- Welcome back to another segment
of Behind the Scenes of The Waltons.
Today, I'm going to be taking more of your questions
in a segment of Ask Judy.
So if you're enjoying these,
please do hit like and subscribe.
And if you have a question,
then please just put it in the comments below
that's where I pull these questions from.
The first question is from Dan, he asks,
was it hard to get caught back up
when you were back in school
or did you have the same school books on the set?
Yes, we had the same school books
at the beginning of each school year.
I would go to my own high school and I would find out
what courses I was required to take
and what book they would be working with.
And then I would get those books from my school
and those would be the books that I would work with
with the teacher on the set.
Now, sometimes when I went back to school,
which was usually around February
for just like three months,
and then sometimes I would come into a class.
I remember coming into a literature class one time
and they were reading the last chapter of Les Miserables.
And then there was going to be starting on an assignment.
So I had not been reading that book
because I didn't know that was going to be
one of the reading assignments.
So I literally had to read that book
over about two or three days.
So I would be caught up, oh, it was grueling.
That is a very thick book, if you've ever read it.
Another time I came back into a, I believe biology class,
which was not my best strength in school
and I was a couple of chapters behind.
So I was trying to quickly catch up on my own
and there'd be a test every week.
And I remember getting like failing,
the first couple of tests because I had no idea
what was happening.
And I had to do all that catch-up work on my own
and get up to speed and understand what was happening
and then I got ahead.
And then I started getting really good grades
and then other kids in the class wanted to like copy
off me, but that teacher graded on a bell curve.
So I was like, heck this will impact my grade I'm not sure
I really want you cheating off of my paper.
Kylene asked,
be interested in learning about the various sets
that were used to depict movie theaters in The Waltons.
There were several episodes where people go to the show
and the sets all look a little bit different to me.
So question, did you ever shoot in an actual editing room
where a real movie screen was a permanent fixture
or were the screens always just set up
for filming purposes?
I think they were pretty much just set up
for filming purposes.
So they had more control over where the cameras were
and how they could light.
So that would be the type of thing we might set up on.
I think it was Stage 23 was one of our alternate stages
that we used.
So they would have brought in
just like they do with an airplane.
They would've brought in seats
and movable walls and would have a wall with a projector.
And now whether they were actually projecting that movie
during the actual filming or whether it was put in later
that I don't remember.
So, but I don't recall us ever going
into an actual editing room.
And then also,
what about the real movie clips
and newsreels that were used.
Were they public domain
or did you have to acquire the right somehow?
I don't know what the situation with the actual clips was
if they were like footage of World War II or newsreels
or things like that,
then those would have been the actual footage
and same thing with the movie.
So depending on what the
they probably had to get some sort of rights,
but we were on the Warner Brothers lot,
so chances are they used footage
from the Warner Brothers archives.
They may still have needed to pay some sort of rights
for those.
Esther asked, I love the Baldwin Sisters innocence,
but sometimes I think they knew the recipe had alcohol.
Could be. Anyway -
So the question was,
I know you all probably had to work long hours,
but was it hard to transition back to real life
when you were given time off from the set also,
did you all go home every day after filming
or did you guys have to live on the set for a time?
We never did live on the set
because it was say a basically home-based location.
So we weren't away on location.
And when we did go to Frazier Park, every once in a while,
we did stay over,
but we would stay over in a town called Gorman
that was right nearby.
So we never actually lived on the set.
There was no real way to do that
not that you couldn't like go into your dressing room
and lay down and rest for a bit,
but no one ever stayed overnight.
As for going home, yeah it was long hours,
but I've always found it pretty easy to just,
take a deep breath at the end of the day,
no matter what kind of work I've been doing and let it go.
And I'm happy to step off the set,
change my clothes and go back into my own life.
So never a problem for me, but each actor is different.
Interesting question here from Paul.
He said, I think the series did a great job
transitioning as it went along
and the characters grew and matured.
If you broke the series into three portions
early, middle and later years,
what episodes would you consider as your favorites
for each timeframe?
So I'm gonna take these in three year periods
because there were nine years, so what the heck?
So therefore considering the early as Seasons 1,,
2 and 3,
some of my favorites were The Easter Story, love that
The Literary Man, which I just watched again
for the first time in a long time recently
and just loved that episode.
And then The Awakening,
because it was a very significant episode for Mary Ellen
and really was I think,
a turning point for her in terms of maturity, so love that.
In the middle years, The Nurse again,
because it was a big transition point for my character.
The Best Christmas love it as a holiday, episode
and just so many stories going on with all the family,
having to pull together and really epitomized
the meaning of the Christmas spirit.
And then The Firestorm,
one of my all time favorite episodes,
where I thought Richard Thomas and John Ritter
just did brilliant work.
And again, love the storyline and the message
with Mrs. Brimmer and what she reveals
when she picks up that book and starts reading the Bible
in German.
And then for the later years, Day of Infamy
again, impacted my character, so that was pivotal for me.
And just again, such an important moment in history
for all of us and for the United States
and what happened with the war and the way
it impacted the rest of the series, all of that.
So love that episode, The Spirit, again, a holiday one,
maybe I have like holidays on the mind
because we're so close to the holidays
and I absolutely love the holidays,
but I thought it was a sweet story and really enjoyed it.
