- Welcome back to another segment
of "Behind the Scenes of The Waltons."
Today, I'm going to be speaking
with another one of my castmates.
My brother, "Ben."
Played by the wonderful Eric Scott.
If you're enjoying these, please do hit like and subscribe.
Thank you so much for agreeing to come talk to me
and all of our loyal viewers.
- Well, Judy, before we even say anything,
I've been watching yours and they come out twice a week,
and you have done such a good job
of just first of all, taking the energy
and the time to relearn what we've been doing
all those years and really telling people
what we were doing.
And it's a lot of work that you've been doing,
and I'm very impressed by them.
And I wanna thank you.
- Oh. - 'Cause it's something that,
my kids will be able to look at for years to come.
And it was all the stories
that we were doing every week,
but we never put the time to talk
about them 'cause we were just doing them.
- Yeah.
I wish at the time we were filming,
we didn't have iPhones and stuff like that,
so I very rarely had a camera on set,
so I don't have, really,
pictures and stuff of the set particularly,
or the people.
So I just occasionally will come
across something or find something,
or something that one of you have-
- Well, it was work.
- Yeah.
- Even now, you go to work you don't
take pictures of everything that's at work.
It was our work.
So just because everyone in
the world wants to see what we were doing
at work every day, that's not what we were doing.
- Yeah. - We were just going to work.
We were showing up
at the time we were supposed to start the day,
we got into makeup, we got into wardrobe,
we went on the set and we did our job.
And at the end of the day we washed up and went home.
- Yeah. - So we didn't think
that people would be asking us 50 years later,
"That Tuesday that you were filming,
what was it like working with that person?"
So, we just didn't think of that.
And we certainly didn't think of taking
our little cameras that we had and take pictures.
You know, if one of us had a birthday,
maybe our parents were there
and they took a picture of that day.
But, day in, day out,
we didn't have that kind of need or desire.
- Absolutely.
Yeah.
I don't know if you got to see the segment
I did where I had found some home movies that my mom shot?
- Yes.
- Oh, that was- - They were amazing.
- I had no idea because when my mom passed away
I ended up with all these different things that she had,
and she had all these little old school reels,
and I was like, "Ah, what do I do with this?"
And I think it was your Cindy that said,
had talked about you guys sending some things
to be converted, but there was a lot of 'em
and I didn't know what they were.
And they charged by the minute.
And I'm like, "I could end up with who knows what?"
But that one said something about studio.
And so I said, "Oh well let me print this up
and see what it is?"
So, that was so fun.
- Well, those were little gems that you found.
- And then I had to figure out how to narrate it
because there was no sound on it.
For the editor, I literally, like, ran when I had it
as in a digital form, I ran it on the screen and I shot it
so that I could narrate what was happening.
At the same time you could see what was happening.
So then the editor could know what-
- Well, that's a good idea.
- So, yeah. - Yeah.
I use very old school techniques
to do a lot of things 'cause that's all I know.
I'm old school. (chuckling)
- Well, we call it primitive. - Or just old.
One of the two.
(both chuckling)
- You call it old school, I call it primitive.
- Whatever. - Yes, that too.
Yes.
Well, although some of our primitive things,
by today's standards,
we're being able to shoot on film, on 35mm film.
- Yes. - Which was such a gift.
- Yeah. - You know?
- Yeah.
- Although you never knew what you had until you saw it.
(Judy chuckling)
- Well, that's right.
But we sure saw it later on after it was edited,
and music was added and what beautiful stuff
we put together back then, huh?
- Absolutely. - Yeah.
- And I, I'm fascinated now by
the types of questions that people ask.
And sometimes there are things
that wouldn't have occurred to me.
Sometimes there are things
that we completely take for granted
because it was just normal for us, you know?
People asking about not realizing
that you shoot out of order.
- Right.
- So, you know, me trying to explain why
that was practical maybe wasn't as easy for the actors,
although I think it's easier in a series
because you really know your character.
- Mm-hmm.
- So I think it's easier to track
the arc of your character in an episode,
I just didn't really think that much about it, you know?
And I also found on the series
that I wouldn't say that our directors
always trusted us to know our characters.
So, I wouldn't say that I felt
that most directors gave us a lot of input
about our characters, or our motivation in scenes.
- No, you know, maybe they had an idea
that they maybe didn't see all the shows that we had done.
So, they weren't up on maybe one that we had done.
So there might be a correction,
that we might even tell them that,
"well, that isn't consistent with this episode"
that we did two weeks earlier that they didn't direct.
So, I think we had a better grasp of our characters
than maybe even they did.
I remember, Harry, ( Harry Harris) one time wanted me to
say a line a particular way.
And I said, "Harry, I just wouldn't say it that way."
And he came back to me, "No, you gotta do it.
You gotta do it."
And I said, "Harry, I just can't do it."
