Actor best known for playing John Walton Sr in the Us television family drama The Waltons
Ralph Waite, who has died aged 85, worked as a social worker, Presbyterian minister, publicist and book editor before turning to acting and landing the part as patriarch of a struggling American family in the wholesome Us television drama The Waltons (1972-81).
For nine series and more than 200 episodes from 1972 to 1981, as John Walton Sr – "Pa" – he was the quiet tower of strength bringing up a family of seven during the depression and second world war with his wife, Olivia (Michael Learned).
The barefoot Virginia hillfolk operated a sawmill on Walton's Mountain, in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. Their trials and tribulations, based on Earl Hamner Jr's autobiographical novel Spencer's Mountain, were seen through the eyes of the eldest son, John-Boy (played by Richard Thomas for most of the run, then Robert Wightman), a...
Ralph Waite, who has died aged 85, worked as a social worker, Presbyterian minister, publicist and book editor before turning to acting and landing the part as patriarch of a struggling American family in the wholesome Us television drama The Waltons (1972-81).
For nine series and more than 200 episodes from 1972 to 1981, as John Walton Sr – "Pa" – he was the quiet tower of strength bringing up a family of seven during the depression and second world war with his wife, Olivia (Michael Learned).
The barefoot Virginia hillfolk operated a sawmill on Walton's Mountain, in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. Their trials and tribulations, based on Earl Hamner Jr's autobiographical novel Spencer's Mountain, were seen through the eyes of the eldest son, John-Boy (played by Richard Thomas for most of the run, then Robert Wightman), a...
- 2/14/2014
- by Anthony Hayward
- The Guardian - Film News
Ralph Waite, known to millions as John Walton Sr. on the warmhearted 1970s TV series The Waltons - and, more recently, as the Mark Harmon character's father, Jackson "Jack" Gibbs, on the CBS hit NCIS - died at his Palm Desert home at about 11 a.m. Thursday, according to the Desert Sun. He was 85. The paper reports that his longtime friend, Jerry Preece, showed up for a lunch and movie date only to find ambulances and Waite's wife, Linda Waite, at the house. "She just told me she thought he’d passed," said Preece, who ascribed his friend's death to a "tired heart.
- 2/14/2014
- by Stephen M. Silverman
- PEOPLE.com
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