- Welcome back to another segment
of Behind the Scenes of "The Waltons."
Today, I'm going to talk about Episode 12
from Season 3, The Departure,
when John is feeling very restless and decides
to take a job at the shipyards in Norfolk.
This episode was directed by Ivan Dixon, once again,
and it was written by Joanna Lee,
who wrote a number of episodes of "The Waltons."
Early in the episode,
we have a scene around the dinner table.
In this particular case, John says, "Oh, it's Wednesday.
We're having, let's see, we're having corn chowder
and apple fritters."
And Olivia says, "How did you guess?"
And he says, "Because we have that every Wednesday."
It's the only time I ever remember that particular meal
being something that we had
on "The Waltons" specifically said.
But I did note that there were a number of dinner scenes
in this episode.
There was this one and then a little later on,
we're having, looks like fried chicken
and mashed potatoes with carrots and either peas or beans
or something like that.
And then a little later in the episode,
we're having dinner once again.
And this time I see, once again,
that we have mashed potatoes and carrots.
So what would happen on a day like this
is that we would shoot all of those scenes
back to back to back.
So we may or may not shoot them in the sequence
that they appeared in the episode,
but good chance that we did.
If there was no reason not to,
then that would often happen,
especially since pretty much everyone
was in certainly, the first scene,
although then John, Ralph Waite, was not in the next two
because that was when he was supposed to be away
working at the shipyards.
So we would come in and that first dinner scene
would be set up and there you go,
we would be eating whatever that was.
And we would do the wide shots and we'd do all the close-ups
and they'd keep resetting the food as needed
and we would keep eating as needed.
And then that scene would be finished
and we'd all go and we'd change our clothes
and they would reset the table for the next dinner scene.
And that food would come in and we'd come back
and we'd sit down and we'd shoot the wide shot of that.
And then the close-ups,
and typically they didn't shoot each scene
from the same first angle.
They might move the camera a bit so that it
had a slightly different feel to it.
And how many close-ups and things like that
would be dependent on who had things to say.
If we didn't have much to say,
then they might shoot like several of us in one shot.
Or if someone really didn't have anything to say,
then maybe they didn't have a close-up or weren't part
of some additional shots beyond the big wide shot.
So we would shoot the second one
in whatever sequence that was.
And then we would all go away and they would relight
and set up for the next dinner scene
and we'd go change our clothes
and we'd come back and there'd be a new dinner scene
with new food.
And we'd sit down and we would rehearse it,
and then we would shoot the wide shot.
And then we would get into whatever close-ups
there were for that.
So yeah, those got to be long days with a lot
of food and a lot of shots and a lot of takes
of food being passed around or eaten or plates being cleared
or plates with some half eaten food on, things like that.
So, days in the kitchen were - always felt long-
and kind of grueling.
So I just kept noting these dinner scenes,
so it brought all of that back.
A number of characters went through experiencing
the need for some sort of a change.
Mary Ellen certainly did any number of times,
like in The Minstrel, when she ended up running away.
She just felt like she had to do something
to change up her life.
Olivia had that a few times.
And in this case, it's John's turn.
And he says that he's looking at getting a job in Norfolk
because he feels that they need to make more money.
He's tired of feeling like nothing's changing in his life.
He's not making any forward progress.
Everything's staying the same.
Even Olivia brushes her hair the same way.
He's looking for some adventure.
Olivia's very upset about the idea
that he feels he needs to go away during the week.
And there is reference made back
to him doing that before in Waynesboro,
which was the town that John was working in
in The Homecoming when of course he's trying to get home
for Christmas and we're not sure if he's gonna make it.
So I think we can all relate to having moments
in our life when maybe we'd like something to
be a little different.
We feel like maybe we're in some sort of a rut
and we're looking for some new inspiration in our life.
So I think there's a lot of ways to do that.
And in this case, John decides it's going away
and taking this job out of town.
This shot with John and Olivia,
the scene where they sit on the front porch and talk,
looks to me like it was shot on the sound stage
on the porch, the exterior front porch
that was on the sound stage,
partially because of the way the interior,
you can see the lighting into the living room.
And also because you never see far enough to see off
of the porch in any of the scene.
And then a little later in the episode,
Ben and Jason are sitting on the porch
having a conversation.
And this is another case of,
they would've shot these scenes back to back
because they were already on the porch.
It was already basically lit for a night scene on the porch.
So it just was very time efficient to just, you know,
then shoot to the next one rather
than moving all of the equipment someplace else,
and then another time having to come back
and set it all up again.
So that was why we shot out of order.
It just made things move faster.
And it was really just up to the actors.
They were the ones who had to deal
with things jumping around and where were you in the story.
But that was far less of an issue than moving
all of that equipment and the time involved with that.
I've been asked about phone calls, phone call scenes.
And I'm gonna speak a little bit more about that later.
But in this case, there's a point where Olivia
goes to Ike's store to call John.
And in this case, you see both Olivia on the phone,
and then you see John at the boarding house
where he's staying at.
So those would've been shot at different times when Michael
was at Ike's store on the phone.
Chances are, because the other half of
the conversation was actually scripted,
somebody, it may not have been Ralph,
if he wasn't available, it might have been,
but somebody, perhaps a script supervisor would've read
those lines of John's so that when Michael was on the phone,
she could actually hear the other dialogue.
That will often happen when it's an intercut
of shots like that.
And then at another point
when they were shooting all of the things
inside the boarding house, where John was staying,
they would've shot Ralph's side of that phone conversation.
And perhaps if Michael was working that day,
she might have read those lines off camera.
Otherwise again, very well could have been
the script supervisor just reading those lines
for Ralph to hear the other side of the conversation.
Most of the time with phone calls,
there is nobody there and we just take pauses
and imagine what's being said to us on the other side,
and it's shot like that.
Cute, little side things that I noticed.
Elizabeth has a bunny named Cindy.
I don't remember the bunny being around anymore than
in this episode.
So there was a one off on the bunny.
I also enjoy,
there's a subplot with Grandpa has a sore tooth.
He keeps saying it's galloping rheumatism
because he doesn't wanna go to the dentist.
So he likes to pretend it's gonna go away.
Grandma finally makes him an appointment
with the dentist and she arranges for them to go in.
And in this case, you see Grandpa riding in
the rumble seat of John Boy's car,
which I don't remember another time seeing Will
in that rumble seat.
So that was a little bit of a one off as well.
Another unusual aspect of this episode was John getting
in a fight in a bar,
and he has John Boy with him
and you suddenly see this bar fight.
And I thought John, Ralph did a terrific job
of appearing to take some punches there.
And those would have been choreographed.
There would have been, you know,
somebody, some sort of stunt coordinator to do that.
And it would've been all staged to make sure
that nobody actually was hit.
I think it's cute that then when they,
when John and John Boy get out
of there and they're out on the street
and they're rehashing this fight
and John Boy's talking about somebody coming after him
with a chair and John's like, "What did you do?"
He said, "I ducked behind a table.
What do you think I did?"
So I think it was cute that they weren't
both particularly gung-ho to be involved in this fight.
And then of course, John says, "Let's go home."
He's had enough of his adventure.
He's had enough of being away from the family,
and they go home.
So again, another case of like in The Homecoming
when John had to go away to work
and he doesn't like being away from the family
and he comes home
and he figures out how to make a living staying at home.
That's what I have for you for this segment
of Behind the Scenes of "The Waltons,"
about the Season 3 Episode 12, The Departure.
I will be back with more Behind the Scenes
of "The Waltons," and more of your questions
in a segment of Ask Judy.
Thanks for watching.