So, I did it my way.
And probably four months later it was on the air
and he came to me the next morning and said,
"My wife saw it and you were right."
So, sometimes it worked that way.
And it was just a silly little line,
but I knew that my character
would not have said it a certain way.
- Yeah. - The inclinations were wrong.
So, yeah, we knew our characters pretty, pretty well.
So, it was just usually just fine tuning.
But sometimes the directors would guide us
in something that we maybe weren't
as comfortable with, or we always did.
So, you know, they were there to help us.
- Yeah, and it was nice when,
I always enjoyed when they gave me a perspective
that I hadn't thought of yet that was a good one,
and added something to, you know, to the performance.
- But also in a way we were younger than sometime,
my character was much younger
than I was as a person, as myself.
But, they had "Ben" doing things
that my life was not there yet.
You know, I was getting married before I was,
you know, before I was 20 on the show.
So, I had kids before I was even 21, 22 on the show.
So I was experiencing things
that I really couldn't relate to as well as my,
I couldn't tap into my own personal experiences
on some of these.
So, you know, it was nice to have a director
on the set that could sometimes give you a little,
"No, that's not right." (chuckling)
- "That's not how it goes", yeah.
- Yeah.
- What's your take on "Ben"?
How do you see him?
How did you see that character evolve?
I know with someone like Jon playing "Jason,"
because Jon was so musical himself,
they made that a real part of his character
as "Jason" developed.
So, with you, how did all of that work for you,
and how did you see it?
And did you bring things that were really you to it?
- You know, because it was such a large cast,
I feel that a lot of times they really had
the adults well established,
the Grandma and Grandpa's characters,
but they added that whole salt and pepper relationship
between the two of them as the years progressed.
And with Ralph and Michael, you saw the magic they did.
With Richard they had it clearly defined.
For us they waited to really get to know us a little bit.
"Ben" at the very first year,
I remember, you know,
the first big episode I had of a subplot was The Star.
And I had the little spelling bee thing,
and I remember going on the set,
and we were on in the little school room,
and that was, like, the first time
it was centered around my character.
And it was very sweet
and he was just one of the little boys,
and it was just a very sweet little tidbit of an episode.
And by the end of the year,
I think it was a couple scenes I had with Michael
in The Easter Story that I just loved.
But they really didn't know what to do with "Ben" yet.
And I think that they found
that I was probably a little more feisty.
They could have tapped into a little bit more
of that energy that I had as a human being.
And it makes for good drama.
And I think they ran with that a lot more with "Ben".
They made him into a little bit more aggressive
than I would've, but, you know,
we just had fun with it
'cause it was a fun character to play.
Some people talk about,
"Why would you want to play a serial killer?"
Because it's fun to do.
And, "Ben", not that he was anything like that,
but he was definitely, he was a pain, was a pain sometimes.
He wouldn't listen,
he was a little bit of a,
he wasn't very nice sometimes, but, you know,
being the younger brother or the older brother,
it was a lot of fun to do those kind of things
and tease the siblings a little bit more
than I would normally.
I didn't mind doing that.
So, we had fun with that.
And then as "Ben" got older,
they saw the business side of mine, my life.
And I think they got "Ben" into a little bit more of that.
And fortunately, I saw an episode you just did
about "Mary Ellen" being shifted off
into having her own world away from Walton's Mountain.
I fortunately "Ben" was not gonna leave the mountain.
You know, set the shed up as he got older
and got married, and made it Walton & Son and the mill.
So, I had full intention
that I was never gonna leave the mountain. (chuckling)
'Cause if I was off the mountain I'd be in less scenes.
But, that brings me to when "Ben" went to the war later on.
And I loved doing that work.
It was so different for me.
It was interesting
'cause it wasn't like other shows that I had done,
it was "Ben", but in a different position.
- Yeah, you did some beautiful work.
Like, in the "Last Ten Days",
every time I see that,
I think your work in that episode,
some of those things were just wonderful, so beautiful.
- Oh thank you.
It was very different to do.
It was hard to not think of as being in the back lot
and using the jungle and using Drucilla's Pond
as the point of the POW camp, but-
- Yeah, you said they drained it
and used Drucilla's Pond.
- Yeah, they drained the pond and they just built it on
the bottom of the concrete jungle that we had over there.
And you know, just amazing how they changed things.
There was always a little bamboo there
that they could use and stuff like that
that they would grow that were indigenous to the area.
So it was a pretty easy fit for them.
But we never looked at the plant species
to figure out whether it was Virginia,
or if it was South Pacific. (chuckling)
Or Europe.
- Neither, none of the above.
It was strictly Warner Brothers, Burbank Studios.
- That's right.
- I wanna thank Eric for joining me today.
I will be back with more behind the scenes of "The Waltons".
More "Ask Judy", and more with Eric Scott.
Thanks for watching.