- Welcome back to another segment
of Behind the Scenes of The Waltons.
As I head out of town very shortly
I'd like to leave you with this very special segment.
I have the pleasure to have David Harper joining me.
So please enjoy.
Thank you so much for agreeing to come join me.
I know, I have been being asked for ages,
because I spoke with Mary and Eric and Kami and Jon,
and so everyone's like, when are you gonna talk with David?
And I'm like, you know, we'll see. If I can, I will,
but you know, so, they are gonna be over the moon.
I've been hinting since we spoke
that we had it in the works
and you were trying to get your WiFi happening.
So I can't tell you how excited everyone's gonna be
that I got you.
- Well, I look forward to your questions.
Go down memory lane a little bit here.
- Yeah, it's been so fascinating to me
to speak with each of you,
because usually when we get together,
we might talk about things connected with the show
or times we shared,
but we talk real life and we talk other things.
And so to hear the perspective of each of you
about aspects of the show and experiences you were having
that I may not have been there for,
or I may not have known were happening.
I lived in my own little bubble a lot of the times.
And I mean, I was, I think as we often are when we're young,
we're very focused on ourselves
and I know I was, and I was very self-centered at times.
And so what everybody else was doing,
I may not have known what people were experiencing,
filming, or in their personal lives all the time.
So, yeah.
- Well, you know what, it was a lot of work and, you know,
at some point I think we were all on automatic pilot,
just trying to get through the day,
especially with those arduous dinner scenes.
(Judy laughing)
But yeah, you know, I couldn't watch myself for years
and, you know, then Inspiration
and Hallmark started showing it.
And now after like 50 years, I can go back and watch it
with total objectivity kinda like, you know, anybody.
And I still have a little trouble watching myself
when I'm in a scene, but I can go back and kind of go,
"Wow, this was a good show."
I can't think of a single episode
where I didn't choke up a little bit,
and I'm sure at some point, you.
- Do you find that odd?
I mean, sometimes when I've watched episodes
that I was really featured in,
and something about it then I find myself choking up,
and I feel a little odd because like,
I'm watching something I did and it's making me cry.
And so it seems odd sometimes.
Do you have that thought at all, or?
- Not in, not in that regard, just in regard to the content
'cause the stories and the, the performances and stuff,
and you know, it was very reaffirming in a lot of ways.
I mean, we weren't totally sanitized.
We had blemishes and all, but yeah.
You know, I'm almost at the point now where,
I've seen the majority of episodes
at least three or four times.
For a long time I didn't care for the later seasons
after Richard had left.
But then I decided I liked them
because they weren't like the, the first five seasons,
but they were still good in their own right,
and so, yeah.
And you know, I don't know about you,
but when I watch myself on a particular episode
I might have a memory of it
but more times than not I was like,
I have no memory of that.
- I understand.
- I have to laugh,
sometimes I have good memories, but they're all snippets.
I sometimes wonder if it's just been so long or that
some of them might have actually been repressed memories
because I did not enjoy the waiting around, 'cause we did,
We spent a lot of time waiting.
It was great when we were actually working,
but just kind of sitting around trying to find ways
to entertain ourselves,
that got really old.
But you know, maybe in regards to the dinner scenes,
it's like, yeah, I do not wanna remember that.
But I love the way Ralph used to tell those corny jokes
to keep us sane.
I mean, oh, those, you know, all day just doing
one dinner scene, and you know,
you couldn't wait for them to end,
but when I think back about the humor that we brought
and Ralph's jokes were so corny.
They were so corny, it's just what we needed.
And I can recite a couple of them too, but,
so yeah. - Some of them
were a little off color.
- Oh, well, most of them were.
Like I'll see an episode with John Ritter in it,
and I'll think back, you know, God, he was just
so much fun to be around and, you know, I've watched him
on some other shows.
I forget that show he did when he passed away.
I think Kaley Cuoco from Big Bang Theory
played his daughter, and if I ever ran into her,
I would bring up John, 'cause I'm, you know, I'm sure
they adored him as much as we did.
You know, I love seeing our alumni.
Like if I see Ivan Dixon on an old movie
and of course I love Larry Dopkin too.
You know, when I see somebody that knew some of our people
right before the show ended,
and I did that civil war movie in Arkansas,
The Blue and the Gray, just a few weeks earlier,
Ivan was there and he stopped in.
He knew that I was gonna be working on it
at some point, I missed him,
but one of the crew guys, or I don't know,
one of the assistant directors or whatever said,
yeah Ivan was asking about you.
