. p. 42.
- ^ "Obituaries - Ellen Corby; Actress Played Grandma on "The Waltons"". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, California: Ancestry.com#Newspapers.com. April 17, 1999. p. 121.
External links[]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ellen Corby. |
- Ellen Corby at IMDb
- Ellen Corby at AllMovie
- Ellen Corby at the TCM Movie Database
- Ellen Corby at Find a Grave
- 1911 births
- 1999 deaths
- People from Racine, Wisconsin
- 20th-century American actresses
- Actresses from Philadelphia
- Actresses from Wisconsin
- American film actresses
- American people of Danish descent
- Screenwriters from Pennsylvania
- American television actresses
- Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
- Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (television) winners
- Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale)
- Disease-related deaths in California
- Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Drama Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
- American women screenwriters
- 20th-century American women writers
- LGBT entertainers from the United States
- LGBT people from Wisconsin
- 20th-century American screenwriters