Will Geer
Birth : 1902-03-09, Frankfort, Indiana, USA
Death : 1978-04-22
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Will Geer (March 9, 1902 – April 22, 1978) was an American actor and social activist. His original name was William Aughe Ghere. He is remembered for his portrayal of Grandpa Zebulon Tyler Walton in the 1970s TV series, The Waltons.
Geer made his Broadway debut as Pistol in a 1928 production of Much Ado About Nothing, created the role of Mr. Mister in Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock, played Candy in John Steinbeck's theatrical adaptation of his novella Of Mice and Men, and appeared in numerous plays and revues throughout the 1940s. From 1948 to 1951, he appeared in more than a dozen movies, including Winchester '73 (as Wyatt Earp), Broken Arrow, Comanche Territory (all 1950) and Bright Victory (1951).
Geer became a member of the Communist Party of the United States in 1934. Geer was also influential in introducing Harry Hay to organizing in the Communist Party. In 1934, Geer and Hay gave support to a labor strike of the port of San Francisco; the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike which lasted 83 days. Though marred by violence, it was an organizing triumph, one that became a model for future union strikes Geer became a reader of the West Coast Communist newspaper People's World.
Geer became a dedicated activist, touring government work camps in the 1930s with folk singers like Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie (whom he introduced to the People's World and the Daily Worker; Guthrie would go on to write a column for the latter paper). In 1956, the duo released an album together on Folkways Records, titled Bound for Glory: Songs and Stories of Woody Guthrie. In his biography, fellow organizer and homosexual rights pioneer Harry Hay described Geer's activism and outlined their activities while organizing for the strike. Geer is credited with introducing Guthrie to Pete Seeger at the 'Grapes of Wrath' benefit Geer organized in 1940 for migrant farm workers.
Geer acted with the Group Theatre (New York) studying under Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg. Geer also acted in radio, appearing as Mephistopheles (the Devil) in the 1938 and 1944 productions of Norman Corwin's The Plot to Overthrow Christmas. He also acted in the radio soap opera Bright Horizon.
Geer was blacklisted in the early 1950s for refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. As a result, Geer appeared in very few films over the next decade. Among them was Salt of the Earth (1954) which was produced, directed, written, and starring blacklisted Hollywood personnel and told the story of a miners' strike in New Mexico from a pro-union standpoint. The film was denounced as "subversive" and faced difficulties in its production and distribution as a consequence.
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Narrator
In 1970, three years following his death from Huntington’s disease, an all-star cast of musicians gathered at Los Angeles, CA’s Hollywood Bowl to pay homage to iconic folk songwriter Woody Guthrie. Although the concert was a one-night-only event , four-time Emmy Award-winner Jim Brown filmed the historic Woody Guthrie All-Star Tribute Concert 1970, which included performances by Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Country Joe McDonald, Odetta, Richie Havens, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Earl Robinson, and The Band, along with narration by actors Will Geer and Peter Fonda.
Blacklisted gay communist 1940’s character actor Will Geer became Grandpa Walton in the hit series “The Waltons”. How so?
Filmmakers (and canyon residents) Alexander and Anne Christine Von Wetter filmed this documentary for German Television in the early 1970s as a revealing close-up of an extraordinary period in America. The camera masters and 16mm negative were consequently lost to a devastating fire. Luckily, a lone VHS copy had been made, which spent the next 30 years on the studio shelf. The VHS was found heavily damaged, but a restoration team managed to salvage a fair grade of quality, which has since been remastered.
Self (archive footage)
Documentary about James Stewart's long career as an actor and positive personal life.
The Arts Project of the Work Projects Administration (1935-1942) was a USA government agency established to support writers, theater people, painters, sculptors, and photographers.
Zom
Two strange sisters live in a crumbling mansion, where they keep a pet ape, which belonged to their late father, locked in a cage. While one of the sisters seems to be keeping her head on straight, as it were, the other appears to be sinking further and further into barbarism and insanity.
Host
A documentary –actually three episodes of a canceled TV series edited together– examining various phenomena, including ESP, psychic surgery and past-life hypnosis.
Narrator (voice)
Rip Van Winkle, a lazy American man, wanders off one day with his dog Wolf into the Kaatskill mountains where he runs into an odd group of men drinking and playing bowls. He drinks some of their mysterious brew and passes out. When he wakes up under a tree he is astonished to find that 20 years have passed and things are a lot different.
Choo-Choo Trayne
Vernon Praiseworthy is a clumsy but lovable dope who stands to inherit his uncle's fortune. The condition is that he travel the rails as a penniless hobo just as his uncle did in the dark days of the depression. That seems simple enough until he gets involved in a dog-napping plot. Written by Jerry Roberts
Tom Selleck is a member of the "Bunco" squad the squad in charge of nabbing con men, cheats, and swindlers. Most of their time is spent dealing with penny-ante street-corner crooks. But their investigations start to reveal a larger con game in progress.
