Will Geer, who would become best known as Grandpa in the TV show “The Walton”, was a political activist as a young man.
In the 1930s and 1940s Geer was actively involved helping to organize social protest and union organizing in New York and California. During this period he became friends with folk singers Woody Guthrie and Will Seeger (both of whom would later entertain and inspire millions with the American Western Folk music.
In 1934 he met and married Herta Ware, an actress and political activist. There were married for 20 years and had two daughters.
Geer also met actor Harry Hay and the two became lovers. Hay credits Geer for inspiring his own activism - gay right. Gay would go on to help organized Mattachine Society, Gay Liberation Front, and Radical Fairies. Geer was involved with Hay during his marriage with Ware.
Due to his political activism and membership in the Communist Party, Geer was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952. He refused to “name names” of other members and was Blacklisted. Lack of work afterwards as other pressures drove Geer and Ware to divorces by 1954.
Creatively, the 1950s were a drought creatively for Geer, but as the McCarthy era ended, he was cast by director Otto Preminger in the 1962 film “Advise and Consent”. This led to more and more roles, His working drought over, Geer began appearing in more films and television.
(My personal favorite is the thriller “Seconds” from 1966 where Geer plays the mysterious leader of a company that forces men to be “reborn” and discard their original identities. The films starts Rock a Hudson.)
By 1972, Geer was cast in the television series “The Waltons” about an American family struggling during the depression but their love of each other hold them together. The series was enormously popular.
As others have pointed out, Geer was gay, a commie, and America’s Grandpa.
Will Geer fell in 1978 with respiratory issues. He died at home surrounded by family and friends who sang to him - Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”
NOTE: Apparently there is some discussion whether Will Geer was bisexual. The only source supporting this was by Harry Hay 12 years after Geer’s death. Since Hollywood was extremely closeted during Geer’s life, and because I thought Hay’s had many gay rights accomplishments of his own, what would he gain by lying about Geer.
