- Welcome back to another segment
of "Behind the Scenes" of "The Waltons."
Today I'm going to talk about an episode
from Season 3, episode 15, The Lie,
when Ben gets himself in some deep trouble.
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In this episode,
the character of Nancy Madden is brought back.
We first saw the character of Nancy, played by Cindy Fisher,
in the episode, "The Star,"
when she and Ben faced off in a spelling bee.
Now, Cindy is someone
that I would come across at auditions at different times
so I was very familiar with her and her work.
And I think sometimes...
Although we are pretty close in age,
so depending on the age range of a character,
sometimes we actually went up for some of the same roles.
Ben gets himself into a really tough position
when Nancy confides in him that her mother wants to see her.
Now, Nancy's mother ran off when she was just a baby,
and her father has resented that forever,
keeps very tight reins on Nancy,
and definitely does not want her to see her mother
and doesn't know that she's even been approached about this.
So she says to Ben,
she asks Ben if perhaps he could take her this evening
to meet up with her mother in Charlottesville.
She knows that Ben has recently gotten his learner permit
and thinks perhaps he could borrow John-Boy's car.
Well, Ben knows that if he asks John-Boy, John-Boy will say,
"No, 'cause you don't actually have your license,"
and also, "Why do you wanna go?"
And Nancy has sworn Ben to secrecy about this
because she knows if her father finds out,
he will basically lock her in her room forever.
So Ben likes Nancy, and Nancy is very upset,
and like many people, he is drawn into this dilemma
and doesn't want to see Nancy miss this one
and only opportunity to actually meet her mother.
So Ben reluctantly agrees,
and that's where all the trouble starts.
That evening Ben waits until everyone has gone to sleep,
and then he plans to sneak out and take John-Boy's car.
Now as he's lying there under this quilt,
I notice this one square that caught my eye
and the square says "Hope, from May."
So I'm not sure who made this quilt.
And I'm not sure who May was supposed to be,
but with these quilts, a lot of times,
people pull different squares from all kinds of things.
So whoever actually made this quilt likely had this square,
and, you know, the set dressing people probably figured,
"That's fine, this square could have come from anywhere,"
and probably didn't think
that people would actually have an opportunity
to see it and focus on it.
But because I've been asked about the quilts
and where they came from and who made them,
none of which I know, (chuckles)
but I did notice this one thing because of that.
(light dramatic music)
(car engine humming)
When they get to Charlottesville, at first Nancy says no,
that Ben doesn't need to come into the hotel with her.
But then she's a little nervous
and so she does ask Ben to come along.
Ben inadvertently leaves the keys in the car
and this creates the opportunity for these two young people
who are kind of playing a game of "what if",
What if we owned this car?
What if we owned that car?
And when they get to Ben's car, they're playing,
"Oh, if I had this car, I'd be Bonnie and Clyde,"
and then he sees that the keys are in the ignition
and decides he's gonna take it for a little ride.
His girlfriend says, no, she's not going,
but he does take the car and drives around.
And then when he comes back to repark the car,
he hits another car,
and that driver was actually in the car.
Now I do have to call an "I don't think so"
on the fact that the driver of the other car got out
and John-Boy's car has been driven away.
It's dark, it's night, and he takes a little bit of time
supposedly writing down this license plate.
I'm thinking John-Boy's car was too far away
for him to have taken this much time
and still been able to actually see that license plate.
But there we go, it's a television show,
And without that license plate,
the rest of the story wouldn't exist.
So realism sometimes takes a backseat to story.
John-Boy does catch Ben sneaking back into the house
and wonders about this.
At breakfast, when Ben finally is dragged down
by Mary Ellen, the sheriff shows up.
Now in this case it is not Ep Bridges,
and they make mention that Ep was not available,
he had to be someplace else,
and so this is Sheriff Pete.
This is the only time we see Sheriff Pete.
And my guess is that actor John Crawford,
who played Ep Bridges, was probably not available
on the day that they needed to shoot this scene,
and so they recast the role
and came up with a reason why it wasn't Ep
and why his deputy is the one who comes out.
And, of course, he wants to see the car.
And despite John-Boy saying, "I wasn't there.
I wasn't in Charlottesville,"
and all the family saying, "No, everyone was home in bed,"
they go, they look and, of course,
there is damage on the fender of John-Boy's car.
