- Welcome back to another segment
of "Behind the Scenes of 'The Waltons.'"
Today, I'm going to talk about Episode 10 from Season 3,
"The Book," where John Boy believes
he's getting his first book published
of some of his short stories
but turns out not quite what he thought it was going to be.
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"The Book" was written by Joseph Bonaduce,
who is the father of actor Danny Bonaduce
from "The Partridge Family."
And it was directed once again
by our most prolific director of "The Waltons" Harry Harris.
At the beginning of the episode,
you see that John returns home
with a rowboat on the back of the truck.
It has been given to him from someone he knows
who doesn't want it anymore.
And the children are very excited
because they are going to make it pond worthy,
(chuckles) they wanna float it and row it around
on Drucilla's Pond.
And so they're going to take on the job of fixing it up.
John Boy is excited and yet concerned
about being accepted into a special writing class.
He's concerned that as the only freshman accepted
into the class,
that he may not measure up to it.
Olivia tries to be encouraging,
but John Boy isn't quite sure.
The children continue their quest to work on the boat.
They're trying to tighten the seams.
John Boy returns from class and they ask for his help.
And at first he's, no, I don't have time to help you
but they finally convince him to do that.
And he comes up with a well sort of engineered way
in which to tighten those seams.
While at Ike's store, Olivia looks at a newspaper
and there is an ad in there
about publishing. A press company
that says basically that they will publish books.
Olivia's very interested
and takes the paper that Ike is through with.
She decides to take a trip into town
to meet with this press company.
And she takes some of John Boy's writing samples
and they say that they will look them over and let her know.
Ike's store seem to be a center for inspiration
in this episode.
Jason who has a new harmonica he's ordered comes in
and it has arrived.
He is excited and decides to try it out right away.
Jon Walmsley would have actually been playing
this piece live, I'm sure.
And there's another gentleman there
who is very interested in Jason's playing
and asks him about it and asks him about his music.
And Jason says that he also plays guitar and sings.
This gentleman is connected with Bobby Bigelow
and the Haystack Gang
and says that he thinks that Jason might be of interest
to Bobby Bigelow
and that he should stop by a rehearsal they're having.
Jason is very excited about this.
As John Boy arrives home,
he finds Mary Ellen sitting on the front porch steps
working on something for the boat.
He has a conversation with her and then he goes inside.
This is a case where, of course, on the outside,
we were at the exterior set
on the back lot of the studio
because you can see the yard and everything.
As John Boy moves into the house
and comes forward to the kitchen,
you still see through,
in the background of this shot, you see Mary Ellen, me,
still sitting on these front porch steps.
However, this was shot on the interior of the sound stage.
So they just sort of matched up my position
so that you could still see me in the background.
Olivia meets up with John Boy with a letter
that she has received back from the press company.
John Boy is ecstatic to read this letter
and hear that they want to publish his short stories.
Everybody is very excited for John Boy.
Jason comes in to deliver his big news about Bobby Bigelow
and is completely overshadowed and over-ridden
by the excitement over John Boy.
And no one's particularly paying attention
so Jason decides to let it slide.
Jason does go to meet up with Bobby Bigelow
and play for him.
As I was looking at this set,
I seem to recall this being shot on a sound stage,
the interior of this barn,
which would've given them more room
and better control of lighting and stuff like that.
So that's my recollection of it.
They bring dirt in, they put it on the floor
of the sound stage
and just dress everything up to look like
it is an actual barn.
In this case, Mayf Nutter is playing Bobby Bigelow.
Now, Mayf is actually a singer, songwriter, guitar player,
and he did a number of episodes of "The Waltons"
as Bobby Bigelow.
He also sang on the "Walton Christmas CD"
that Jon Wamsley produced.
A Walton Christmas - Together Again,
where we, the cast, sang a whole series of Christmas songs
as "The Waltons" with little introductions in character,
a very sweet CD.
If you haven't heard it, you might enjoy it.
It's hard to find,
but I believe you can sometimes come across copies
on eBay or various other places.
So I think Jon did a fabulous job producing the CD.
So Mayf was involved in saying a number of harmonies
on that CD.
All family has gathered around once again
because John Boy has received the contract
for his publication of his book.
He's all excited.
And John wants to read through the contract
and John Boy's like, no, no, no, he's very excited.
And John sees that there's a place where,
because John Boy isn't 21, he needs a parent to sign.
John Boy takes the contract away from John
and says, "No, he wants Mama to sign as his guardian parent
because she's the one who was instrumental
in this happening."
So nobody actually carefully reads this contract
which becomes an issue.
Jason arrives back in the midst of all of this
with his exciting news
that he has been asked to play with Bobby Bigelow's band.
And it is once again overshadowed by John Boy
and his feeling of success
over finally getting something published.