You know, that just warms my heart.
- Ya, I loved Ivan,
he was always so sweet, and so great to work with,
and he had such an amazing history as an actor,
as a director, just as a human being.
The work, the humanitarian and civil rights work
that he did, he had quite a legacy.
- All my favorite directors that we had
were actors first, I didn't know that Lee Philips
was an actor before he became a director,
but certainly Larry Dopkin, and Ivan Dixon, and.
- Alf Kjellin had been an actor.
- Oh yeah, yeah, Ice Station Zebra.
Yeah so it was really wonderful,
and we were, I think a lot of us were too young
to appreciate who they were at the time, but.
And I like watching the old episodes to see the credits
because it gives me a chance to remember some of the
wonderful crew people that we had.
We did start to change crews quite often after Richard left,
and I think I told you about that documentary
on John Chambers.
It was one of the last interviews that Bob Sidell did.
- Our makeup artist.
- Yeah, for those who don't know, Bob Sidell
was our makeup artist for the first five seasons, and,
I don't know if anybody's interested but one of our
other makeup people was Bill Reynolds,
that's Debbie Reynolds' brother, so,
and he was a lot of fun to be around too, so.
- It's wonderful to have been there and be able
to experience that generation of talent,
that we were privileged to work with.
- I can still hardly believe it's been 50 years.
- I know, crazy.
- Time moves so quickly, and it's constantly
slipping through our fingers, but,
I'm sure you know this too, you reach a certain age
and you just become philosophical about everything,
you kind of have to, right?
Nothing wrong with that.
- When the series ended I know it took a while
for me to make peace with,
the fact that I was going to be associated
with The Waltons forever, like I wanted
to sort of move on and feel like,
I had other
aspects to my life that my whole career wasn't gonna be
just about The Waltons, and so I wanted,
yeah, I was doing other work and I wanted people
to appreciate and recognize other work I was doing
beyond just The Waltons, so it took me a while
to come back to,
embracing the legacy, and, I mean I was always proud
of the show, but really to come back to a point
of recognizing just how relevant the stories still are,
and the amazing people we got to,
and what a gift it was.
I mean I always appreciated it, but really came back to,
saying, that's okay.
If people remember that, if it's my epitaph,
it's on my gravestone, whatever,
I'm okay with that, which at a point in my time I was like,
no, no, I'm more than just that.
And I know that I am, and I feel like I don't have to
prove that anymore, so, you know.
- Yeah, before I forget my cousin told me to tell you,
that Mary Ellen was her favorite character,
and she said, yeah she did teen angst
better than anybody I've ever seen.
- It's 'cause I was going through teen angst.
- Well, yeah, it helps.
You're not acting so much, but,
and I said to her,
excepting the adults, next to Richard, for us younger people
you were the second best actress or actor on the show,
and part of that's 'cause you had such great material.
You really did, and people comment on that a lot.
And yeah, I like the very early episodes when we're all
young and very cute.
- Well everyone I felt was so natural,
I mean that's one of the things that I always thought
about your work, and I still do, and what I hear
comments about, is you, I mean Kami same thing,
I mean you were both so young and yet, I can't say
I ever once in all the seasons caught you acting.
I just felt like you were always just there.
And present, and delivering your lines,
and not trying to make anything more than just the honesty
of what it was.
And that's such a gift.
- I had only done a couple things before the show.
I think, The Homecoming was only my third thing
I had done.
I got hired on my very first interview,
which was for an NBC movie of the week,
it was a western with Ernest Borgnine,
I think I was eight.
And we filmed about half of it,
and then they fired me.
I was supposed to be a horse thief,
but I was a little too short to get on a horse without help,
even though I was replaced I still used to get residuals
'cause they kept my night riding shots.
So I, you know, I wasn't old enough,
I didn't have enough experience,
to even think about, how do I act?
All I knew was, remember your lines.
And,
I guess trying to be believable was just,
'cause all I ever wanted to do was,
is to be believable.
And you couple that with a certain amount of disinterest,
it's like, it's just a big thing of pretend.
Certainly for us in the beginning, it was great fun.
And the long days, it became work and stuff,
but, we, even though we were hired to be a family,
we were a family.
So a lot of it just came very easy to us.
- That's what I have for you for this segment
of Behind the Scenes of The Waltons,
as I spoke with David Harper.
I'll be back with more Behind the Scenes of the Waltons,
more Ask Judy, and more with David Harper.
Thanks for watching.