Will Geer Trailers
Will Geer: America's Grandpa TrailerWoody Guthrie All-Star Tribute Concert 1970 TrailerIn Hollywood's Backyard: Topanga in the 1970s Trailer
Will Geer (March 9, 1902 – April 22, 1978) was an American actor and social activist. His original name was William Aughe Ghere. He is remembered for his portrayal of Grandpa Zebulon Tyler Walton in the 1970s TV series, The Waltons.
Geer made his Broadway debut as Pistol in a 1928 production of Much Ado About Nothing, created the role of Mr. Mister in Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock, played Candy in John Steinbeck's theatrical adaptation of his novella Of Mice and Men, and appeared in numerous plays and revues throughout the 1940s. From 1948 to 1951, he appeared in more than a dozen movies, including Winchester '73 (as Wyatt Earp), Broken Arrow, Comanche Territory (all 1950) and Bright Victory (1951).
Geer became a member of the Communist Party of the United States in 1934. Geer was also influential in introducing Harry Hay to organizing in the Communist Party. In 1934, Geer and Hay gave support to a labor strike of the port of San Francisco; the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike which lasted 83 days. Though marred by violence, it was an organizing triumph, one that became a model for future union strikes Geer became a reader of the West Coast Communist newspaper People's World.
Geer became a dedicated activist, touring government work camps in the 1930s with folk singers like Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie (whom he introduced to the People's World and the Daily Worker; Guthrie would go on to write a column for the latter paper). In 1956, the duo released an album together on Folkways Records, titled Bound for Glory: Songs and Stories of Woody Guthrie. In his biography, fellow organizer and homosexual rights pioneer Harry Hay described Geer's activism and outlined their activities while organizing for the strike. Geer is credited with introducing Guthrie to Pete Seeger at the 'Grapes of Wrath' benefit Geer organized in 1940 for migrant farm workers.
Geer acted with the Group Theatre (New York) studying under Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg. Geer also acted in radio, appearing as Mephistopheles (the Devil) in the 1938 and 1944 productions of Norman Corwin's The Plot to Overthrow Christmas. He also acted in the radio soap opera Bright Horizon.
Geer was blacklisted in the early 1950s for refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. As a result, Geer appeared in very few films over the next decade. Among them was Salt of the Earth (1954) which was produced, directed, written, and starring blacklisted Hollywood personnel and 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.
Most Popular Will Geer Trailers
Total trailers found: 75
15 April 1974
Barbara and Al adopt Eric, who is deaf and mute, and take him camping in Santa Cruz Mountains of California.
08 June 1934
A young man desperately in love with a nightclub singer sees an opportunity to spend some time alone with her when they're traveling through the Nevada gold country, and he takes the carburetor off her car and throws it in the river, stranding them there.
04 February 1935
A choirmaster addicted to opium and obsessed with a beautiful young woman will stop at nothing to possess her.
01 August 1950
A prison warden fights to prove one of his inmates was wrongly convicted.
08 March 1934
Dirt-poor mountain girl Trigger Hicks is a loner. Her faith-healing is mistaken for witchcraft by the community.
11 July 1949
A prostitute is thrown out of her house by her alcoholic father, and her scheming brother-in-law tries to devise a plan to marry her off and make some money in the process.
01 August 1951
A soldier blinded in war returns home and attempts to adjust to civilian life.
30 June 1970
A federal agent attempts to make some real money before the alcohol ban is lifted so he sets his sights on the whiskey cache of an old army buddy.
05 May 1972
The stern matriarch of a family that lives in a creepy mansion finds that a killer is hiding in the house, searching for a $600,000 fortune rumored to be hidden there and chopping off the heads of anyone who gets in the way.
01 November 1977
Vernon Praiseworthy is a clumsy but lovable dope who stands to inherit his uncle's fortune. The condition is that he travel the rails as a penniless hobo just as his uncle did in the dark days of the depression.
19 March 1978
Two strange sisters live in a crumbling mansion, where they keep a pet ape, which belonged to their late father, locked in a cage.
26 May 1949
Treasury Department officials recruit a florist (Raft) to lead them to a wanted criminal (Macready); but once he gets too close, he finds he's the hunted.
01 April 1974
In the wild west con-man 'Candy' Johnson heads to Nevada to set up his own gambling den and teams up with Lucy Cotton, a young woman he meets there.
21 July 1950
Indian scout Tom Jeffords is sent out to stem the war between the American settlers and Apaches in the late 1870s Arizona.
26 April 1951
Falsely accused by the corrupt Governor Elden of Charleston of fencing stolen pirate booty, young Davey Crandall and friend Tom Botts buy passage on the ship of local buccaneer Bloodthirsty Ben.
21 December 1967
At first, Dr. Sidney Schaefer feels honored and thrilled to be offered the job of the President's Analyst.
05 April 1973
Young woman starts having premonitions of her friends dying. Once her friends begin to die, she starts having premonitions of her own death.
02 October 1973
A small-town sheriff is confronted with the deaths of local senior citizens and strange goings-on in his town.
20 December 1969
In turn-of-the-century Mississippi, an 11-year-old boy comes of age as two mischievous adult friends talk him into sneaking the family car out for a trip to Memphis and a series of adventures.
05 October 1966
An unhappy middle-aged banker agrees to a procedure that will fake his death and give him a completely new look and identity; one that comes with its own price.
10 September 1974
Two hurricane hunters track a huge, violent hurricane that is bearing down on a Gulf Coast town.
