- Welcome back to another segment
of "Behind the Scenes of the Waltons."
I hope you all enjoyed a very Happy Holidays
a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and all of that.
I had a very quiet Christmas, but it was very nice.
So as we approach 2023,
I thought I would take some more of your questions from 2022
in this segment of "Ask Judy."
Someone asked why we didn't use a real house,
because I've spoken about the exterior of the house
being just a facade, things like that.
And other of my guests
have talked about coming on to the set for the first time
and being aware of the fact that it wasn't a real house,
that there was nothing really inside it,
and then we went onto the soundstage
to shoot all the interiors,
and that sets were doubled up and things like that.
We didn't use a real house
because we were shooting on the Warner Brothers lot,
and there really weren't any real full houses there
on the lot.
And it's just, time wise, it was more efficient,
more time efficient to use the existing sets
that were actually on the studio lot.
So we could make a company move from the back lot
to the soundstage or the soundstage to the house
in a relatively short period of time.
When you work within an actual house,
there's certain restrictions
because you can't remove walls.
So if somebody is up against a wall,
and you're shooting a person
that's maybe shoved him up against the wall
and they're, you know, shaking them and stuff
and then you wanna come around behind him,
you can't get behind that wall.
Sometimes spaces are just a little small
to get the camera where you really want it.
Whereas when you have a set that has been built,
all those interiors, then those walls are all movable.
And so you can get into virtually any position
on the set that you would need to.
Or if you wanna get creative, you can.
And you can shoot from up high
because there's no ceilings.
So you you can light it easier and things like that.
We had on our soundstage, with all of the sets,
there was rigging up above.
So there were catwalks and there were places
that had been set.
When they put that set together,
they rigged it up above so that all of those different sets
could have lights already hung up above.
So it was much faster to go in
and kick on the lights that they wanted on
and then add anything on just on the floor that they wanted.
But if you go into a whole new set,
an existing house or something,
which happens quite frequently
when you're filming these days,
they rent houses, rent people's houses, and they use them.
You have to bring all the equipment in.
If you were going to use it
and then maybe you weren't gonna come back
for a couple weeks,
well, you either rent the house for the whole season
or you have to keep bringing the equipment in and out
and setting it all up.
And that just takes a lot of time.
So nowadays,
because you can do more lighting with smaller instruments
and less light
because of a lot of the digital work that's done,
it's a little easier.
But we were kind of at that transition period
with the "Waltons," coming from earlier shows
where even exteriors were done on soundstages.
You look at old episodes like "Star Trek"
or even things like "Big Valley,"
and you can look at some of those sets
and to me I look up and go, "Oh, that was on a soundstage."
You know, I watched something,
like we just went through Christmas,
I watched Christmas movies.
I watched something like "White Christmas,"
and I know that that whole exterior of the lodge
where they were staying up in Vermont
was on a soundstage.
I can just look at it and tell.
So they used to do that,
because soundstages were big
and so they could just create a whole sort of front yard
of someplace and use that.
And again, they could control the lighting.
They could control the sound.
They could control just the environment there.
So a lot of that was done at that point in time.
And then during the Waltons,
we were kind of on that transition
where we still used most of the studio,
but we would go out for certain locations,
but usually exterior locations
moreso than going and using someone else's house.
But then it started moving over more and more
to independent-type productions
where people did and do just go and rent a location,
an existing thing.
And in some cases, that is more cost effective now.
So that's a long-winded answer to the why not a real house.
A question here from Courtney who asked,
"You have mentioned several times
that if you weren't scheduled for a shoot on a certain day,
you somewhat had the day off.
But yet you didn't,
because you had to be available at a moment's notice
in case there was a change in schedule
and they needed you to come in.
Since that was an era before cell phones,
did you basically have to stick around the house
near the phone?
How often did you try to make plans
only to get a call to report to the studio?" (laughs)
Yeah, that would definitely happen.
You might have the day off you thought,
and then perhaps the night before,
you'd get a call from the assistant director saying,
"We might need to shift things around.
You're kind of on call."
Or they could just say, "Mm, we shifted around
and we need you here at nine o'clock tomorrow."
So that would happen.
It was tricky because, as you say,
we did not have have cell phones.
People had answering services.
I never did.
Pagers were just starting to come in.
I don't know that I had a pager either.
Sometimes if there was some question,
they might say, "Call in at this time
to check and make sure we don't need you."
Or sometimes if you were sort of on call
but they didn't know what time
and they were trying to give you
as much freedom as possible, they might say,
"Well, call us at 10.
Okay, it's looking okay.
Check back at noon,
and we'll let you know if we need you right before lunch
or right after lunch."
So you could have things like that.
