- Welcome back to another segment
of "Behind the Scenes of the Waltons."
Today, I'm going to be taking your questions
on another segment of "Ask Judy."
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I've talked quite a bit about the various different sets
we've used on "The Waltons," and recently
I came across a couple of sketches of the floor plan
of the interior sets of the house on Stage 26,
both the ground floor of the house
and then also what would've been the upstairs
of the house, all of which were on a single level
on the sound stage.
So here we have the ground floor,
with the living room, the kitchen,
the stairs that go up to the landing,
that then off to one side, you have the Grandparents' room
so you'd go up the landing, then you'd go
into the Grandparents' room, down a few stairs there,
and then into the Grandparents' bedroom.
Then continuing on up the stairs,
where it went up to a very small landing,
holding platform area where we could wait
to make entrances when we were coming down those stairs.
And then there's also the screened-in back porch area,
when we entered from there,
and then there's also the front porch,
which runs across the front of the interior set
as it did on the exterior set on the back lot.
So that's pretty much it on the ground floor.
Then as we go into the second floor,
you can see where those stairs then
were supposed to have come up from the ground floor,
and right next to that was the area
that was sort of the attic area,
just a couple steps up into that attic area,
then you continue along and off to one side,
you get John Boy's bedroom, and then a little further along
off to the other side you have the boys' bedroom,
then you continue further down,
you have the bathroom that we all shared,
and then at the end of that hallway
was the room that doubled as both the parents' bedroom
and the girls' bedroom, they just swapped
out the furniture depending on which set they were using.
So there you have what that floor plan looked like
if you were ever wondering about that.
I think all of that about the floor plan
hopefully answers Steven's question
about why were there two steps up from the kitchen,
and then that landing, and then steps down
into the Grandparents', I'm not sure why
the set was originally designed that way,
maybe they thought it was more visually interesting.
It did give us that landing coming down
into the kitchen from the upstairs,
meant that they didn't have to try
and build a steep staircase in one piece there,
and also then, we could utilize that platform visually
coming into the kitchen so everything wasn't flat.
Levels are always a really nice thing to shoot.
I always found when I was working in theaters
and directing that it was nice to have levels
because you can create different sorts of pictures
with levels, so hope that helps you out, Steven.
My next question is from Emil, who asked,
"I've always been told that the book comes out first
"before the picture or movie does.
"Is it the same in the case of 'The Waltons?'"
In the case of "The Waltons," it actually is
because Earl Hamner initially wrote the book
"Spencer's Mountain" about his family,
and that became the movie, "Spencer's Mountain,"
and then he wrote the book "The Homecoming,"
which then was picked up by Lorimar
and then produced by CBS for the TV Christmas special,
"The Homecoming," back in 1971.
From there, it was determined to do a series,
and so then that series became "The Waltons."
I had a wonderful post that someone put
into the comments here, that I just wanted to share
with you about the food.
This particular person said that
she worked as a secretary in 1976 to 77
on Warner Brothers on "Wonder Woman,"
and loving the film industry and being from Virginia,
she would sometimes get homesick.
So she said, "I frequently wandered over to 'The Waltons'
"outdoor set on my lunch hours
"to get a Burbank Studios version of Virginia.
"There was a big garden behind the white picket fence
"to the left of the house, and several times
"when I was there, the guy in charge of the garden
"would be working.
"He told me that a lot of the vegetables
"growing there were actually prepared and used
"in your filming, like that corn on the cob you mentioned."
I did not realize that they used
the actual vegetables from that garden sometimes.
So then, "Once, he said that Earl Hamner loved eggplants,
"so that's what he was planting in the garden that day.
"I had fun helping him plant them and we laughed
"as we said we sure hope the plants survived.
"It would've been terrible for him to have to put on
"his resume that he got fired from 'The Waltons'
"because the eggplant died.
"Another time I helped him attach
"bright red plastic tomatoes to the plants
"that had not matured enough to show up
"in the afternoon shoot.
"I loved being on the set.
"The tree swing was peaceful,
"and I remember the chickens, et cetera,
"were actually kept on the set.
"When my mom visited me, I got her on 'The Waltons'
"sound stage and meeting you and the rest
"of the gracious cast was the highlight of her trip."
Aww, thank you so much for posting that.