01 June 1968
Posing as a hangman, Mace Bishop arrives in town with the intention of freeing a gang of outlaws, including his brother, from the gallows.
10 September 1972
A mountain man who wishes to live the life of a hermit becomes the unwilling object of a long vendetta by Indians when he proves to be the match of their warriors in one-on-one combat on the early frontier.
06 July 1950
Lin McAdam rides into town on the trail of Dutch Henry Brown, only to find himself in a shooting competition against him.
13 March 1987
Documentary about James Stewart's long career as an actor and positive personal life.
15 December 1967
After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity.
30 April 1976
Peasant children Mytyl and Tyltyl are led on a magical quest for the fabulous Blue Bird of Happiness by the fairy Berylune.
07 March 1940
The Fight for Life was documentary filmmaker Pare Lorentz' first "dramatic" film, utilizing the talents of several top New York stage actors.
15 February 2017
Filmmakers (and canyon residents) Alexander and Anne Christine Von Wetter filmed this documentary for German Television in the early 1970s as a revealing close-up of an extraordinary period in America.
12 September 1968
The protégé of a powerful congressman discovers his boss's corruption.
06 June 1962
Proposed by the President of the United States to fill the post of Secretary of State, Robert Leffingwell appears before a Senate committee, chaired by the idealistic Senator Brig Anderson, which must decide whether he is the right person for the job.
20 May 1964
Black Like Me is the true account of John Griffin's experiences when he passed as a black man.
01 January 1977
Tom Selleck is a member of the "Bunco" squad the squad in charge of nabbing con men, cheats, and swindlers.
04 May 1967
Landmark TV adaptation of the Arthur Miller play. Nominated for 3 Emmy awards.
08 November 1940
This labor advocacy film is about diseases plaguing miners in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Sponsored by the Tri-State Survey Committee, "Men and Dust" is a stylistically innovative documentary and a valuable ecological record of landscapes radically transformed by extractive industry.
13 March 1974
A gunfighter who survives his own hanging helps a young widow who is trying to keep a ruthless land baron from taking her ranch.
01 May 1974
A young housewife and mother of two tries to cope with growing children and an unfaithful husband.
17 August 1951
A detective tries to prevent the assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln during a train ride headed for Washington in 1861.
14 March 1954
At New Mexico's Empire Zinc mine, Mexican-American workers protest the unsafe work conditions and unequal wages compared to their Anglo counterparts.
21 March 1956
Captain Braddock of the Los Angeles Racket Squad schools a group of cadet policemen by telling them of three precarious and dangerous cases of con artistry.
15 August 1971
An enigmatic man returns to his Alabama hometown as his sister is dying of cancer and incites the suspicion of notable town officials.
01 March 2019
In 1970, three years following his death from Huntington’s disease, an all-star cast of musicians gathered at Los Angeles, CA’s Hollywood Bowl to pay homage to iconic folk songwriter Woody Guthrie.
01 January 1978
A documentary –actually three episodes of a canceled TV series edited together– examining various phenomena, including ESP, psychic surgery and past-life hypnosis.
03 December 1951
Sylvanus Hurley is a swindler who's been swindled: he's been given a deed to a large plot of mangrove swamp in the out-of-the-way community.
07 November 1973
Rogue intelligence agents, right-wing politicians, greedy capitalists, and free-lance assassins plot and carry out the JFK assassination in this speculative agitprop.
22 July 1948
A state welfare agent persuades a Maine lobsterman to take a troubled orphan boy aboard.
05 May 1939
One of the last bills signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad across the wilderness to California.
05 March 1973
A New York City cop who has retired to a small Western town is drawn into the local case of an Indian who is accused of murdering a sheriff.
05 July 1972
Two young children, who, rather than part with an old pet lion who was once a circus performer, go on a perilous mountain trek to stay with a recluse friend.
06 May 1976
Story follows three generations of a family in the New York City Police Department.
11 March 1973
David Janssen plays Harry Orwell, a retired L.A. cop who was shot during a robbery and whose partner was killed in the incident.
28 June 1935
In early 19th century England, ambitious and ruthless orphan Rebecca Sharp advances from the position of governess to the heights of British society.
22 November 1949
Rural Mississippi in the 1940s: Lucas Beauchamp, a local black man with a reputation of not kowtowing to whites, is found standing over the body of a dead white man, holding a pistol that has recently been fired.
15 April 1932
A bored socialite wagers with a Broadway producer in order to land the lead role in his play but has the tables turned on her by the out-of-touch adventurer she ventures to ensnare under the conditions of the bet.
31 March 1973
A television reporter uncovers a compromising photograph of a Supreme Court nominee, only for the woman in the picture to die under mysterious circumstances.
13 October 1950
Mike Brannon is a former war hero turned midget car racer. His ruthless racing tactics have made him successful but the fans consider him a villain and boo him mercilessly.
16 July 1976
A young drifter and small-town waitress witness a corrupt sheriff murder his own deputy. Framed for the murder and pursued by the sheriff, they run for their life to try and stay alive.
10 June 1949
A man determined to track down the fabled Arizona gold mine known as The Lost Dutchman has an affair with a married treasure hunter, whose pursuit of the mine has lead her to double-cross her husband.
24 June 1950
Harry Musk is one in a million. That means that he's the one out of a million children who is perfectly proportioned but will never grow larger than a typical six-year-old.
20 November 1978
Rip Van Winkle, a lazy American man, wanders off one day with his dog Wolf into the Kaatskill mountains where he runs into an odd group of men drinking and playing bowls.
