today i'm going to be talking about my
oldest brother
richard thomas who played john boy if
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when we filmed the homecoming i had the
biggest crush on richard
i was 13 he was 20 and and it was just i
thought he was so wonderful
and uh and just
so admired him as an actor and as a
person
i i grew out of it by the time we
started the the series and we were just
good friends throughout the series and i
really
i really missed him when he left because
of the energy that he
brought to the set to any scene he was
involved in
he was such a pro
that he always gave 110
you always knew that he was right there
with you
no matter what scene you were doing and
he
imbued john boy with so much
emotion and volatility and and teenage
angst
and all the things that made john boy so
wonderful and really brought the whole
story to life since the show was told
from his point of view
he wore that very well
richard was different than john boy in a
lot of ways
he grew up in new york as opposed to
in a rural area he was
much more sophisticated very well read
very erudite
and a wonderful sense of humor not
nearly as angst ridden as john boy often
was
he also loved things like jimi hendrix
was one of his
favorite recording artists in the 70s
and so he had much more
broad taste than john boy would have
been exposed to
in the 30s and 40s and of course many of
you have probably seen richard play very
diverse roles
uh he's played psychopaths and
and a lot of tougher characters than
someone would expect from having seen
him on the waltons
in season one we filmed the easter story
where jonboy teaches mary ellen how to
dance
and then she teaches gw how to dance so
that
they can go to the dance richard you may
not know this but his parents had a
ballet company
in new york while he was growing up so
richard grew up around dance his sister
was a prima ballerina for many years
so richard was a really good dancer
one time in real life richard and i
attended some sort of a party
probably a walton related event and we
were dancing together
and he suddenly started moving a little
differently he had his hands behind his
back he was kind of just
you know moving around in a in a very
different fashion and i thought oh
that's really cool because he was such a
good dancer and then at the end he
leaned in he said
i have to leave now i've split the back
of my pants so i'm just gonna
slide on out of here
i never told that story and i didn't
tell anybody at the party why he had to
leave
so it's between all of us now
when the waltons first started richard
couldn't drive because he grew up in new
york
so in that first season the drivers on
the set
the the teamsters actually taught
richard to drive and he got his license
during the filming of the waltons
because of course he had to be able to
drive the truck and then his
his car and various other vehicles
richard was quite a prankster there was
the time of course that he
and will mooned the tourists that came
by the set
when they were filming in drusilla's
pond
there was another time when he
and john ritter were working together
and they would do they would do all
kinds of silly things like
they'd put something in their mouth that
would then foam and
and then they'd start foaming at the
mouth as if they were rabid or something
like that they would
they would try and crack each other up
but they were both such pros
that it never affected the work they
were always able to do their job
but i loved being around when richard
and and john ritter were working
together
because things were always at another
level of humor around the set
there was one time when we were shooting
a kitchen scene and a lot of us were
already on set
including crew and as a prank against
richard everybody had drawn a mole on
their face
various sides they didn't necessarily
match up to the side that richard's mole
was on
and then we just kind of would straight
face waited till richard came in and
started looking around and realizing
everything
that was going on and he took it
in the spirit that it was meant and had
a good laugh out of it
there was another time when richard had
a dressing room on the stage on the
soundstage
i don't know how he did it but one of
the crew members that was a good friend
of richards
had somehow put this giant
stuffed moose that was on a rolling bed
in his dressing room and it the door
wouldn't even close it was so big
and he it was a small dressing room and
so when he went to go to his dressing
room and open the door
there he was confronted with this huge
moose head
like right there in his face and again
he had a great sense of humor and it
just completely
cracked him up in more recent years
i've had a chance to go visit richard
when he has been doing stage productions
and have seen him do some
wonderful work on stage a few years back
i went down to san diego to see him do a
show called camp david and
after the show i went and spent some
time with him between the matinee and
the evening performance
and as he was walking me back to my car
when i was leaving
we reflected about our time on the
waltons
and how grateful we were
for the show what it
brought to us both personally and
professionally
how much we loved each other and
the entire cast and how special that was
and just
our amazement at what the show
has come to mean to us and to every
every person who's watched it over the
years
so thank you we really do appreciate all
of you
who have kept the show alive for all
these years
for the cast we will always have our
memories and we will always have
this second family that we share
together but
you become part of our extended family
and continue to breathe life
into what the show has meant
and what it still means with all the
wonderful values that it brings
especially in today's world so thank you
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going to continue to bring more behind
the scenes about
the cast some of the episodes and some
of the other things that went on
in general during the filming of the
waltons
i'll see you next time