- Welcome back to another segment
of Behind The Scenes of "The Waltons."
Today, I'm gonna be talking about Episode 13
from Season 3, The Visitor.
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The Visitor was another episode directed by Ralph Waite.
Always a challenge when an actor
is also directing. That transition back and forth
between being behind the camera
and thinking about the shots and the actors
and crafting all of that,
and then jumping in front of the camera
and taking on that other persona.
That can be a little bit of a challenge,
but Ralph seemed to handle it really well.
Elizabeth has an imaginary friend, Jimmy,
who she takes everywhere with her,
and she wants other people to interact with Jimmy.
And although she knows Jimmy is imaginary,
she still talks with him
and treats him as if he is really there.
So we all have a little bit of our own interaction
with Jimmy during the course of the episode.
And in fact, there was one scene
that I thought was really quite cute.
She is down by the creek,
and she sits in a swing, a two-person swing,
and the camera is on her when she's talking.
And then there's a wonderful moment
where Ralph turned the camera around,
and it's over Elizabeth's shoulder,
pointed at where Jimmy would be.
And of course, there's no one sitting
on the other side of that swing,
but just the representation for the viewer
that Elizabeth does in fact feel
that she's having a conversation,
but just to reassure all of us
that we are not imagining things.
And that Jimmy truly is imaginary.
The Beardsley cabin, which is quite overrun
with weeds and bushes and whatnot, seems very abandoned.
But one day as the children are coming home from school,
they notice that the door is open.
And they check, no one seems to be around.
But shortly after that,
they find out that old friends of the family,
Mason Beardsley and his wife, Delia,
are coming back and going to be moving back into the house.
Grandpa and Grandma are particularly excited
to have them back because they were close friends of theirs.
So we all sort of get volunteered.
The whole family goes over to help clean up the place
because Mason is pretty overwhelmed
by trying to get the place ready.
He said he is getting it all ready for Delia to arrive.
They've been living down, I believe, in Atlanta
where their son, James Lee went
and they moved down there.
But now, Mason feels like they've been away too long,
and they want to come back to their own home.
The children have run across John Boy
as they're checking out the abandoned Beardsley place.
And then when they're all heading home,
of course everybody climbs onto John Boy's car.
I love how that happens.
And we arrive back at the house
with people just piled all over the car,
hanging off the running boards and standing up in the back
and kind of I'm half in, half out of the rumble seat.
And again, not the type of thing that we would do nowadays,
but certainly very common on "The Waltons."
And I think a lot more common
in particularly rural areas and of the era.
Although being an actor, you might think of
as not particularly physical most of the time
or a pretty easy job or something,
but it's remarkable how often scenes
involved doing something physical.
You might think of that in action shows
where clearly the actors in some cases
are doing a lot of running or hiking or physical activity.
Wasn't so much the case on "The Waltons,"
but we did do our fair share of physical work.
Early in the episode, we are washing John Boy's car,
so we are actually out there
with sponges and with rags and whatnot
and physically doing that.
Of course, this turns into a bit of a sibling rivalry thing
because I toss soap suds at John Boy,
who then tries to toss them back.
Then they're supposed to rinse the car off
and Ben has the hose and he starts hosing down John Boy.
And it gets to be just a free for all.
With something like that
where Richard clearly got completely soaked,
that would be the last shot of this sequence
that they would've done where you would see John Boy
because up until then, anything that you saw,
he would have to be dry.
Once they were gonna put that hose on him,
there would be no going back
without a long delay to dry him off and dry his clothes off.
So once that hose got going in every direction, (laughs)
then that was kind of the end of any more shooting,
except any additional shots where we were wet.
Because we did not film on actual houses, like real houses,
the locations we had were on sound stages
or they were on the studio lot,
so when we are dealing with the Beardsley house,
there is supposed to be a well
that they are trying to get functioning again.
So when you actually see water coming out of that,
that would've had to be rigged
to have actual water coming out
because it was not an actual well.
And then inside the house,
when they come in and they prime the pump
and they get the water running in the kitchen sink,
again they would've had to rig that.
So that's some sort of hose was hooked under there
and they could activate it with that pump
or the pump wasn't working at all
and somebody turned a faucet at the appropriate time
or turned the hose on so that the water came up and out.
So those were the types of technical things
that had to be rigged for nonfunctioning sets like this.
Various people in the family
begin to feel that Mason doesn't seem to be fully himself.
And their longtime housekeeper, Minnie Doze,
comes back when she finds out
that Mr. Beardsley has returned
and insists on coming back to work
and helping ready the house for Delia.
She's very excited for her coming back,
but she also begins to feel that Mr. Beardsley
isn't quite himself.
So there are various people concerned about him.
And as it turns out when James Lee arrives,
we find out that his mother Delia
actually died two years ago.
Mason's having a very hard time dealing with that.
And so to him, he continues to tell himself
that she's somewhere else or she's coming
or she will be there soon.
So in a sense, not only Elizabeth has an imaginary friend,
but Mason has kept Delia alive for himself as well.
And sort of has his own imaginary relationship
now in the present.
The news of Delia's death is particularly hard on Grandma.
And it's one of the few times
I really remember seeing Grandma break down in a situation.
She was always so stoic about things,
and she didn't show a lot of emotion.
She got irritated and she might shout and stuff like that.
But to show vulnerability
was not as common for her character.
So I thought it was a really touching moment
between Grandma and Grandpa.
And ultimately, Grandpa says he will go talk to Mason.
And I think he feels that being contemporaries
and being at the point in their life
where the loss of a longtime spouse was something
that they potentially could both relate to.
Grandpa decides he will go speak with him,
and they have a very short but poignant scene together.
And it's very impactful for, I think, both of them.
And Mason recognizes that he needs to let Delia go
and move on.
And he knows she's gone,
but he recognizes that he needs to actually
acknowledge that for real and move on.
We were fortunate to have another couple
of fabulous guest stars join us for this episode.
John Beal, who played Mason, had a very illustrious career
both on Broadway and in Hollywood.
He worked with such stars as Katharine Hepburn,
Helen Hayes, Gloria Stewart.
And then Madge Sinclair
played the Beardsley's longtime housekeeper Minnie,
and she had quite a career as well.
She was nominated for an Emmy
for the series, "Trapper John, M.D.,"
where she had a regular role on that.
She was nominated for an Emmy for the mini series "Roots"
in which our very own Ralph Waite also was seen.
She won an Emmy for a show called "Gabriel's Fire."
And then she went on also
to do a couple of different versions,
incarnations of the "Star Trek" series.
And then unfortunately, we lost her way too young.
That's what I have for you for this segment
of Behind The Scenes of "The Waltons"
about the Season 3 episode, The Visitor.
I will be back with more behind the scenes of "The Waltons"
and more Ask Judy.
And next up, a special tribute for Father's Day.
Thanks for watching.