Ellen Corby

At 87 years old, Ellen Corby has this physical status:

Ellen Hansen Corby (June 3, 1911 – April 14, 1999) was an American actress.

She is best known for her role on CBS television show "Grandma" Walton, for which she received three Emmy Awards.

She was also nominated for an Academy Award and received a Golden Globe Award for her role as Aunt Trina in I Remember Mama (1948).

Early life

Ellen Hansen was born in Racine, Wisconsin, to Danish immigrant parents. She grew up in Philadelphia. When she was in high school, an interest in amateur theater led her to Atlantic City, where she briefly served as a chorus girl. She and her future husband, cinematographer Francis Corby, moved to Hollywood in the same year and took up a script girl at RKO Studios and Hal Roach Studios, where she appeared on Our Gang comedies. She was in charge of acting lessons for the next 12 years and taught acting lessons on the side.

Personal life

Ellen Hansen married Francis Corby, a film producer/cinematographer who was two decades old at the time, in 1934; they divorced in 1944. There were no children in the marriage. Corby met Stella Luchetta in 1954, who became a mentor for the remainder of her life.

Corby was born in 1969 as a transcendental meditation guide.

She had a stroke in November 1976, but she recovered and returned to her role on The Waltons in March 1978. Will Geer, Olivia Walton's husband in the series, may have saved her life, according to Michael Learned. Geer immediately suspected something was wrong because Corby was a true professional who was never late for work. So Geer and the show's creators travelled to her house, where they learned she had suffered from a stroke.

In A Walton Easter (1997), she appeared in A Walton Easter. Corby died at the age of 87 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, after several years of declining health. In Glendale, California, her memorial park is located in Forest Lawn Memorial Park.

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Career

Although she appeared in more than 30 films in the 1930s and 1940s, including Babes in Toyland (1934) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946), her first credit acting appearance was in RKO's Cornered (1945), in which she appeared as a maid, followed by an uncredited briefing role as a kitchen cook in The Locket (1946). Corby began her writing career at Paramount studios writing on the western Twilight on the Trail (1941).

In her appearance as a lovelorn aunt in I Remember Mama (1948), she received an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. She worked in film and television, mostly in Westerns, portraying maids, ghosts, waitresses, or gossips, and she appeared in Trackdown (1957-1959), starring Robert Culp as Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman. Henrietta Porter, a feminist, advocates for women's rights, says "women should have the right to vote." Women should vote.

They can't do any worse than you men!"

Corby, 1989, was named a Golden Boot award for her guest appearances in many Westerns.

On CBS' The Andy Griffith Show, Corby appeared as the elderly Mrs. Lesh, the crooked car peddler. She appeared on Wagon Train, Cheyenne, The Guns of Will Sonnett, Dragnet (two episodes), Rescue 8, The Rifleman, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Patrick Hartley, The Deadline, Tightrope, Bonanza, The Addams Family (as Lurch's Mother), The Beverly Hillbillies, The Invaders, Lassie, and The Night Gallery. She appeared in the NBC television series Please Don't Eat the Daisies, based on a 1965 Doris Day film, from 1965 to 1967.

Grandma Esther Walton appeared on the made-for-TV film The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971), which was also the pilot for The Waltons. In the film, actress Edgar Bergen portrays her husband, Zebulon Walton. Corby went back to work on the television show The Waltons, and she's back to doing so. (She was the only adult actor from the original Homecoming pilot to be cast in the series.) Will Geer played her husband in the series from 1972 to his death in 1978, the character of Zebulon Walton was also buried. The series ran from 1972 to 1981, and it culminated in six sequel films. She received three Emmy Awards and three more nominations for her role in The Waltons as Best Supporting Actress. She was also nominated for the best supporting actress in a television series for The Waltons and was also selected three times. She died on November 10, 1976, after a massive stroke that had affected her speech and severely restricted her mobility and function, she had left the show. During the last episode of the 1977–78 season, she returned to the series as a result of a stroke.

She remained a regular on The Waltons from 1978-79, with Esther Walton dealing with her strokes as Corby was in real life. Although Corby was able to talk after her stroke, her character's lines were normally limited to one word or one-word dialogue. For example, she encouraged the family to "pray, pray, pray, pray, and pray" after hearing news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

During The Waltons' last two seasons, her role as Grandma Walton was revived, though she later reprised her role as Grandma Walton in five of the six Waltons reunion films from 1982 to 1997.

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