Sometimes it was just evident
you were gonna have the day off.
Maybe you were done with all of your scenes for an episode,
so you knew that they still
had another day or two of filming.
So clearly, unless they added you into a scene,
then you weren't gonna be needed.
But it was very tricky to try to schedule appointments.
Even with a cell phone,
that's very difficult when you're filming,
because you can think you have a day off
or you try to book an appointment.
To me, oh I wanna see the dentist.
And they're like, "Okay, can you come a week from Thursday?"
"I have no idea."
So a lot of those things
would end up having to be scheduled in your time off.
And when we filmed nine months out of the year,
we didn't have a lot of time off
to take care of those things.
Nowadays, seasons don't always take that many months
to film.
So a little more latitude for people these days.
This question is from Matt.
"How big was the soundstage?
There seems to be a lot of interior shots
of homes or stores,
and I know the houses were mostly facades."
So soundstages were pretty big.
I couldn't really give you dimensions,
but, I mean, we had the full scale interior,
living room, kitchen, grandparents' room, John-Boy's room,
the boys' room,
the set that doubled for the girls' room
and the parents' room.
We didn't have the full Baldwin Sisters' house,
because you didn't see that much of their house.
But we did have the main sort of parlor
where there was the big portrait of their papa, the judge.
And that was the room
that most of the time when people went to visit them
that we used.
We also had the entry hallway
that was kind of connected to that room.
So those two sets were,
all of those were permanently on Soundstage 26
that we used all the time,
as well as the interior of the Godsey store,
but just the store and the pool room area.
If they were going to shoot
actually into the Godsey's living area,
that was not permanently on our soundstage.
There was extra space on that soundstage
that they could make,
they could put in a temporary set.
Sometimes they might do the interior of the shed
when it started being used
when Ben and Cindy lived in there.
Or I'm pretty sure they built,
when Erin and I went and shared an apartment together,
I think that little apartment they built on Soundstage 26.
So those were pretty much our permanent ones.
So it was big enough to accommodate all of those sets.
But if they needed things that we didn't usually use,
then they would oftentimes
have to use one of the other soundstages on the studio lot.
So let's see.
You had more to this.
"Do you have to rebuild every time one was needed?"
No, not with those permanent ones.
Those were there throughout the season.
Now whether they put them away
during the three months we were off
and then brought them back in, I don't know that.
And I can maybe try to ask our good friend John Dayton
if he knows what went on between seasons.
He probably knows that.
So we'll see about asking him that.
"Did you use the same basic one
and just dress it up differently?"
Sometimes.
The flats that they would bring in to build a room
were pretty basic,
and then they might just, yeah, set dress it.
So wall flats could be just pretty standard,
and then they would just bring in furniture
and things like that.
They didn't redecorate any of the house set spaces
or the Baldwins or the Godsey store.
So it would've just been some
of those other pieces that were like a one-off
that they built it for that episode and then it went away.
And then they built something else for another episode.
So those, yeah, those weren't permanent,
so they would just bring in as needed and decorate.
Then, let's see, "Are you stating that the parents' bedroom
and the girls' bedroom were interchangeable?
So yes, in that case,
they would just bring the furniture in.
So the shape of those two rooms,
the girls' room and the parents' room didn't change.
So they would just pull the girls' beds out,
bring in John and Olivia's bed,
John and Olivia's dresser, things like that.
And then it would be so just set decoration
and things that went on the walls.
I have a question here from Mowerdon who said,
"What were the dynamics like between Lorimar, the studio,
and the network during the production of the series?
Was it challenging or confusing for you guys and crew,
knowing who to truly answer to?
Were there many conflicts between the three entities,
and did you guys ever get in the middle of their conflicts
or did you report solely to Lorimar directly?"
So there was definitely a hierarchy.
On the set,
we answered to the director
and what came down to the director
from the production office, which was Lorimar.
So Earl Hamner, or whoever our producer was for that season,
those would be the people
that we would direct our questions to.
If the director couldn't answer the question,
then it would go up to Earl or the producer.
Then Lorimar, the producers would deal with any questions
with the network.
So sometimes the network would send down mandates,
but those would go through the producers,
through the production office.
And then if it was something that we needed to know,
it would come down to us.
So there was never really a confusion
about who you answer to.
We might have disagreements
with things that were coming down from the network,
but we had no direct line to the network
to voice (chuckling) any kind of complaint about anything.
So yeah, as an actor,
especially for us as sort of the children,
we were a little lower on that food chain.
So we just pretty much had to show up
and do what we were told.
That's what I have for this segment
of "Behind the Scenes of the Waltons: Ask Judy."
I wish you all a very Happy New Year,
and I will be back in 2023.
Thanks for watching.