- Welcome back to another segment
of "Behind The Scenes of the Waltons."
Today, I'm going to be continuing my conversation
with Eric Scott who played my brother, Ben.
So if you are enjoying these segments,
please do hit like and subscribe.
Storylines you talked a bit about being in the POW camp,
and some of that.
When you were talking about you being younger
as your character than in real life,
I had not realized that
it was an intentional thing about making...
'Cause Ben was originally older than Erin,
and then all of a sudden it was like
Erin was older than Ben.
And I didn't realize that that was intentional,
that switch up.
- Well, there was an interesting thing that went-
Again, if you look at it, they did have I think
Mary in the top part of the cast, even in the "Homecoming",
and I was in the bottom three.
But because I was older in real life,
there was almost like that.
And since I was really two characters,
'cause in the "Homecoming", it was Ben and Stewart
that were combined to make the character Ben.
So I got all Stewart's lines, and I got all Ben's.
So the fact that I was older, I think there was almost
like we went into the series with Ben was older.
But then they came to me and they wanted to make
a specific change with Mary passing me
at around Season two or three.
Which I was fine with me - in fact, I remember having
a conversation with Ellen about that.
And she said, "I know that might not be easy for you to do,
but it's the best thing to do.
If you stay young, they'll have some stories
to write about you.
If you age yourself out,
they'll have less to write about you."
And I thought that was really good advice
because if you stayed younger,
and that's why when I was acting,
because of my short stature,
I was able to do at the age of seven, eight, nine,
I could do five-year-old characters.
The only one that ever knew that I was older than that age
would've been usually if it was a female casting director,
because they could tell that I had permanent teeth already
at the age of seven.
But I could play the age of a five or six-year-old,
and I could memorize lines
'cause I was able to read them and everything else.
So it was to your advantage to always play younger
if you could.
So I just said, "Sure, I have no problem
with having Ben stay young.
You can make him younger than Elizabeth
as far as I'm concerned."
(both laughs)
- The never aging Ben. - That's right.
Just keep him there, be one of the grandsons.
- Yeah.
(Eric laughing)
One of the questions I get asked a lot is about is
the saw mill.
Now I never really worked in the saw mill,
but people seem to be interested,
and also concerned about the safety factors,
like who taught you how to do that?
What was going on?
Was it safe?
Nobody has goggles on,
and yet you're clearly working that equipment.
- It was definitely pre-OSHA.
Let's put it that way.
They gave us a cursory of of all the equipment.
I had fortunately, I think seventh or eighth grade
had wood shop, so that was my experience going into it,
which of course as an actor,
whenever they say, "Can you do something?"
you say, "Of course you can."
I remember going for a role of a John Wayne movie,
and they said, "Can you ride horses?"
I said, "Of course I can."
As you know, I don't like horses, and I don't ride them,
although I know you do, but you'd never say no to anything.
So when they say, "Hey, can you work in a saw mill?"
I said, "Of course I can."
For me, it was not a difficult thing to learn.
I know that if you notice Jason hardly ever worked in it,
and Jim Bob hardly ever worked in it,
it didn't come to them as easily as it did for myself.
They did do a lot of prop work beforehand
to make it easier for us.
So a lot of times they would take like a four by four piece
of wood, and they would glue balsa wood
on all four sides, and then put the outside of the wood,
actual outside of the tree they would put right on it.
- The bark on it.
- The bark, thank you.
And that's what you would be cutting.
So you weren't even going into the wood.
So sometimes you would even see Will at the end
of the scene, he'd just pull the log,
and just pull it right on through
which you could not have done with a real mill because
the blade would've just seized right there.
But just for sake of the scene Will wanted it done,
so he pulled it through sometimes.
So it was fun.
- And no one ever got hurt?
- I don't remember anyone being hurt to the point
where we couldn't continue working.
There might have been "ow" type of thing but.
- Yeah, I know nobody had any serious cuts,
or nobody lost any digits, or anything like that.
- No, no, there was nothing major that came out.
- Yeah, yeah.
And the other one that I was asked about
was the the cave-in, the mill cave-in,
I'm sorry, the mine when John-Boy came back,
and they reopened the mine, and you were all
in the mine, and when it collapsed and everything.
I'd spoke with you a bit about it,
but if people didn't see that segment
when I talked about that, maybe you can share about that.
- Well, it was a fun episode to do.
The exterior which we were not in part of, most of that,
that was done over there at the actual Warner Bros Mill,
right there in the back,
the side lot in which we hardly ever worked at.
And that was very different
'cause we we never went over there,
that was a working part of the studio.
