@jeff63434: 50 Years Ago this month... Ellen Corby played Esther "Grandma" Walton on The Waltons, and she was one of those characters who made Walton's Mountain feel like a real home. Grandma could be stern, stubborn and quick to speak her mind, especially when Grandpa got under her skin. But underneath all that fussing was a woman who loved her family deeply. Ellen was so wonderful in the role that she won three Emmy Awards for playing Grandma Walton. Then, in November 1976, Ellen suffered a serious stroke. It affected her speech and movement, and she had to step away from the show while she recovered. For a while, no one knew whether she could return. But Ellen worked hard to recover, and in 1978 she came back to The Waltons. Instead of trying to hide what had happened to her, the show wrote it into Grandma's story. Grandma Walton had suffered a stroke too, so some of the struggles we saw on screen were very real struggles Ellen was dealing with herself. Her speech wasn't the same, and she couldn't do everything she had done before, but she could still say so much with her expressions and that familiar look she could give Grandpa. Knowing what Ellen Corby had actually been through makes those later episodes even more meaningful to me. We weren't just watching Grandma Walton recover. We were watching Ellen Corby find her way back, too.

174

There are no more comments for this video.

To see more videos from user @jeff63434, please go to the Tikwm homepage.