And then the last one I mentioned was The Wager I don't,
I wouldn't say
I thought it was one of our best episodes,
but for me it was one of my favorites to film
because I got to go to work all day and ride horses.
So for me to get to go do two things I loved,
I would have loved to have done like Westerns
or action films because of all the sports I did
and Westerns because I love riding so much.
So there you go.
My next question is from Cann, Ken? I'm thinking Cann,
Judy, I was wondering if you had
normal childhood teen experiences like being a brownie
or girl scout,
getting your driver's license - or cruising with friends,
proms and first dates?
I'm guessing you just didn't have the time.
I did get to do a lot of normal teenage things,
particularly since I didn't start doing the series
till I was in high school.
So I was already had had a lot
of just normal, normal experiences, life experiences.
And then in school, I was part of student government.
I was on committees and different things like that.
Did all those kinds of things,
I did have to learn to drive and get my driver's license,
although I didn't get to go to my own prom.
I did go to someone else's prom as his date.
So that was, that was great to have that experience
and a little bit of cruising,
but, it was pretty tame in the in the 70s,
with me, my friends,
there was one street that people would do
a bit of cruising on.
It was pretty low key, but,
so I had a lot of those types of experiences.
I never did do Girl Scouts or Brownies
or anything like that, but that was kind of a choice.
And then also, did you encourage your kids
to get involved with acting at all?
I, when my son was little,
my agent did ask if I was interested
in them submitting him for some things?
He did do one TV, commercial, I was a complete wreck.
He was fine.
I hated every moment of it as a stage parent,
I was just so protective and was like, no,
I was horrified by, they didn't,
I felt they didn't really take care of the children well,
and so I was like, nope, I'm done and he didn't care.
He was like two and a half, so I'm like, I don't think so.
And then when he was a little older,
he did express some interest in acting once or twice.
So I just kind of left it to him.
He did work with me on the TV series that I did up in Canada
Bluff that I did writing and directing on.
So he did a few episodes,
two or three episodes of that series.
So that was great to do some scenes with him to direct him.
So yeah, he did a little bit
and then chose to move more into other areas
of the creative arts.
And so he's kind of working more behind the scenes now.
So thanks for your interest.
A question here from Greg when they are shooting a closeup
of your doing dialogue with another actor,
is that other actor really in front of you,
or are you just speaking to an empty space or person
to give you sense of personal interaction?
It depends on the circumstances.
Typically the other actor is there
and the other actor will be very close to the camera
because they want your eye line as close to camera
as possible without looking directly at camera.
So that person will be standing just off to the side
of where the camera is, but really tight in.
So as an actor, when you're doing those sorts of closeups,
I mean, you can see the camera operator,
you can see the assistant camera operator
and you can see the director and you can see,
you can see all these people behind the camera
and around the camera in your peripheral vision.
But you hone in on that actor you're talking to,
and really just make that your primary focus
and you learn to just tune out everybody else.
But sometimes, and if you have multiple actors,
you might have a number of people really crammed in tight.
So as an actor, when you're doing off camera stuff,
a lot of times it's like,
you're all squished in really tight together
next to the camera
so that the eye-lines don't go way over here.
They wanna keep the eye lines like here, here, here,
they want them close enough to camera.
So those are a lot of cheated, things like that.
Sometimes you're in a position where,
because of where the camera is,
the other actor simply cannot get in there.
And so then a lot of times they'll just give you a mark,
they'll go, okay
like focus here or they'll say,
we'll put a spot on a stand, on a C stand
or something like that.
One of the stands that holds the light or a flag
or something that would help defined lighting.
So they'll do things like that, or it's like, oh,
on the doorframe or here.
So you just have a visual eye-line
and then the lines will be thrown to you.
Usually the other actor is still around
and they're actually throwing you those lines off camera,
but you are not actually seeing them.
And sometimes occasionally something would happen
where the other actor couldn't be there.
It would happen sometimes with the children
when it was like end of day.
And we had to be dismissed because of the limitations
on how long they were allowed to have us on set.
So the kids have gone.
And then if you were over 18 and were no longer a kid
and had to do scenes,
it could be that you ended up doing a scene
where the other actor wasn't there
and then you just, you're given your sight line
and the script supervisor would typically read those lines.
And our script supervisor
was not what I would call an actor.
So we'd get these really sort of dry line readings.
So you'd have to kind of for yourself,
put life into it from the other side.
Remember what the other actor,
what their performance was like, and just sort of create it.
And all of this is very much like the type of thing
that you do when you audition
where you don't necessarily have the other actor.
You've got somebody reading who may
or may not be a good reader good actor.
And you just have to kind of create all that.
if there's multiple people in a scene,
when you're auditioning,
you have one person and then you have to decide
where those other people are,
whether you deliver all of your lines to that person.
Whether you go, oh, there's a person over here
or there's like two people over here.
So you want to, you choose to split,
and identify the people that you're talking to.
Those types of things are choices that each actor makes
for themselves.
So hope that answered your question.
That's what I have for you for this segment
of Behind the Scenes of The Waltons, Ask Judy.
And hopefully I will see you next time
on another Behind the Scenes of The Waltons
or another Ask Judy.
Thanks for watching.