I know sometimes if things seasonally did not match up,
like we needed it to be winter and there were leaves
on the trees, they would take the leaves off the trees,
or in the case of the episode
when you're picking apples, evidently the apples
had already been picked, so they literally had to go in
and put apples back on the trees,
so things like that would happen to accommodate
various different filming.
From Destiny, I have this question.
"I believe you mentioned having a double for an episode.
"Were there doubles in cases like driving,
"where we thought it was someone, but actually a double,
"like Will or Ralph walking to the car?"
Yes, that did happen.
I have mentioned that Will did not actually drive,
so whenever you thought you saw him driving,
it was always a double and sometimes
when we can pause, we actually can see it isn't,
but with the longer shots, we can't really tell
who's driving and sometimes they would take
all the vehicles out on location and get
various sort of stock shots of the cars
being driven this way and that way
so that they had them and could use them
in various different episodes.
In those cases, they did not take any of the actors out
because they didn't need to.
If you were, occasionally there might be something
where a car was driven by somebody else
because they needed to get a shot, the actor,
they didn't need the actor to do it,
but if you actually, the rest of us,
pretty much if you saw us get in a car and drive off,
it was us in the car driving.
I was never doubled driving, I was doubled
the one time on the roof of the house in "The Carnival"
when I was supposed to be walking the tightrope
up on the roof of the barn.
Richard Thomas was occasionally doubled
for some stunts.
I think during "The Thoroughbred" and some
of the riding sequences when they were going up
and down tough areas on the mountains for the race,
and Elizabeth was doubled when the horse, Molly
that she had crashed through a fence and fell down.
So there were things like that
that were doubles, but for the most part,
we did all our own so-called stunts.
It wasn't what you'd call a lot of stunts
on "The Waltons," so not usually a big deal,
and then Leslie Winston had shared
that with that red car, she never did actually learn
how to drive it, so whenever she was in the car,
she said she was usually pulled in and out of shots
by the crew with a rope on that car.
Then Dee asked how much ahead of time
were storylines planned out?
I don't really know.
We would get a list of what the episodes were going
to be for the most part in a season,
but all we got were titles.
We didn't know what they were about,
so whether there was season arcs,
like in Season 5,
Mary Ellen's gonna get married,
in Season 6 she's gonna have a baby, you know,
whether those types of things were planned out
very far in advance, I'm not really sure.
I know that happens a lot with series now,
they will have several years of story arcs,
it's what we call the Bible for the show.
But I don't know if at the time of "The Waltons,"
that was going on.
Right, gonna grab just a few quick ones here.
Someone asked if Tony was really pregnant, Jason's wife.
No, she was not.
None of us who had babies on the series
actually were pregnant in real life at that time,
so neither Tony nor me or Leslie when Cindy was pregnant,
no, it was all just padding.
Rob asked how long did I live in Vancouver?
I lived in Vancouver, Canada for 10 years.
Loved it up there.
Then I had a question here,
"Was there much over-dubbing done?
"It seems like it would eat up a lot of time."
It did eat up time and budget,
so they did as little as possible,
there were just occasional things
where we couldn't use audio,
like in "The Grandchild," when I was running
in the storm and there was lightning and rain
and everything, we just, it was too noisy,
we couldn't shoot the actual dialogue or anything
so that was dubbed.
Or if something really was just unintelligible sometimes,
we'd have to go in, but it didn't happen very often.
And then, Dara asked, "What happened to the ring
"that went down the drain in 'The Ring?'"
It didn't actually go down the drain,
so we were able to save it and that would've gone,
I expect, back to the prop department.
And then someone asked about having seen a picture
of the 50th anniversary of CBS programs
with a ton of stars at the time, both past and present.
"There seems to have been a majority of your cast
"in the picture, not that any of you shouldn't be
"in the picture, it's surprising to see
"so many of you in that picture.
"Just wondered, were you notified or did most of you
"happen to be on the lot filming
"then asked to participate?
"Very cool photo."
It is a very cool photo, and it hangs on the wall
in my house, I'm very proud of having had
an opportunity to be part of that CBS 50th special.
And it was planned, CBS was doing this whole special.
They did invite all of our cast to come participate
along with the stars from all shows over the first 50 years
of CBS, so a real honor to be a part
of that fabulous picture.
That's what I have for you for this segment of "Ask Judy."
I will be back with more behind the scenes
of "The Waltons" and more "Ask Judy."
Thanks for watching.