Good night John-Boy

[coalminerswife85]

In the book good night John-Boy or as my husband calls it my Walton bible, has anyone else noticed in the episode guides so e of the information about certain episodes are incorrect, such as names of people involved, or about why this or that was orruring?

[Marilyn]

I haven't looked that close. I'll pay more attention... ;D

[dfnmeows44]

This is the first time I have heard this I need to check it more closely.
This is my first post here in a while. I have been unable to log in and am at a library now

[davidm]

Like from season 2, The Thanksgiving Story, the book says the Baldwin sisters wanted to adopt Ben, but it was Jason they wanted to adopt.

[Marilyn]

Sounds like more than one person was putting the text together for the book if they got Ben and Jason mixed up.

[mauro43]

Wow, that is a great news! I did not know that a authoritative book about Waltons has been published!

This could be exactly what I'm looking for, and I have just made a little research on the Web. Unfortunately the book is not available in Italy, but I have found it in Amazon.de at a very low price.

Nevertheless, I would like to know how detailed the descriptions of every episode are (e.g. only few words, or a rather precise digest)? Let me show you an example of what I mean:
www.the-waltons.com/season5.html#The_Best_Christmas
Is the book more or less specific that that web page, and does it report the final conversation in the house at night ("Goodnight...")?

[Marilyn]

The descriptions in the book are just a paragraph or two. Very good book though!

[davidm]

Goodnight John-Boy was written by Earl Hamner Jr and Ralph Giffin. It gives a little autobiography of Earl, how Spencer's Mountain came to be, including the film and what Earl didn't like about the movie. The Homecoming is based on a real Christmas story for the Hamners in the early 1930s, and it becoming a tv series. They list each episode by season and a little about each episode. Sometimes one of the actors will add a comment or two on a specific episode. Fans also had the opportunity to comment every now and then. It also covers the inception of the Walton Mountain Museum. I got mine at Schuyler, VA and is autographed by Earl.

[sambda]

The book is written by Ralph Giffin, who runs one of The Waltons websites out there, I believe. Earl Hamner is on the credits, but I think his part was really just supplying the info for the biographical sections and so on.

It starts out well - a foreword by Richard Thomas himself, and then two excellent chapters all about Hamner and his family, with loads of old family photos. The third chapter is about "Spencer's Mountain" (book and film) with some behind-the-scenes stuff about that. Chapter 4 details "The Homecoming" in much the same way, with very detailed "making of" info. After that chapter, I was thinking, "The rest of this is going to be great!"

Then the book starts to fall down. Chapter 5 (by far the biggest in the book) is an episode-by-episode synopsis thing. Just a short para about each episode and, to be honest, there are more detailed such things on the web. Sometimes there are comments from the actors, writers and directors about their favourite episodes with anecdotes. And for the person that asked, no, the "Goodnight" conversations are not given (though there is a website out there that has them all). As has been mentioned above, there are some errors in the plots given, and, as usual, the screw up in broadcast dates around "The Children's Carol" and a few other such mistakes.

By the problem is that, after detailing the making of "Spencer's Mountain" and "The Homecoming", there is nothing at all about the making of the actual series! Nothing about Will Geer's dying, Ellen Corby's stroke, Richard Thomas leaving etc etc etc. It's like the writer just got bored and switched to just doing to plotlines. I mean, someone who doesn't know about the show wouldn't even know that Learned and Waite left before the end of the show - basic "comings and goings" aren't even mentioned.

Anyway, the final chapter is about the museum in Schuyler (something I understand Hamner has gone a bit sour on).

Also detracting a bit from the finished product is the quality of the paper it is printed on. Maybe different editions haven't all been the same, but my one is printed on cheap newspaper and this makes some of the photos look really horrible. It was rather a surprise on opening the book to find that, especially with that really nicely-designed glossy cover!

So it rather fails at being either photographic book or a making-of book, and falls between the two stools. As the biographical sections, though nice, have really been eclipsed by Pearson's biog (though the WM book has the edge on the photos as regards that).

I think a really nice book about TW remains to be written - nice and glossy with colour photos, and taking us through the trials and tribulations on the show, season by season. But for now, this will have to do.