DATE: Thursday, October 23, 1997            TAG: 9710230085

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY EMILY PEASE, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:  125 lines

"REAL" AND TV WALTONS WILL REUNITE

ON SATURDAY, when the night is no longer young, the Hamner family will turn in for bed. Lights will go out, one by one. And then the good-nights will begin:

``Good night, Earl.''

``Good night, Paul.''

``Good night, Jim.''

Gathered for a reunion in their home town of Schuyler, Va., the Hamners will resume their family tradition of lying in their beds in the dark, saying good night to one another by name.

Just like the Waltons.

``Yes, we really did say good night like that,'' recalls Marion Hamner Hawkes, the model for Mary Ellen, John Boy's sister on the popular television show. ``And when we get back together now, we still do it.''

Hawkes now lives in Williamsburg, where she and her husband, Glenn, volunteer at the Colonial Williamsburg visitors center.

``Williamsburg feels like home,'' she says.

It has been 25 years since the first episode of ``The Waltons'' aired on CBS. To celebrate, the town of Schuyler will host a grand reunion this weekend, when visitors can stroll past the Hamner home. The Waltons Mountain Museum will open its doors to the public, as always.

Much of the Hamner family will be on hand, including Marion and her sisters Audrey and Nancy and brothers James, Earl and Paul.

They'll be joined by several actors from the TV series: Judy Norton-Taylor, who played Mary Ellen; Cami Cotler, who played Elizabeth; Mary Beth McDonough, who played Erin; Howell Williams, who played Harley Grant, and Ronnie Claire Edwards, who played Cora Beth Godsey.

During the nine years the show was on the air, the Hamners came to feel that their TV counterparts were an extension of their own family. The actors, in turn, enjoyed meeting the real ``Waltons.''

The relationship between truth and fiction became so blurred, in fact, that Marion Hamner Hawkes often slips and refers to her siblings by their fictional names. Audrey becomes ``Erin,'' for example, and Nancy becomes ``Elizabeth.''

Youngest brother James Hamner, who continues to live in the family home in Schuyler, even became known to his family as Jim Bob - his character on the show - although now his brothers and sisters mostly refer to him as ``Jim.''

Yet only Earl Hamner Jr., whose book ``Spencer's Mountain'' inspired the show, actually worked closely with the cast. While the show was being produced, Earl lived close by in Hollywood, where he could serve as executive script consultant. Earl also provided the opening and closing voice of John Boy as he looked back on his boyhood days on ``Walton's Mountain'' during the Depression.

For the rest of the Hamner family, who watched every Thursday night in their homes across the country, the show provided a way to relive their close, happy lives as children growing up in rural Virginia.

Television critics, most of whom lived in New York or Los Angeles, at first begrudgingly admitted liking the show but took issue with the clean faces of the Walton children and the homespun wisdom of the grandparents, played by Will Greer and Ellen Borby. Hawkes still insists the Hamner family really was as loving as the show portrayed them - maybe even more so.

``I resented the fact that they wanted us to tussle more with each other, and to fight,'' Hawkes says. ``We never really did that. We loved each other - and we still do.''

At least one thing about the show was pure fiction. There was never a Walton's Mountain, Hawkes says, adding, ``We were poor, remember? If we had owned a mountain, there wouldn't have been a show.''

But many of the show's details were straight out of life in Schuyler during the '30s and '40s. The Baldwin Sisters, for example - those mischievous ladies who liked to nip from a bottle hidden in a purse - were taken from real life. In Schuyler, they were really a mother and a daughter whose fondness for their own homemade ``recipe'' - moonshine - was well known.

``My mother would rather have died than to let me go to their house,'' Hawkes says, laughing.

Other eccentric characters, like store owners Ike and Cora Beth Godsey, were composites, Hawkes says. ``I loved Cora Beth. She was a combination of some of my aunts and ladies in the neighborhood.''

Of all the characters, one of the most carefully drawn was the father of the clan, John Walton, who was played by Ralph Waite. Like John Walton in the television series, Earl Hamner Sr. owned a small lumber yard. When he saw that neighbors were struggling financially, he quietly saw to it that their woodpiles stayed stocked.

``Long after my father died, my mother would receive money from neighbors who said he had helped them at one time or another,'' Hawkes says.

The elder Hamner was not a church-goer, she says, just like the character on the TV show.

``We were all Baptists,'' she says, ``but my father would go to church only under protest. He would take a fishing pole and wait until after the first hymn had been sung. Then he'd go off fishing. I'd guess you'd say he worshiped nature, but he always told us children to say our prayers.''

Hawkes has seen every episode of ``The Waltons'' - approximately 234 shows. Of all the shows, her least favorite was the episode where her own character, Mary Ellen, remarried after her husband, Curt, was declared missing after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

``I didn't agree with that,'' says Hawkes, who has been married only once. ``That wouldn't be like Mary Ellen to give up on finding Curt. She would have fought for her husband.''

However, Hawkes has high praise for the way her brother characterized her in his book, and she believes actress Judy Norton-Taylor did a ``terrific job'' portraying her on TV.

``I liked Mary Ellen,'' Hawkes says. ``I thought she had a lot of spunk. I was always the outspoken one, a women's libber. And I was never happy with the division of labor in our household.''

The Hammer children, just like the Walton children on TV, were expected to do all the chores, which were assigned by gender. The girls made all the beds - including their brothers' beds - and they did all the cooking and the cleaning and the laundry. The boys did the outside jobs, like mending fences and taking care of livestock.

``I didn't like inside work,'' Hawkes says.

Now, Waltons fans can watch reruns of the show on cable, and they can learn more about the characters, the actors and the Hamner family on a Waltons site on the Internet, which Hawkes likes to visit daily on her home computer. There's even a Waltons chat room, called the Waltons Forum. The address is www.v-waltons.com.

``It's amazing to see what people have to say,'' Hawkes says. ``The show still means so much to them. Some of them even know more about the show than I do.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

THE DAILY PRESS

Marion Hamner Hawkes...

GETTING THERE

To get to Schuyler, take Interstate 64 west to U.S. 29 south.

From U.S. 29, take Virginia Route 6 east. Go about 5 miles and turn

right on Virginia Route 800; go to the road's end and turn right on

Virginia Route 617. Follow signs to Schuyler. KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW

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