Rockfield
A young drifter and small-town waitress witness a corrupt sheriff murder his own deputy. Framed for the murder and pursued by the sheriff, they run for their life to try and stay alive.
Pat Crowley
Story follows three generations of a family in the New York City Police Department.
Grandfather
A pair of peasant children, Mytyl and her brother Tyltyl, are led on a magical quest for the fabulous Blue Bird of Happiness by the Fairy Berylune. On their journey, they are accompanied by the humanized presences of a Dog, a Cat, Light, Fire, Bread, and other entities.
Reverend Davis
A dramatization of the Oct. 30, 1938 mass panic that Orson Welles' radio play, "The War of the Worlds" accidentally provoked.
Dr. Simpson
Film noir parody with a private eye trying to solve the murder of his milkman.
Dr. McCutcheon
Two hurricane hunters track a huge, violent hurricane that is bearing down on a Gulf Coast town.
Motel Manager
A young housewife and mother of two tries to cope with growing children and an unfaithful husband.
Crazy Jack
Barbara and Al adopt Eric, who is deaf and mute, and take him camping in Santa Cruz Mountains of California. Eric becomes lost and is found by a hermit named Crazy Jack, who teaches him how to survive in the woods.
Judge Cotton
In the wild west con-man 'Candy' Johnson heads to Nevada to set up his own gambling den and teams up with Lucy Cotton, a young woman he meets there. This failed television pilot film is loosely based on Honky Tonk (1941), which starred Clark Gable.
Nameless
A gunfighter who survives his own hanging helps a young widow who is trying to keep a ruthless land baron from taking her ranch.
Ferguson
Rogue intelligence agents, right-wing politicians, greedy capitalists, and free-lance assassins plot and carry out the JFK assassination in this speculative agitprop.
Len McNeil
David Janssen plays Harry Orwell, a retired L.A. cop who was shot during a robbery and whose partner was killed in the incident. Harry is in constant pain due to the bullet lodged near his spine, but he works off and on as a private detective to supplement his pension. Late one night, Harry is approached in his home by one of the men who shot him (Martin Sheen) to help find the other man (Sal Mineo) involved in the robbery, who he says is trying to kill him. Is it a setup? This was the first pilot for the ABC detective series *Harry O*, which (after a second pilot, *Smile Jenny, You're Dead*, was picked up) aired from September 1974 to April 1976.
Lemuel Lovell
A small-town sheriff is confronted with the deaths of local senior citizens and strange goings-on in his town.
Ben
Young woman starts having premonitions of her friends dying. Once her friends begin to die, she starts having premonitions of her own death.
Joel Ryker
A TV reporter investigates compromising photographs of a nominee to the Supreme Court.
J. Smiley Krenshaw
A New York City cop who has retired to a small Western town is drawn into the local case of an Indian who is accused of murdering a sheriff.
Bear Claw
A mountain man who wishes to live the life of a hermit becomes the unwilling object of a long vendetta by Indians when he proves to be the match of their warriors in one-to-one combat on the early frontier.
Grandpa
Two young children, who, rather than part with an old pet lion who was once a circus performer, go on a perilous mountain trek to stay with a recluse friend.
Stan
Will Cole is a charismatic 35 year old paper mill laborer who seems to celebrate a life of bad choices. He lives and behaves as if he was still 18, womanizing and drinking and rejecting responsibility because he sees no reason to take life seriously. Surprisingly enough, despite his devil-may-care attitude, he has several important people in his life. He maintains a special relationship with Stan, an old mentor who lives in a nursing home, and Ruth, the only woman he truly cares about. Andrew is his best friend but grows tired of Will's antics, and he is soon to be married and moving on. Will constantly has something up his sleeve but his pranks inevitably bring pain and tragedy to those closest to him, forcing him to reevaluate his life and make some difficult decisions. (IMDb)
Roy Jurroe
The stern matriarch of a family that lives in a creepy mansion finds that a killer is hiding in the house, searching for a $500,000 fortune rumored to be hidden there and chopping off the heads of anyone who gets in the way.
Justice Gilead Merton
Just before the Salem Witch Trials, an embittered old woman, who has learned witchcraft, teams up with the Devil, and brings a scarecrow to life as part of her diabolical revenge on the judge who was once her lover.
Doc Thomas
An enigmatic man (Sidney Poitier) returns to his Alabama hometown as his sister is dying of cancer and incites the suspicion of notable town officials.
