Retro : Thanksgiving Dinner With the Waltons

Thomas Wolfe was wrong: You can go home again. OK, maybe not to your home. But most definitely, to the Waltons’ home.

On Sunday night, the familiar white house will fill once again with the clan who personified family values two decades before the phrase existed. That’s when CBS airs “A Walton Thanksgiving,” a two-hour television film reuniting members of the original cast of “The Waltons,” the gentle series about an extended family living in the backwoods of Virginia during and after the Depression. It is their first reunion since 1982.

Inspired by the 1971 Christmas telefilm “The Homecoming,” which was based on Earl Hamner Jr.’s novel about his real-life relatives, “The Waltons” aired on CBS from 1972 to 1981. The following year, viewers bade adieu to the family with three holiday-themed television films on NBC, the last of which also was set at Thanksgiving. Repeats now run on cable’s the Family Channel.

Perhaps most notable about this new outing is the return of series star Richard Thomas as writer John-Boy Walton; he had departed the show after its fifth season and later was replaced by Robert Wightman. Also back are Ralph Waite and Michael Learned as stalwart parents John and Olivia Walton, and Ellen Corby, still spirited as Grandma despite a stroke some years ago. (Grandpa Will Geer, who died in 1978, is seen in a flashback.)

On hand, too, are the actors who portrayed John-Boy’s younger siblings: Judy Norton (Mary Ellen), Jon Walmsley (Jason), Eric Scott (Ben), Mary McDonough (Erin), David W. Harper (Jim-Bob) and Kami Cotler (Elizabeth). They are joined by the storekeeper Godseys (Joe Conley, Ronnie Clare Edwards) and the moonshine-making Baldwin sisters (Mary Jackson, Helen Kleeb).

The script, by veteran “Waltons” writers Claire Whitaker and Rod Peterson, sets the action in 1963, 15 years after the period in the previous telefilms. With John and Olivia about to build a long-awaited dream house, the family, spouses, children and John-Boy’s girlfriend Janet (Kate McNeil) gather for their last Thanksgiving celebration in the old home. But the assassination of President John F. Kennedy rocks them all, giving rise to reflection about their lives and values.

For the actors, who had kept up with each other through the years, becoming Waltons again has been a mix of comforting familiarity and a “time warp,” as Michael Learned termed it, bordering on the bizarre.

During filming breaks on the Warner Bros. back lot and at a Valencia studio, where interior sets had been closely re-created, cast members expressed delight at working together again. Those portraying Walton siblings also noted the changes that their real-life maturity had brought to their roles; the youngest, Kami Cotler, is now 28.

“I don’t think any of us anticipated how much we meant to each other as time went by,” says Ralph Waite. “This feels as real as our lives out there in the world. I hadn’t thought at all about the show or the family, but the minute I put on the overalls and got behind the truck, or had a father-son talk, I was right back into it.”

One of those sons, Eric Scott, now 35, agreed with his TV dad. But his excitement at being back is tempered by an all-too-real tragedy that occurred a year ago this month: While eight months pregnant with their first child, his wife Theresa was diagnosed with acute myelomonocytic leukemia and died, two days after giving birth to healthy daughter Ashley.

“It’s been pretty rough,” Scott acknowledges, his voice turning somber. “Suddenly, Ben’s a happily married man, and the prop man puts a ring on my hand every day.”

Learned slipped readily back into her role, which she had vacated in 1980 and returned to briefly for the 1982 Mother’s Day telefilm. Still, there were some surprises. “I’ve been watching the reruns,” she says. “I’d bought into some of the media hype, that we were saccharine, sickeningly sweet. But it’s not true. Olivia was pretty feisty, her own person. I’ve been able to use some of that now rather than the old idea.”

Also, she says, “In a scene with (Mary Ellen’s) daughter, she mentioned Grandpa, and I was thinking of Will Geer. And I realized, I’m the grandmother here!”

A different sort of surprise awaited Richard Thomas, now 42, who had left John-Boy behind nearly 17 years earlier to broaden his acting horizons. “Before we started, I was very worried,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘How’s the accent? Should he be the same? What about the clothes?’ But when I got on the road leading to the house, it was like I’d never left. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s been in me for 17 years, like an alien, waiting to burst out.’ I stood there and yelled, ‘He’s baaack!’ ”

There is some buzz that if the ratings are good, more “Waltons” movies await. The cast members say they are all for the idea, as long as the scripts serve a greater purpose than merely attracting Nielsen numbers.

Whatever the future holds, this experience, Thomas says, was “very moving. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”

“A Walton Thanksgiving” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS. A four-episode “Waltons” marathon from noon to 4 p.m. airs Sunday on the Family Channel, followed by “The Waltons: The Thanksgiving Story,” which repeats Thursday at 7 p.m. Repeats of the series air weekdays at noon and 7 p.m. on the Family Channel.