Ellen Hansen Corby (June 3, 1911 – April 14, 1999) was an American actress and screenwriter. She performed in over 200 films and television series from the 1930s to the 1990s. She played the role ofEsther "Grandma" Walton on theCBS television seriesThe Waltons, for which she won threeEmmy Awards. She was also nominated for anAcademy Award and won aGolden Globe Award for her performance as Aunt Trina inI Remember Mama (1948).[1][2][3]
Ellen Hansen was born inRacine, Wisconsin,[1] to immigrant parents fromDenmark. She grew up inPhiladelphia. An interest in amateur theater while in high school led her toAtlantic City in 1932, where she briefly worked as achorus girl. She moved to Hollywood that same year, and got a job as ascript girl.[2][clarification needed] atRKO Studios andHal Roach Studios, where she often worked onOur Gang comedies, alongside her future husband, cinematographer Francis Corby. She held that position for the next 12 years and took acting lessons on the side.[3][4][5]
Although she had bit parts in more than 30 films in the 1930s and 1940s, includingBabes in Toyland (1934),The Dark Corner (1946) andIt's a Wonderful Life (1946),[1] her first credited acting role was in RKO'sCornered (1945) in which she played a maid, followed by an uncredited brief speaking role as a kitchen cook inThe Locket (1946). Corby began her career as a writer atParamount studios working on theWesternTwilight on the Trail (1941).
She received an Academy Award nomination and aGolden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as a lovelorn aunt inI Remember Mama (1948).[1][2] Over the next four decades, she worked in film and television, typically portraying prim neighbors, spinsters,[1][3] maids, secretaries, waitresses, or gossips,[3] often in Westerns,[1] and had a recurring role as Henrietta Porter, a newspaper publisher, inTrackdown.[1]
Corby's best-known role came as Grandma Esther Walton[1][2] on the made-for-TV filmThe Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971), which served as the pilot forThe Waltons. Her character's husband, Zebulon Walton, was portrayed by actorEdgar Bergen in the film. Corby went on to resume her role on the weekly television seriesThe Waltons.[3] (She was the only adult actor from the originalHomecoming pilot to carry her role over to the series.) ActorWill Geer played her husband in the series from 1972 until his death in 1978, at which time the character of Zebulon Walton was also buried. The series ran from 1972 to 1981, and resulted in six sequel films. For her work inThe Waltons, she gained three Emmy Awards (1973, 1975, 1976)[1][2] and three more nominations as Best Supporting Actress. She also won a Golden Globe award for best supporting actress in a TV series forThe Waltons, and was nominated another three times.[1][2] She left the show November 10, 1976, owing to a massive stroke she had suffered at home,[1][2][6] which impaired her speech and severely limited her mobility and function.[7] She returned to the series during the final episode of the 1977–78 season, with her character depicted as also recovering from a stroke.[2][8]
She remained a regular onThe Waltons through the end of the 1978–79 season, with Esther Walton struggling with her stroke deficits (as Corby was in real life).[3] Although Corby was able to communicate after her stroke, her character's lines were usually limited to one word or one-phrased dialogue. For example, upon receiving news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, she exhorted the family to "pray, pray, pray."
Her role dropped to recurring duringThe Waltons' eighth season, and she did not appear in any of season nine (the final season of the series). She later resumed her role as Grandma Walton in five of the sixWaltons reunion movies between 1982 and 1997, not appearing in the second movie "Mother's Day on Walton's Mountain".[2]
Ellen Hansen married Francis Corby, a film director/cinematographer who was two decades her senior, in 1934; they divorced in 1944. The marriage produced no children. Ellen Corby was survived by her friend of 45 years, Stella Luchetta, and Stella’s husband Peter Luchetta.[9]
^"Ellen Corby".Los Angeles Times. April 28, 1999. RetrievedSeptember 15, 2014.In late 1969, Ellen Corby and I, along with 120 others, spent some months in the jungles of the Himalayan foothills near Rishikesh, India, becoming teachers of Transcendental Meditation.
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