Simon Anderson
An alcoholic drifter decides to run for sheriff in a small town. However, in order to get elected, he must find out who killed a visiting preacher.
The Bishop
A young priest questions his faith after he falls in love with a social worker.
Mike Patterson
A successful professor has his life disrupted by a secret from his past — in his college days he became a member of a powerful secret society, and now the society has a job for him.
Mr. Baylor
A federal agent attempts to make some real money before the alcohol ban is lifted so he sets his sights on the whiskey cache of an old army buddy.
Boss
In turn-of-the-century Mississippi, an 11-year-old boy comes of age as two mischievous adult friends talk him into sneaking the family car out for a trip to Memphis and a series of adventures.
Malcolm Stoddard
The protégé of a powerful congressman discovers his boss's corruption.
Pop Chaney
Posing as a hangman, Mace Bishop arrives in town with the intention of freeing a gang of outlaws, including his brother, from the gallows. Mace urges his younger brother to give up crime. The sheriff chases the brothers to Mexico. They join forces, however, against a group of Mexican bandits.
Candy
Two ranch workers, one of them simple-minded, look for work and happiness during the Great Depression, but luck is not in their cards.
Dr. Lee-Evan
At first, Dr. Sidney Schaefer feels honored and thrilled to be offered the job of the President's Analyst. But then the stress of the job and the paranoid spies that come with a sensitive government position get to him, and he runs away. Now spies from all over the world are after him, either to get him for their own side or to kill him and prevent someone else from getting him.
Prosecutor
After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity.
Giles Corey
Landmark adaptation of the Arthur Miller play. Nominated for 3 Emmy awards.
Old Man
An unhappy middle-aged banker agrees to a procedure that will fake his death and give him a completely new look and identity – one that comes with its own price.
Truckdriver
Black Like Me is the true account of John Griffin's experiences when he passed as a black man.
Senate Minority Leader
Proposed by the President of the United States to fill the post of Secretary of State, Robert Leffingwell appears before a Senate committee, chaired by the idealistic Senator Brig Anderson, which must decide whether he is the right person for the job.
Harry Robinson
Captain Braddock of the Los Angeles Racket Squad schools a group of cadet policemen by telling them of three precarious and dangerous cases of con artistry. Included are tracking down a dance hall girl, who, together with a big operative, are thwarted in attempting a robbery; a racketeer fleecing a book publisher on a Trans-Atlantic voyage, and the tripping up of the plans of a phony land syndicate.
Sheriff
At New Mexico's Empire Zinc mine, Mexican-American workers protest the unsafe work conditions and unequal wages compared to their Anglo counterparts. Ramon Quintero helps organize the strike, but he is shown to be a hypocrite by treating his pregnant wife, Esperanza, with a similar unfairness. When an injunction stops the men from protesting, however, the gender roles are reversed, and women find themselves on the picket lines while the men stay at home.
Dan Paget - Miami Mayor / Postmaster
Sylvanus Hurley is a swindler who's been swindled: he's been given a deed to a large plot of mangrove swamp in the out-of-the-way community. So he decides to con the locals, some of whom are not as honest as he....
Homer Crowley
A detective tries to prevent the assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln during a train ride headed for Washington in 1861.
Mr. Nevins
A soldier blinded in war returns home and attempts to adjust to civilian life.
Tom Botts
Falsely accused by the corrupt Governor Elden of Charleston of fencing stolen pirate booty, young Davey Crandall and friend Tom Botts buy passage on the ship of local buccaneer Bloodthirsty Ben. They avoid being killed by faking a case of the pox, which causes the panicked captain and crew to desert the ship. The two find themselves alone, and when a lucky cannon shot hits a mast on a British ship, they find themselves mistaken for pirates. They sail to Tortuga, where they recruit such notorious corsairs as Henry Morgan, Captain Kidd, Anne Bonney, and Blackbeard to lay siege to Chaleston and expose the villain Elden.
Jack Mackay
Mike Brannon is a former war hero turned midget car racer. His ruthless racing tactics have made him successful but the fans consider him a villain and boo him mercilessly. Independent, beautiful reporter Regina Forbes tries to interview him but is put off by his gruff chauvinism, and when Brannon's daredevil tactics cause the death of a fellow driver, he finds himself a pariah in the sport thanks to her articles. When she finds him earning money as a barnstorming daredevil driver hoping for a comeback, they begin to become mutually attracted.
Rancher
Indian scout Tom Jeffords is sent out to stem the war between the Whites and Apaches in the late 1870s. He learns that the Indians kill only to protect themselves, or out of retaliation for white atrocities.
Convict Mapes
A prison warden fights to prove one of his inmates was wrongly convicted.