And so Jason feels a little let down
that nobody's particularly interested in his news
but he just kind of lets himself
fade into the background once again.
Over subsequent time,
John Boy starts exhibiting signs of having a swelled head.
All of a sudden, in his writing class
where he had been a little intimidated
and feeling a little put down about his writing,
now, all of a sudden is very important.
He's getting all this interest in from other people.
They wanna interview him.
They want to invite him
to special classes or attending things.
And so he is letting all of this go to his head.
Work on the boat is continuing.
And at one point the children wanna get John Boy's attention
for something.
They go over and they shout at him up at his window
and he finally sticks his head out the window.
Now, this would've been shot on the back lot
at the exterior of the house.
And Richard would've had to go into this facade,
this partial structure of a house,
and climb up a ladder onto a platform
that ran the length of those windows up there
that enabled actors to go
and actually be in those windows
and filmed in those windows.
But there was no actual room there.
All of the interiors would've been shot on the sound stage.
What you also notice in this shot
is in the upper right hand corner.
There is visible, very clearly, a microphone.
Now, I was recently told that it isn't so much
that the sound department and everybody missed
that there was a microphone in the shot.
It is more that because television sets
at the time of "The Walton" in the 70's
were all more or less square.
Whereas the capacity of the camera allowed for more space
to be seen through the eye piece
than what the final television screen
would actually reflect.
So the camera operator could see things
that were outside of what was considered the safe zone.
The safe zone was everything that the camera could see
and that would ultimately be seen
on everybody's television screen
and anything that was around the edges of that was okay.
It was safe for something to be there
because it would not be seen in the final production.
However, now that the shape of our televisions have changed
and we're seeing more of the actual picture,
we are now seeing things
that previously we would not have seen.
Jason goes back to play his first little job
with Bobby Bigelow's band.
And in this case, all of these players, musicians
actually were playing those instrument
is my understanding, as I recall.
Even though you sort of see the outside of this barn
in this case,
you're not seeing a really wide angle.
So I still think this was on a sound stage
and they were able to drive vehicles onto sound stages.
So they just parked a vehicle out there
and gave the apparency that we were outside.
So these were ways in which they could cheat sets,
so to speak.
It is the moment of reckoning for this publication
of John Boy's books.
He receives them, they're gorgeous.
He's all excited. They're beautifully bound.
He hands them to each member of the family.
Then he finds the bill for $50.
Turns out that this was not actually the publisher
wanting to pay to publish John Boy's book
as much as what is called a vanity press,
whereby they take someone
who just really wants their material to be published
and they pay a price for it.
They take this contract to a lawyer
who explains this to them
and says, it is indeed an ironclad contract.
And he did get something in return for his money.
And they all realized that
they should have read that contract in more detail.
John Boy is embarrassed
and doesn't quite know what to do
about all of this realizes
that he's gonna be responsible for paying this money.
Jason finally has an opportunity to tell all the family
about his upcoming premiere with Bobby Bigelow
and the Haystack Gang,
and everyone is very excited for Jason
and asks why he didn't tell him before.
And he sort of says, well, you know,
everybody was all very excited about John Boy.
And they weren't really ready to hear this news.
Olivia feels badly about that.
I thought it was interesting
because as I think about it,
Jason tended to be sort of the most forgiving
of the children in a circumstance like this.
Even when he goes up to tell John Boy about it,
John Boy is very happy for him.
And also feels badly that his arrogance overshadowed Jason
and he was being so self important.
And Jason explains that everyone's gonna come see him play
and John Boy's, of course, I will be there.
So we are countering John Boy's sense of his own success
with Jason's actual success.
And yet Jason wasn't running around getting swelled head.
The whole family goes to attend Jason's premier gig
with the Haystack Gang
and we all dance and have fun.
And it's another opportunity for "The Waltons"
to be at a party, at a dance.
And we did this in a number of episodes
and I always found it a lot of fun to do.
When John Boy goes back to his class
and knows he's going to have to explain
to everybody what happened.
He is met at the door by an interviewer
and hustled into an actual live interview
that's being recorded at that moment.
He keeps trying to explain, but, but,
and he isn't given the opportunity
and ends up having to confess actually on microphone
about what happened and tell his story.
And I love that he actually didn't try to gloss it over
that he literally just was honest about what happened
even though it was embarrassing to him.
The interviewer is played by actor Gerald McRaney,
who you might recognize as a younger version
of the actor from "Simon & Simon."
The episode wraps up
with the children all launching the boat
into Drucilla's Pond
and talking John Boy into coming and climbing in with them,
you know, it's just some fun stuff on the pond.
That's what I have for you for this segment
of "Behind the Scenes of 'The Waltons'"
about the episode, "The Book."
I will be back with more segments
of "Behind the Scenes of 'The Waltons'" and more "Ask Judy."
Thanks for watching.