Ralph Waite, Patriarch in TV Series ‘The Waltons,’ Dies at 85

Ralph Waite, a multifaceted actor who became etched in the American imagination as the craggy-faced, big-hearted patriarch of a rustic, Depression-era clan in the popular 1970s television series “The Waltons,” died on Thursday. He was 85.

His manager, Alan Mills, confirmed the death but gave no other details, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Waite lived in Palm Springs, Calif.

CBS premiered “The Waltons” in September 1972 against two already popular shows: Flip Wilson’s irreverent comedy show on NBC and, on ABC, “Mod Squad,” a drama about young undercover police officers. What some saw as a cornball newcomer was expected to be buried, but within two seasons it had driven its competitors off the air.

The success of “The Waltons” owed much to the actors and the characters they played, members of a homespun, hardscrabble rural family used to surmounting challenges through old-fashioned virtues. The foremost was John Jr., or “John-Boy,” the oldest of seven children. John-Boy, played by Richard Thomas, was a serious young man with a passion to be a writer.

Almost as significant was Mr. Waite’s John Sr., the family patriarch who displayed wisdom, goodness, courage and a bit of a temper. He did not approve of hunting animals for sport, but hunted to put food on his hard-pressed family’s table. Though he shunned organized religion, his wife, Olivia, played by Michael Learned, called him “the most God-fearing man I know.”

After his death, Ms. Learned said of Mr. Waite in a statement: “Ralph was a good honest actor and a good honest man. He was my spiritual husband. We loved each other for over 40 years.”

In 2004, a poll of TV Guide readers of the “50 Greatest Dads of All Time” rated him No. 3, behind only Bill Cosby’s Dr. Cliff Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” and Lorne Greene’s Ben Cartwright on “Bonanza.”

Mr. Waite was not particularly enthused when he first heard about plans for the show. His agent advised him to take the part so he could “pick up a couple of bucks.”

“The Waltons” lasted for nine seasons and produced six movie sequels. In 1992, President George Bush said he wanted to “make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like ‘The Simpsons.’ ”

“Somehow, we struck a vein in the life of the world,” Mr. Waite said in an interview in 2013 with The Lancaster News, a South Carolina newspaper.

Acting was only one aspect of Mr. Waite’s life, although it was because of his “Waltons” fame that excited strangers hailed him in airports. He was at various times a Marine, a social worker, an ordained Presbyterian minister who served two congregations, a book editor and a three-time Democratic candidate for Congress from California.

As an actor, he ranged from Shakespeare to Beckett, from Broadway to soap operas, most notably as Father Matt on “Days of Our Lives.” One of his two Emmy nominations was for playing Slater, the first mate of a slave ship in the “Roots” mini-series in 1977, a glaring contrast to the broad-minded John Walton. The other was for “The Waltons.”

He had small parts in movies like “Cool Hand Luke” (1967), with Paul Newman, and “Five Easy Pieces” (1970), with Jack Nicholson. He appeared on television on “Murder One” (1996); as the Rev. Norman Balthus on HBO’s “Carnivàle” (2003-2005) and as Jackson Gibbs, the father of Mark Harmon’s character, on “NCIS” (2008-2012). He directed 16 episodes of “The Waltons.”

Mr. Waite started the Los Angeles Actors’ Theater, an experimental company, and spent more than $1 million of his own money on a failed 1980 movie about skid-row types. The film, “On the Nickel,” which he wrote, produced, directed and starred in, appeared in just a few theaters.

Ralph Harold Waite was born in White Plains on June 22, 1928, the oldest of five children. In a 1977 interview with People magazine, he called his youthful environment “very secular, nonartistic.”

“I was never taken to a play of concert or church,” he said. “Yet I was a show-off, a dreamer, a storyteller.”

After graduating from high school, he joined the Marines, serving from 1946 to 1948. He entered Bucknell University, where he met Beverly Hall, whom he married in 1951. She encouraged him to go into social work, which he did in Westchester County after graduating from Bucknell in 1952.

Tiring of the county bureaucracy, he entered Yale Divinity School and earned a master’s degree. He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister and served congregations on Fishers Island, off Long Island, and in Garden City, N.Y.

Upset with what he saw as hypocrisy in the church, he later left the ministry and worked for Harper & Row editing religious books.

That, too, did not satisfy him. Meanwhile his marriage deteriorated and he drank too much, a problem that he said worsened until he gave up alcohol in the mid-1970s. A friend suggested he try acting lessons.

“I was in my 30s and I had never acted before,” he told The Boston Globe in 1974. “But I figured I had nothing to lose, so I went with him. The first time I just listened. The second time I played a scene. The third time I took the bit in my teeth, and I loved it. I felt alive for the first time since I can’t remember when.”

He eventually got a job as an understudy to all the actors in a Broadway production of Genet’s “The Balcony.” By the time the run ended six months later, he had played all the major roles. He worked as a bartender and waited tables to support himself. In 1965, he received excellent reviews for his performance in William Alfred’s “Hogan’s Goat,” a drama about Brooklyn politics in the 1890s.

In 1967, Clive Barnes in The New York Times savaged a modernistic interpretation of “Hamlet” by the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater in which Hamlet passed out peanuts and balloons to the audience. But he praised Mr. Waite’s “bluff, happy villainy” as Claudius.

Mr. Waite began getting movie roles in addition to his work in New York theater. He wrote a screenplay and showed it to the producer Lee Rich, who ran Lorimar Productions with Merv Adelson. Mr. Rich was not interested in the script, but asked, “Would you be interested in playing in a series I have in mind as the father of a Depression family in the South?”

Mr. Waite became involved in the Los Angeles community, leading an alcohol and drug recovery program and helping to build low-income housing. Saying he was inspired by Vaclav Havel, the playwright who became president of Czechoslovakia, he ran for Congress in 1990. Despite contributions from Hollywood friends like Al Pacino, he lost to the Republican incumbent, Al McCandless.

He ran for Congress again, in 1998, this time against Mary Bono, the widow of the pop singer and congressman Sonny Bono, who was killed in a skiing accident. He actually ran against her twice, losing in both a special election after Mr. Bono’s death and in the subsequent general election.

Mr. Waite’s campaign was handicapped by his commitment to appear as Willie Loman in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” in a New Jersey theater. He could not break his acting contract and had to commute back and forth to the West Coast.

“Ralph Waite is on the road more than Willy Loman — because Ralph Waite is Willy Loman,” The New York Times commented.

Mr. Waite’s first marriage ended in divorce, as did his second, to Kerry Shear. In 1984, he married Linda East, who survives him. He is also survived by two daughters from his first marriage.

Mr. Waite returned to the church in his later years, attending a liberal Presbyterian Church in Palm Desert, Calif. He even preached a sermon or two, including one titled, “We are all Jews.”

Always, he was John Walton, the paternal voice of wisdom. He remembered a woman approaching him in a crowd and saying she was poor as a child and thought of him as her father. “I went to school and college because of you,” she said.

“She said, ‘Now I’m a lawyer, and I don’t think I would be if I hadn’t seen that show,’ ” Mr. Waite said. “I’m still amazed by that. It happens all the time.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/arts/television/ralph-waite-patriarch-in-tv-series-the-waltons-dies-at-85.html?_r=0