So that was where they would create props, and build props,
but we certainly never filmed there.
So that was neat.
And then they actually filmed the set,
they used an indoor stage for it,
and they had a whole cave created,
and we went in there,
and so it was pretty much fake in nature.
You would have some styrofoam type rocks
that would fall on you and stuff like that.
There was nothing of ever any weight or anything
to truly be scary.
It was that the part of an actor is to make it so
that it is scary.
So if you get a lot of questions about that,
it just says that we all did a good job
of creating magic for the moment because.
- They clearly dumped a lot of stuff on you
because you could see stuff.
- Yeah, it was mostly thrown
in front of you.
- Between you and the camera, so it looked like it.
- Exactly, so you would see a lot of it coming down,
but it didn't hit us as much as you did.
They might have dusted us before the filming began,
so you just actually would see the after effect.
I might have wanted... probably some of the guys
might have thrown it on me on purpose just because it's me.
(both laughs)
And they thought I was deserving of it, or they had a chance
to actually do something to me, take it out on me
a little bit, but it was fine.
Nothing drastic about it.
I'm sure that again, they would tell us that
it was carcinogenic in nature,
and we shouldn't have been doing it with what we were doing,
but ignorance is bliss when you're in the Hollywood world.
(Eric laughs)
- Yes, you were always very energetic.
I remember mornings in the makeup room,
and it would be, everybody would be, it would be early,
and we'd be half asleep, and it would be super quiet,
and then Eric would arrive,
and it was like the decibel level went up.
- Well, you can ask my kids, and I have three of them.
I'm the same way, I haven't changed,
I still wake up with all the energy all the gusto
of a of a 12 year old working on a set for the first time.
But that really was my attitude,
I was so happy to be working.
I've always joked that they say,
"what's your favorite episode?"
I always say one that Ben had a lot of lines in it,
because I was so happy to work, I loved acting,
I loved doing it, being on the set,
having a role to play.
And we knew that we were getting quality stuff
week in, week out.
The storylines, the scripts, the amount of energy
we would put in the show, you could tell everyone
was serious about it, and it showed.
So I was honored to be on something like that.
I mean, I had done a lot of other schlocky shows,
and you get on a set like that,
and you become very appreciative of what you had.
And I well was, so I'm sorry
if I was too energetic for you in the mornings.
- I'm just not a morning person.
- I probably knew that Judy,
and I probably did that on purpose.
(Eric laughs)
- Yeah, I know you like to bait me.
(both laughs)
I do remember, and you were a good spot about it,
but I remember the classic things where we all had things
with lines sometimes, but there's two that always stood out
for me with you, Marcia Woolery,
that there was some, I don't know whether it was every time
you had to say Marcia Woolery, or just sometimes,
but it's a tongue twister.
So what happened was,
I had a speech impediment growing up.
- Never knew that.
- Yeah, my first 11 years of my life my name is Elik.
Okay, so I mean, when I was being cast in shows
at the age of seven, they all thought that I was
from New York, and it was fun.
They liked the fact that I couldn't say Rs.
Hanna-Barbera was doing this cartoon thing that was gonna be
for all the schools,
and it was gonna be a multi-episodic thing,
and I got the main character.
Well, that's when this poor guy,
and he was one of the big directors there, Art Scott,
he worked with me practically every afternoon
for about four months with my Rs, and all the articulation
that I had to do to really get these little cartoons done.
So although I was still much better by the time
"The Waltons" had come up and "The Homecoming,"
if you even see "Bewitched", you'll see my Rs
are still not as well defined as they were, but later on.
So they would give me lines like a Marcia Woolery,
and those Rs just would get me,
or practicing basketball, the Rs,
I would get stuttered and tongue-tied.
- I didn't know that was it.
But I do know we all talked really fast.
So I was not like that.
- Yeah, you wouldn't tell people back then,
you would just keep it to yourself and say,
so of course the writers got wind of that,
and there's a little evil part about some writers you know,
and they'll put those things in.
So they would definitely have fun with my character,
and give me some lines that
they knew would be tongue twisters for me.
And they'd see me struggle a little bit but.
- Oh, that's mean.
- Well, (chuckles) it's fun, it's fun.
I'm fine with it, I slept fine at night,
it didn't bother me.
It was one of those things that took me a while,
and sometimes it just got in the way of me acting up.
So I wasn't studying enough,
or I wasn't prepared for that shot at that moment.
- That's what I have for you for this part
of my conversation with Eric Scott.
I'll be back with more behind the scenes
of "The Waltons", more "Ask Judy",
maybe even more with Eric Scott.
Thanks for watching.