WILL GEER "THE MOONSHINE WAR" AUTOGRAPH PHOTO

Description

8" x 10" movie still from MGM "The Moonshine War" autographed by Will Geer in black ink.  Geer(d78)was an American actor, musician, and social activist, who was active in labor organizing and other movements in New York and Southern California in the 1930s and 1940s. In California he befriended rising singer Woody Guthrie. They both lived in New York for a time in the 1940s. He was blacklisted in the 1950s, by Hollywood, after refusing, in testimony before Congress, to name persons who had joined the Communist Party.
Geer acted on stage in New York and eastern theatres, and in California for film. He is best-known as an actor for his later portrayal of Grandpa Zebulon Tyler Walton in the 1970s TV series The Waltons. decade. Among them was Salt of the Earth (1954) which starred and was produced, directed and written by blacklisted Hollywood personnel. It told the story of a miners' strike in New Mexico from a pro-union standpoint. The film was denounced as "subversive," and faced difficulties in its production and distribution as a consequence.
In 1951, Geer founded the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, California, with his wife, actress Herta Ware. He combined his acting and botanical careers at the Theatricum, cultivating every plant mentioned in Shakespeare's plays.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Geer played several seasons at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut. In addition, he created a second Shakespeare Garden on the theater's grounds.
By this time, he was working sporadically again on Broadway. In 1964, he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for 110 in the Shade. In 1972, he played the part of Bear Claw in Jeremiah Johnson. In 1972, he was cast as Zebulon Walton, the family patriarch on The Waltons, a role he took over from Edgar Bergen, who played the character in the pilot. He won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for The Waltons in 1975.
Geer maintained a garden at his vacation house, called Geer-Gore Gardens, in Nichols, Connecticut. He visited often and attended the local Fourth of July fireworks celebrations, sometimes wearing a black top hat or straw hat and always his trademark denim overalls with only one suspender hooked.
Geer also had a small vacation house in Solana Beach, California, where his front and back yards were cultivated as vegetable gardens rather than lawns.
When Geer died, shortly after completing the sixth season of The Waltons, the death of his character was written into the show's script. His final episode, the last episode of the 1977–1978 season, depicted his being reunited with his onscreen wife Esther (played by Ellen Corby; she had been absent for the entire season, due to a stroke). Geer's character was mourned onscreen during the first episode of the 1978–1979 season, titled "The Empty Nest".
His former wife, actress Herta Ware, was best known for her performance as the wife of Jack Gilford in the film Cocoon (1985). Geer and Ware had three children, Kate Geer, Thad Geer, and actress Ellen Geer. Ware also had a daughter, actress Melora Marshall, from another marriage. Although Geer and Ware eventually divorced, they remained close for the rest of their lives.
As Will Geer was dying on April 22, 1978 of respiratory failure at the age of 76, his family sang Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" and recited poems by Robert Frost at his deathbed. Geer's remains were cremated; his ashes are buried at the Theatricum Botanicum in the Shakespeare Garden in Topanga Canyon, California.