Category: Christmas - Christmas / Chanukkah - Drama - Feature Film Family - Movie
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DVD The Homecoming
A true television classic, The Homecoming was the second movie (after 1963's Spencer's Mountain) based on Earl Hamner's autobiographical writings about love, pride, faith, and survival in rural America during the Great Depression. The Homecoming introduced the Walton family, a 1930s mountain clan living a hardscrabble existence that forces patriarch John Walton (Andrew Duggan) to seek work, far from home, in the city. When John fails to return home, as promised, on Christmas Eve, his iron-willed wife Olivia (Patricia Neal) keeps a lid on their children's worry. Oldest son John-Boy (Richard Thomas), who privately dreams of becoming a writer but worries about disappointing his parents, is dispatched to find his dad. Graceful yet harder-edged than the subsequent TV series The Waltons (which recast several characters and ran for nine years), The Homecoming reveals, albeit understatedly, much about the pain of poverty even as the family draws strength and closeness through endurance. --Tom Keogh
I knocked off a star because this release is SO bare-bones--no commentaries/reminiscences, no extras, and no subtitles or captions (it has an insert, though!). The special itself (I remember when it premiered on CBS), however, is five stars all the way.
I have a particular soft spot for The Homecoming because my parents are from Appalachia, albeit the Alleghany Ridge (not the Blue Ridge, which is where this little drama takes place). Having spent every summer of my childhood in Pennsylvania near the West Virginia line, the nostalgia of The Homecoming is delicious--I invariably laugh, cry, and allow myself to float along on a cloud for an hour-and-a-half. It's hard to believe that so much can be contained in a mere 98 minutes--the result of the excellence of Earl Hamner's craft, based on his writing what he knows. He means us to know it too, and he succeeds in spades.
The image looks fine--a bit soft, but this was shot for TV, after all. ALL performances are stellar--you'll meet wonderful, colorful characters--people you'd like to know in real life. And guess what? You'll feel like you do! Make yourself comfortable, pour out a glass of "The Recipe," and if you haven't already done so, make The Homecoming part of your Christmas tradition.
As my parents remember
I saw this film when it first debuted on tv. It moved me then as it does now. Although they never talked about it, this movie depicts how I feel my parents must have experienced Christmas. Seeing this program will make you feel how truly blessed we are and how important family really is.
Pat
Maybe not the hallmark of a Christmas feel good movie with all the fuzzy warm trimmings, but the people are real and sometimes life is hard even though it is Christmas. It reaffirms the idea that the holiday is what YOU make it, not what the commercial machine is telling you it has to be.
The Waltons' nearly 10-year run on network television grew out of the popular, 1971 made-for-TV movie The Homecoming, which was derived from a Depression-era, rustic setting ("Walton's Mountain"), and characters based on Earl Hamner Jr.'s autobiographical novel Spencer's Mountain--itself the source for a very nice 1963 feature film starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara. That's a lot of entertainment sprouting from Hamner's prose. But something about his seminal story of family values, rugged independence, and big dreams amidst a hardscrabble existence captured the hearts of American audiences, many of whom personally recalled severe economic adversity in the 1930s.
Long before Henry Fonda played an irascible patriarch in On Golden Pond, he played an equally crusty family man in this warmly rustic, 1963 drama Spencer's Mountain, based on an Earl Hamner Jr. novel that later inspired the television series The Waltons. Fonda plays Clay Spencer, a fiercely independent, hard-drinking, foul-mouthed Wyoming laborer who believes in God but rejects (to his tiny community's consternation) organized religion. Scraping together enough money to build a new house for his wife (Maureen O'Hara) and nine children, Spencer runs into an obstacle to both his plans and family pride when his college-bound son (James MacArthur) romances the daughter of Spencer's boss. Director Delmer Daves whips up a kind of morose schmaltz out of the earnest... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Henry Fonda - Maureen O'Hara Director(s): Delmer Daves DVD Release Date: Released the 08 July 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Hallmark's warm, 1995 made-for-television movie The Christmas Box and its darker, 1996 prequel, Timepiece, are logically and delightfully paired in this DVD package. In the former, Richard Thomas plays Richard, a ski-shop owner consumed with work and unhappy about his family's insistence on sharing a lonely mansion with Mary, an icy, humorless widow (Maureen O'Hara). While Richard's wife and child develop loving ties with Mary, he suffers recurring dreams and grows convinced the house is haunted by a tragedy from the old woman's past. Timepiece jumps ahead 16 years from the resolution of that story, then takes us back to the 1940s, when Mary (Naomi Watts) and her late husband, David (Kevin Kilner), a wealthy arms supplier to America's war effort, marry and endure both... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Marcus Cole DVD Release Date: Released the 23 September 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Year two of Earl Hamner's The Waltons still finds the original cast complete and the show humming along nicely on nostalgia for an earlier America, specifically the Depression-era 1930s, a time of sacrifice and family unity as The Waltons portrays it. The characters we came to know so well in season one (see The Waltons: The Complete First Season) continue to live in a spirit of cooperation and generosity, and with hope that a younger generation of Waltons will prosper and dream new dreams for everyone.
The 24 episodes included in this box set feature a number of very strong stories, including a handful of classics, all immersed in the series' typically old-Hollywood production values. (Several season two shows were directed by Waltons' star Ralph Waite.)... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Harry Harris - Ralph Waite - Gwen Arner - Ivan Dixon - Gabrielle Beaumont DVD Release Date: Released the 26 April 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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While we are getting ready to say goodbye to John Boy in the 5th season (not this 4th season), every episode deserves 5 stars. I loved this show growing up (high school) and can watch reruns forever. I'm planning on purchasing all seasons, as I treasure every episode. This is my all time favorite television show and, I think, always will be. More Info about this DVD Director(s): Harry Harris - Ralph Waite - Gwen Arner - Ivan Dixon - Gabrielle Beaumont DVD Release Date: 23 January 2007
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