- Welcome back to another segment
of "Behind the Scenes of 'The Waltons'".
Today I'm talking about another episode
directed by Richard Thomas from season four.
This is "The Fox".
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There's a fox that's been going after chickens.
Ben, meanwhile, has the idea
that he wants to start selling furs,
so he's got a trap and he's gonna start trapping animals.
John shows him how cruel these traps are,
and suggests that maybe Ben consider a box trap instead.
Ben isn't necessarily frilled about that,
but he does indeed build a box trap instead.
We also find out that there is going to be an anniversary
of the Battle of San Juan Hill
when the Rough Riders with Teddy Roosevelt
charged up San Juan Hill.
Grandpa can't go because John is going to be away,
and grandpa's supposed to mind the mill
and take care of work that needs to be done.
But this whole battle and the Rough Riders and everything
is something we heard about throughout the series,
and a story that grandpa told over and over.
And when the radio isn't working one night,
he reenacts the story again.
The kids go, oh, tell the story, and he does,
and we all join in.
And Grandma seems to be very distressed by all of this
and is argumentative during the telling of it.
And we're not quite sure what that's about.
But John Boy's fascinated because he has found out
that "Adventure Magazine" pays two cents a word
for stories that they buy.
But he's trying to figure out
what he could possibly write about.
And we see the wheels clicking in his mind as he watches
grandpa tell this adventure story.
John Boy goes to see Mr. McCreary
played by actor Frank Ferguson,
because he's in charge of this anniversary,
and he has this idea that maybe
they could have the anniversary at Walton's Mountain.
And they even talk about the idea of reenacting
the charge up San Juan Hill and doing it
on Walton's Mountain.
Mr. McCreary is very excited about this idea
and thinks that they could have a parade
and he could get a lot of publicity.
And so the two of them get busy with all their excitement
about this idea.
Now, when John Boy comes back and proposes this,
Olivia is very upset about this idea.
She and grandma think it's terrible.
- See, what we had in mind, Mr. McCreary and myself,
was to have a reenactment of the charge up San Juan Hill,
with the actual veterans who were there
that day reliving the battle.
- I think that's a terrible idea.
- Basically glorifying war and making it seem like fun
to charge up a hill and do battle.
John Boy's a little surprised by this reaction
and grandpa says he will have absolutely nothing
to do with it.
So, this comes as surprise to John Boy.
He goes back to Mr. McCreary who says it's too late.
Everything's in motion.
So John Boy has gotten himself
into a little bit of a pickle there.
I thought it was absolutely adorable,
this scene where we see Maude Gormley,
played by the adorable Merie Earle, is sitting on the porch.
Grandma comes out
and this is just like a lot of comic sense here,
some humor for "The Waltons".
(boom scraping)
- Esther. - Good Lord.
- We get to see more of Ellen's sense of comedy,
which was just so finely tuned.
So love this little bit there where she gets startled.
Maude has come to say
that her cat, Prudence, has run away again.
Well, as it turns out,
Ben has caught Prudence in his fox trap.
So they do return the cat to Maude.
However, Ben does catch the fox
and everybody is giving him the evil eye,
because his plan is to kill this fox for its fur.
And we were all disgusted with that idea
and Elizabeth totally argues with him about it.
And he just feels like, well,
this is his plan and that's what he's gonna do.
Grandma shares with Olivia that she had not told grandpa
that she was expecting John
because she knew how he really wanted to go
and do his patriotic duty.
He wanted to join the war and go off,
and she didn't want to saddle him
with this sense of fatherhood
and make him feel trapped by it.
But what caught my attention there
was she was speaking as if John, being pregnant with John,
was her first child, and yet we've always talked
that Ben was John's older brother.
So I'm not quite sure whether it was just the way
the scene was structured that was confusing
or whether it was another case of just
a writer or not knowing this aspect
about the timelines of John and Ben.
As it turns out, Mr. McCreary calls John Boy
to say that he's gonna have to call off
the reunion gathering at Walton's Mountain
because only three people are going to be able to make it
and none of them were enthusiastic
about charging up the hill.
So they're going to go back to their original plan
and just have the gathering in town.
There were numerous scenes where we saw Mr. McCreary.
These would've all been shot in one day
because every one of 'em was in his office.
So they would've been able to bring the actor in
for just one day and shoot all of his scenes in the one day.
This was more cost effective
because they only had to pay the actor for one day.
They only had to have the set and use that for one day.
And because it really only involved John Boy,
who was around all the time anyway,
it was a pretty easy thing to just knock that off.
And that's what they will typically do
when they have an actor that they can shoot out
in one day basically.
The dilemma about the fox is resolved when Olivia,
Olivia's really smart in this case,
she doesn't come to Ben and say
you will absolutely let that fox go.
She talks to him about, you know,
the feelings and thoughts of the fox
and what kind of life would this be for?
'Cause Ben then says, well, maybe I won't kill it.
Maybe I'll keep it as a pet.
And she sort of has him think about what this would mean
for the fox and being trapped in a box
and not being able to be free or have his own family.
And Ben finally recognizes the validity
of everything Olivia's saying
and feels compassion for the fox and lets the fox go.
Grandpa has gone up into the mountains
until this reunion's over,
because he doesn't wanna have anything to do with it.
John Boy goes up to find him
and basically tell him that it's been called off anyway,
but Zeb confesses that the whole way the charge happened
and the stories he's embellished over all the years
weren't really the way it happened.
That in fact, Zeb was not, in his opinion,
honored to be a member of the Rough Riders.
That he actually was given the only job
that he feels they thought he was qualified for,
which was tending the mules.
So he's been embarrassed by that,
but he has, you know, he confesses,
that he has enjoyed creating this story
and remembering it the way he's created it,
and that after telling it so many years that way
that it's almost as if it's become real
in his mind that that's what really happened.
So, mostly he was just embarrassed
for it to be found out that that wasn't really what happened
and that in fact, he played no pivotal role in that at all.
John Boy and grandpa come home
to find that there is company.
There is Bob Allerton and his wife who have stopped by.
They're there for the reunion,
and they have come by to see Zeb.
And we hear this wonderful story
about how as the charge started that Bob was injured
and that Zeb protected him.
Tied off the wound in his leg with a bandana
that had come from grandma.
It had been a wedding present
and she had given it to Zeb when he went off to off to war.
And grandpa has always said that he planted this bandana
at the top of San Juan Hill,
but now we found out that indeed he wrapped it
around Bob's leg and then ultimately carried him
beyond the enemy lines,
you know, to safety, and basically saved his life.
So in fact, he was one of the heroes of that day.
So this of course changes the whole way
in which everybody, including grandpa,
views his experience about that charge up San Juan Hill.
In Earl's final narration,
he says that he did submit the story
to "Adventure Magazine" and it was rejected
with a terse note,
"Not interested in the Spanish-American War."
Now, I have no idea if Earl did in fact submit a story
that got a terse rejection letter
or whether that was just more of Earl's,
you know, clever writing that found
that that was a nice way to wrap up this story.
That's what I have for you for this segment
of "Behind the Scenes of 'The Waltons'"
about the episode "The Fox".
I'll be back with more "Behind the Scenes of 'The Waltons'"
and more "Ask Judy".
Thanks for watching.