Will Geer

Will Geer was an American actor best known and beloved as Grandpa Zebulon Tyler Walton on The Waltons (1972, Emmy Award). He was gay and had a decades-long relationship with Harry Hay -- later the founder of the Mattachine Society, one of the earliest gay rights organizations in the United States -- beginning in 1934, when the two met performing together and became lovers amid their shared involvement in the West Coast waterfront and San Francisco general strikes. Geer was blacklisted in 1951 after being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and taking the Fifth Amendment, a consequence of his left-wing political associations that also overlapped with his relationship with Hay. His homosexuality has been documented by Hay's biographers and in Geer's own family's accounts. His story represents the intersection of queer and progressive political history in mid-century America.