Wyatt Earp
Lin McAdam rides into town on the trail of Dutch Henry Brown, only to find himself in a shooting competition against him. McAdam wins the prize, a one-in-a-thousand Winchester rifle, but Dutch steals it and leaves town. McAdam follows, intent on settling his old quarrel, while the rifle keeps changing hands and touching a number of lives.
William Musk - Father
Harry Musk is one in a million. That means that he's the one out of a million children who is perfectly proportioned but will never grow larger than a typical six-year-old. Adult, pint-sized Harry longs to be part of the big world.
Dan'l Seeger
Silver has been found on comanche territory and the government accomplished a peaceful agreement with the indians. When James 'Jim' Bowie comes into the scene he finds the white settlers living near by planning to attack the indians although they know about that agreement and the beautiful Katie seems to play a leading role in this intrigue.
O'Fallon
Billy the Kid becomes embroiled in Lincoln County, NM, land wars. When rancher who gave him a break is killed by rival henchman, Billy vows revenge. New employer takes advantage of his naivety to kill rivals, lets the Kid take rap. Kid takes to the hills with friends until caught. Escapes hanging but remains in area to be near employer's young wife with whom he's infatuated
Sheriff Hampton
Rural Mississippi in the 1940s: Lucas Beauchamp, a local black man with a reputation of not kowtowing to whites, is found standing over the body of a dead white man, holding a pistol that has recently been fired. Quickly arrested for murder and jailed, Beauchamp insists he's innocent and asks the town's most prominent lawyer, Gavin Stevens, to defend him, but Stevens refuses. When a local boy whom Beauchamp has helped in the past and who believes him to be innocent hears talk of a mob taking Beauchamp out of jail and lynching him, he pleads with Stevens to defend Beauchamp at trial and prove his innocence.
Noah
A prostitute is thrown out of her house by her alcoholic father, and her scheming brother-in-law tries to devise a plan to marry her off and make some money in the process.
Deputy Ray Covin
A man determined to track down the fabled Arizona gold mine known as The Lost Dutchman has an affair with a married treasure hunter, whose pursuit of the mine has lead her to double-cross her husband.
Schultzy
Treasury Department officials recruit a florist (Raft) to lead them to a wanted criminal (Macready); but once he gets too close, he finds he's the hunted.
Nick Driver
A state welfare agent persuades a Maine lobsterman to take a troubled orphan boy aboard.
Narrator (voice)
This labor advocacy film is about diseases plaguing miners in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Sponsored by the Tri-State Survey Committee, "Men and Dust" is a stylistically innovative documentary and a valuable ecological record of landscapes radically transformed by extractive industry.
Ballou
The Fight for Life was documentary filmmaker Pare Lorentz' first "dramatic" film, utilizing the talents of several top New York stage actors. A tribute to the Chicago Maternity Center and its efforts to provide the best possible care for destitute mothers, the film is based on the book of the same name by Paul de Kruif. Myron McCormick plays the largest role as a dedicated intern, while others in the cast include such theatrical heavywrights as Will Geer, Dudley Digges and Dorothy Adams. The film's many vignettes range from the tragic (a mother dying in childbirth in the opening scene) to the exultant (another mother rescued from the brink of death in a disease-ridden tenement). Filmed in Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland, Fight for Life is a worthwhile effort, though Lorentz seems more comfortable with the "actuality" scenes than with the dramatized passages.
Foreman (uncredited)
One of the last bills signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad across the wilderness to California. But financial opportunist Asa Barrows hopes to profit from obstructing it. Chief troubleshooter Jeff Butler has his hands full fighting Barrows' agent, gambler Sid Campeau; Campeau's partner Dick Allen is Jeff's war buddy and rival suitor for engineer's daughter Molly Monahan. Who will survive the effort to push the railroad through at any cost?
Spectator (uncredited)
The first feature length film to use three-strip Technicolor film. Adapted from a play that was adapted from William Makepeace Thackeray's book "Vanity Fair", the film looks at the English class system during the Napoleonic Wars era.
Poker Player (uncredited)
A young man desperately in love with a nightclub singer sees an opportunity to spend some time alone with her when they're traveling through the Nevada gold country, and he takes the carburetor off her car and throws it in the river, stranding them there. They wind up staying at the cabin of a crusty old prospector, and soon the manager of a nightclub act shows up with his bevy of beautiful showgirls.
West Fry
Dirt-poor mountain girl Trigger Hicks is a loner. Her faith-healing is mistaken for witchcraft by the community. She falls for an engineer building a dam, who protects her.
McMahon - Asylum Guard
A scheming socialite meets her match in the out-of-touch wildlife explorer she ventures to ensnare.