And so Ben does confess
that he took the car to Charlottesville,
but because he's been sworn to secrecy he lies and says,
"I don't know what happened."
And I was just taking a walk
and he's just digging himself a deeper hole.
I noticed at the breakfast table
there is this one angle here
where you can see Mary and Jon.
So Erin and Jason are sitting there.
And because of the angle of the camera, I noticed
that Mary was sort of holding her head a particular way
and her hair was all back.
We were often, the girls,
were told to keep our hair from falling in our face
when the camera was on a particular angle.
So it looked to me like Mary had been told
to get her hair back and keep it back
so it wasn't in her face.
However, eight seconds later, we come back to another angle
and you once again see Erin and Jason
and this time Erin's hair is all forward and messier.
So I'm not sure which got shot first,
but clearly they were shot differently
and probably this one was shot first, the messy one.
And then when they went to the other angle,
they were trying to clean it up
so that they could see her face.
But consequently, to me, eight seconds,
mm, doesn't match. (chuckles)
Trying to keep his promise when Daddy is angry with Ben
and asking him to tell him what happened
because this is really big trouble
And Ben smart mouths him, not a good move.
But Ben is feeling defensive, he's feeling trapped,
and John comes after him, picks him up and gets in his face.
And you know, he was seeing the wrath of daddy
and although he does not hit him, he says,
"I could beat this out of you but I'm not going to."
Of course, we never actually saw John ever hit
any of the children,
but he did sometimes let his anger loose
just in the frustration of the moment
and also probably trying to impinge
on whichever one of the children
he felt needed to listen up.
But he never went so far as to actually hit anyone.
I love how a bit later on
when John-Boy is trying to unravel all of what's going on
and suspects that perhaps Ben has fallen in
with the wrong crowd or that there's a girl involved.
And he sees Mary Ellen and Erin,
and he asks Mary Ellen, he goes,
"Do you know what's going on with Ben?
Who's he hanging out with at school?"
And she's like, "What are you asking me for?"
He's like, "Well, because you know everything that goes on."
So I love that they wrote that aspect,
that they felt that Mary Ellen just knows what's going on.
And she's like,
"Well, I'm not gonna stick my nose in Ben's business."
And John-Boy expresses to them
that Ben really is in serious trouble.
And Erin pipes up and says,
"Oh, it's Nancy Madden, he's got a crush on her."
And in typical Erin fashion,
Erin is the one who tattles, not Mary Ellen,
which just reminded me of The Homecoming
when Erin was the one who was always tattling
and then again in the episode, "The Dust Bowl Cousins,"
when she is kind of told to stop tattling.
So that was a character aspect
that they carried on with Erin for some time
over the first few seasons.
John-Boy finds a box of matches in his car
from the hotel in Charlottesville so he goes over there
and finds out that Ben was indeed there,
and finds out Nancy was there,
and that her mother was there.
So armed with this information,
they go back and he and daddy confront Ben.
And Daddy basically says,
"You need to go over and you need to tell Nancy
that you can't keep this promise anymore."
Ben goes over, tries to talk to Nancy.
Her father will not let him
so Ben comes back and John goes with him
and has a conversation with Eustace, with Nancy's father,
and is able to get through to him
and recognized that it's really...
Eustace confesses it's really his fear of losing Nancy
as well as having lost her mother.
The mother having left really impacted him.
And so Nancy reconciles with her father
and the two of them do go
with John and John-Boy and Ben to the courthouse
and they get the whole thing straightened out.
So the lie becomes not a lie anymore,
and all is well in Walton land.
Interesting note, set-wise, that the area
that was the Madden sort of homestead was actually...
That house was the house that was used in The Ceremony
when the Mann family, the immigrants from Germany, came,
Jewish immigrants, and stayed there.
So that was that same house.
And this was the area right by Drucilla's pond.
And once again Drucilla's pond was drained,
and they put this dirt and stuff in,
and that's where the animals are,
and this is where you see Ben park
and run across to get Nancy.
And then when John comes in and parks,
this is all basically right in Drucilla's pond.
That's what I have for you for this segment
of "Behind the Scenes" of "The Waltons,"
about the episode, "The Lie."
I will be back with more "Behind the Scenes"
of "The Waltons"
and more of your questions in segments of "Ask Judy."
Thanks for watching.