What makesThe Walton's & Littlehouse so wholesome

[teresa]

:)The adult actors, including Richard Thomas as he was 20 at the time of Homecoming, had a lot to due with how the younger Walton sibling turned out as adults. They were all like 2nd family who loved and cared for them. They had someone to look up to. Were very close outside the set & on. Not one of them strayed to drugs and alcohol or got in any trouble with the law. The Walton's & Littlehouse was taken to heart, soul & mind as they grew to adulthood. Everyone of them are special to me now as adults in there lives today as they were when I first met them in the 70's.
God bless them all
teresa

[ncwaltonsfan]

It is refreshing that the actors on these shows stayed on the straight and narrow,especially after reading about things that happen with some child stars. In the case of "The Waltons", Richard was a good mentor,along with Ralph,Michael,Will,and Ellen. Also,the young actors had a good upbringing and support away from the set. It seems this was the case with the "Little House" actors as well.

[wetherwacky]

Perhaps the children didn't fall into major trouble, because their shows were based in more wholesome times in the past, not in the 60s' or 70s'. The influence of pop culture didn't affect them as much as the children of the Brady Bunch, because the show was trying to project a feeling for the 30s' and 40s'. I don't know. Just a thought.

[ncwaltonsfan]

I think that has a great deal to do with it. When you compare the values of the 1930s and 1940s to the sex and drug culture of the late 1960s and the 1970s, there are profound differences.

[stldan]

I was just reading about Jackie Coogan (grandfather of Keith Mitchell who played Rose's grandson on The Waltons). He was a child actor in the early 1900s, and his parents plundered his earnings in order to support their heroin habit. There was absolutely a drug (and alochol) culture in the 30s and 40s.

I'm not diminishing the value of a show like The Waltons. I'm really not. But I think that we tend to romanticize an age that largely didn't exist. Would anyone really want to go back to the intense poverty and war and pre-Civil Rights of the 30s and 40s?

And while I admire the cast of The Waltons and Little House, I believe that they've struggled with the same human failings as the rest of us. I think that divorce and its impact on a family is as big a problem as the sex and drugs of the 60s and 70s, and certainly some of the cast members were not immune to that.

[wetherwacky]

Yeah, but there was still a major shift in values in the 60s'. And I'd rather live through that depression instead of this one, because the character and industry of people in those days was... more admirable. But after that comes the draft, and then I might not have made it back. No meeting President Truman or President Kennedy.