- Welcome back to another segment
of "Behind the Scenes of 'The Waltons'".
Today, I'm talking about the second of two episodes
that Sissy Spacek guest starred in.
In this case, from Season 2, "The Odyssey".
One of the first things I noticed in this episode
was how long my hair was.
Oh my goodness. I'd forgotten it was ever that long.
I used to just kind of let it grow.
And I remember there was a point,
and as I get through more seasons,
I expect I will find the point
where one of our hairstylists said,
oh, you have really bad split ends.
And let me just trim those up.
And I thought, yeah, sure.
Well, my hair kind of came down to a V,
and she basically leveled it where the V started.
So rather than kind of trimming all of that.
So all of a sudden it was,
oh, I don't know, a good 8 - 10 inches shorter.
Never grew long again. Sad, but true.
The other thing I noticed on my hair
was this kind of a line about here.
In 'The Homecoming', they wanted all the children
to be redheads because there's a story point about that.
So, I didn't have red hair.
They dyed my hair a sort of a dark auburn kind of a color.
And then after we filmed "The Homecoming",
I just kind of left it alone and let it start growing out.
Well, it was probably about six months later
that we started Season 1 of "The Waltons",
and what they did was rather than - they decided
they weren't gonna worry about all of us having red hair,
and my hair had probably grown out, I don't know,
about here, you know, somewhere around there,
and what they did was they said,
well, we will put a rinse.
So, a non-permanent kind of color or dye or something.
I don't remember if it was a rinse or a dye.
Anyway, they said from the point of where my own hair
had grown out to the rest of it, they would try to match
my natural color.
So they did that. So as it continued to grow, we did that.
And then when it hit about here,
they decided not to worry about it anymore.
So, that must've been when that happened,
because I was like, that's kind of two different colors.
So if you notice that, now you know why.
Early on, I am feeding a baby lamb.
Another animal on "The Waltons".
This one, I guess, was pretty benign to work with,
and I'm doing it for some sort of a contest, at the fair.
I need a pen built for it.
So I go and I talk John Boy into doing it,
as does everybody else with different things.
Ben and Jason are building a Soapbox Derby car,
and they want John Boy's help to get the wheels on.
And everybody seems to want something from John Boy.
So finally he gets thoroughly frustrated by the whole thing
and says that he is going to go off up to,
I believe the McGregor (actually Montgomery) cabin up up in the mountains
so that he can have some peace and quiet to work, to write.
Another case of ad-libs.
At the top of the scene,
they have called the doctor in, Dr. Vance,
because Jim Bob (Ben) is running quite a fever.
And John Boy has to turn over his room to Jim Bob. (Ben)
But before the doctor comes back in,
as John and John Boy are sitting by the fireplace,
the first line in that scene would have been,
"Oh, doc"... and whatever they asked the doctor.
How is Jim Bob?
So, this conversation,
these couple of lines that happened before
would have been Ralph and Richard just ad-libbing.
So otherwise the scene would have seemed lifeless
until the doctor entered.
So this was their way of filling with life,
with real life sort of things and ad-libs
until the doctor appeared.
So here, you will hear that.
- [John] Yeah, so my brother said to me, it's-
Oh, doc. How is he?
- As John Boy heads up to the McGregor cabin,
he comes across Granny Ketchum,
who is trying to get this mule, Blue,
you might recognize, out of her garden.
John Boy stops and helps her get the mule out of her garden
and tie it up someplace where it will not eat her cabbages.
And we find out that Granny Ketchum has a whole garden
and collects things that are natural herbs
and natural healing plants and things like that.
That she is sort of a local natural healer.
John Boy finally arrives at the cabin
and he discovers that Sarah Jane Simmons,
Sissy Spacek, is already there,
and quite pregnant.
She tells John Boy about having met a young man,
and that they got married
and now he has gone off to someplace to get a job,
make money, and then he is going to send for her.
And that she can't go home to her mother's
because they had quite an argument.
And basically her mother sent her away to another family
and she was supposed to get an education through them.
And mostly, she said,
what she ended up doing was working.
That they worked her like she was their personal servant.
And she did very little in terms of education
and ultimately left there.
So, she knows that she would not be welcome,
or feels she would not be welcomed back home with her mother
because her mother is very harsh and very judgmental,
and Sarah Jane is afraid of her.
Back at the Walton house,
a storm is starting, and soon it is starting to rain.
Initially, we don't see water coming down, but then we do,
and everybody gets like absolutely soaked.
You know, putting animals in the barn and all of that.
And then soon, this storm is also raging out at the cabin.
Sarah Jane is not doing well.
She's getting all anxious and riled up.
And ultimately, she goes into labor and John Boy
isn't quite sure what to do,
and decides that he is going to try
and go get Granny Ketchum to help out.
Sarah's mother has discovered that Sarah Jane
ran away from the people
that she was supposed to be staying with,
and she is very anxious to figure out where she is
and what's happening,
and she comes to the Walton house,
wondering if they might know where she is.
John Boy gives this tea to Sarah,
and she does start to do better.
But the labor is progressing.
John Boy, because of the nature of the storm out
and how anxious Sarah is,
realizes he's gonna have to deliver this baby.
So he does.
And once again, we are working with an infant,
and that was always exciting and a little anxious
for everybody to make sure that the infant
was well taken care of.
Jim Bob, who had planned to grow tomatoes
for his entry into the contest at the fair,
finds that the storm has basically destroyed the tomatoes.
Grandma steps in and says that she will show him
how to make tomato preserves.
And she does.
Other members of the family come in,
and they tease Jim Bob and make fun of him.
And Grandma tries to get them to stop, but they won't.
So, just fun family dynamics there.
A lovely end sequence where John Boy comes back home
with Sarah and Sarah's baby,
and she is reconciled with her mother,
and tells her mother that she is married
and that the father of the baby will be coming,
sending for her or coming back to get her
as soon as he is settled with his new job.
After they step away, John and John Boy
have a little bit of an exchange
because John Boy thinks that she originally mentioned
a different town that her husband went to.
And John kind of looks at him and says,
does it matter?
Open to interpretation.
Does that mean Sarah Jane really wasn't sure where he went?
That maybe he's completely mythical?
Or that he ran off and may not be coming back.
I leave it to you. What do you think that meant?
On a sad note?
John says that a letter was delivered for John Boy.
It's from Granny Ketchum.
She has passed away,
but she has left the mule, Blue, to John Boy.
So this is how we first acquired Blue.
The fair has turned out to be very successful
for the family.
Mary Ellen won first prize for Daisy, her lamb.
Jim Bob got a third for his tomato preserves.
Erin had a second, and Elizabeth had an honorable mention,
whereas Jason and Ben didn't win anything.
But everybody now, once again has need of John Boy's help.
And John Boy, in this case,
is quite willing to go and help all of his siblings.
Mama asks him about, what about your writing?
And he basically says, I'm mulling it over.
That's what I have for you for this segment
of "Behind the Scenes of 'The Waltons'",
about the episode, "The Odyssey".
I will be back with more
"Behind the Scenes of 'The Waltons'"
and more "Ask Judy".
Thanks for watching.