The Waltons weren't poor

i remember the Glasgow ones. Horrible.

but in the US, a country that hadn’t had its infrastructure destroyed by war, at the time enjoying the greatest prosperity in history, and millions of people still living this way.

@knitnerd90 thats an interesting link, thanks. I think though the Nick Hedges for Shelter photos from the UK 60’s look much worse, sadly

There are multiple episodes/characters in The Waltons that were much poorer than they were but they were still poor. They had what they needed yes (a house to live in, a business, food, the basics of life, family, love) but rarely any extras.

They also wore 1970s flares etc which is impressive timetravelling fashion sense for the 1930s.
Its a tv show........ best not to over analyse!

I was going to use Dolly Parton as an example of Appalachian poverty!

The Waltons absolutely soft-soap things — and Virginia was a Jim Crow state, they certainly didn't show that. But most people didn't own land to farm at all. Many miners lived in company towns where they didn't own their homes, and bought their food at high prices from the company store. You wouldn't have been self sufficient. You were tied to local employers in ways that urban slum dwellers were not. Coal companies were strike-breaking up until the 1970s (at that point, it was becoming moot because the industry was shrinking so much).

To this day the poorest places in the USA are Native reservations and central Appalachia. LBJ, who grew up pretty poor himself, was appalled when he visited during his War on Poverty. Here's some photos of what that looked like:

https://time.com/3878609/war-on-poverty-appalachia-portraits-1964/

To this day, West Virginia has the lowest life expectancy in the US, over a decade less than the healthiest states.

Sharecroppers in the Deep South were almost as badly off. There's a famous book called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men about the lives of three tenant families during the Depression.

It’s based on a true story. They were largely self-sufficient but didn’t have a whole lot of cash money. And as noted, it’s just a TV show, not a documentary.

They were all on (repeated) around the same time as a child in the 1980s.

That would be a different programme. It's just telling one family's story, in a way that appealed to millions of others across the world at the time.

Bit off on a tangent here, but if anyone has Tubi (free channel) there’s a film called ‘stalking Laura’ with John Boy and Brooke Shields, it’s a true story and though he tries his utmost to not be ‘John Boy’ with his automatic rifles and rocket launchers he just remains…..’John Boy’ It was just his defining role to me.

This is the fun sponge talking..

It couldn’t have been that hard, they got to see Bobby Bigelow and the Haystack Gang live

Oh I loved Jim Bob. I had a real fondness for them all really, but he was always my favourite.

I like the Waltons but I could never understand their casual walking about the countryside. Surely there were bears about!

And he made the food of that time and poisoned them both.

I thought you meant that you'd been watching The Waltons when YOUR neighbour popped round to tell you he'd been living off wild onions. 😜 I should get some sleep.

But that level of poverty wouldn't have made for a hit feelgood show

And this is it exactly. OP if you’re really interested you should read up on Earl Hamner Jr. The Waltons, his stories based on his real life family history, are deliberately VERY sanitised versions of his reality growing up. What he really wanted to convey was the love, support and close family relationships from his time growing up through the depression, rather than the real life grinding poverty, specifically as a message of hope.

Those of us who are old enough remember Michael Landon as Little Joe in Bonanza.

My favourite moment in Yellowstone was discovering that Teeter is Michael Landon's daughter. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRui9dFxQVCXx0Cd4lSmQMtNAjlILzM9q0gyUhc48cAOH-ccLTxflvLTFRX&s=10

Haha so true, this thread is cracking me up 🤣

Her parents were illiterate and she grew up eating squirrel.

But that level of poverty wouldn't have made for a hit feelgood show.

Although she wasn't born until the 40's I think Dolly Parton has a better claim to being dirt poor than the Waltons. She was one of 12 and spent her early childhood in a one room shack. Things started to look up when she was a bit older because they moved to a two room shack. You didn't see that level of deprivation in the Waltons even though they were living through the depression.

I love watching the show. I have read that families who lived on farms had an easier time because they could have gardens, raising animals, and an easier life. Many people had large families to help on the farm and the Walton’s had food and land but had very little in money.

This is the cutting edge pop culture analysis I come to MN for 😂

I have real fondness for The Waltons. Watched it as a kid and then found it a couple of years ago playing late at night on some obscure TV channel.

The sitch with Mary Ellen's husband was very odd. John Boy was painfully earnest, and Jim Bob was a bit...Deliverance.

I think we need to remember this was filmed in 70s, a big time of cultural change, hence the emphasis on racial integration and acceptance etc, and the popularity of the "love conquers everything" theme, but yes i think highly unrealistic in 1930s. Coincidentally, I am reading Spencers mountain by earl hamner, autobiographical but fictionalised too. This is what the waltons is based on. They did not live in a big house on their own property but in a small house that was owned by the mill and quarry company that owned all the houses and was the employer. The family struggled for shoes and some of the kids shoes were communal, you might say. The mother is telling the dad all the time that the kids need shoes. The clothes belonged to the oldest and then passed down. John boy or Clay boy in this book is the first boy to be allowed to finish high school as most had to get jobs, join the company. The school teacher talks about company men being old and bent at 40. The waltons or spencer or hamner family had owned all of the mountain but the many sons sold their bits off to the company. Only the dad has retained a small parcel of land on the mountain and refuses to sell. He dreams of building a house on the mountain and has been planning it for 17 years since he got married. but, as yet only got the basement dug out. Havent finished the book yet so cant say if he ever builds it.

Re the contraception, in the 30s. Thanks to your comment I found out about the comstock laws that affected access to contraception, and also about the Virginian Sterilisation Act where thousands of people were forced to have operations, mostly women.......in the name of eugenics, so yeah, that doesnt quite fit with all the tolerance in the show.
On the plus side, in spencers mountain , the dads brother marries "a jew" and no one actually knows what that is precisely, despite going to church every sunday. Wicked old Grandpa absconds with the new bride to get some of the recipe in buckingham county!
I dont really like the LHOP tv show, but I do end up watching the Waltons when I find its on! I was allowed to watch it at my auntie marys house when I was 11.

Yup im sounding like a waltons weirdo!

Mr Godsey and Corabeth were amusing

Grandpa Walton had a brilliant name- Zebulon. I would have loved to have been brave enough to call my son Zebulon!

My main memory of the Waltons is the sound that the car horns made.