welcome back to my next segment of
behind the scenes of the waltons as i
continue talking about the homecoming
that we shot in 1971
then we get into the wonderful
interaction of the turkey arriving and
grandma's suspicion about this turkey
and where it came from and um
i loved everything the undercurrents in
the scene because
you know charlie's challenging grandma
who's challenging him back about how he
shot it he's got an answer for
everything and olivia is just
really walking her own moral tightrope
about
how to justify for herself being able to
accept this turkey
but she doesn't want to know too much
about it she doesn't really want to know
where it came from because if she really
knows then she wouldn't be able to
accept it
so there is a mother
knowing she needs to feed her family and
where we all may have
those moments of
where do we where where's our line in
the sand and i thought it was very
interesting to see those moments with
olivia where she sort of let certain
things ride and
later on when john boyd brings it up
she's like that's enough of you john boy
you know go milk the cow uh so she just
kind of rides over all of that and
grandma sort of huffs and puffs and you
know i mean right away the brilliance of
ellen corby is on full display i think
my favorite moment with patricia neal
was when i come back in from milking the
cow after talking with john boy and
getting his advice and ask her
if she thinks i'm pretty and she says no
and i am disappointed and she says i
think you're beautiful but that she
never even looks at me it's just also a
matter of fact
mama do you think i'm pretty
no
i think you're beautiful
there wasn't a lot of extra
sentimentality
in how these scenes were played which to
me just brought such
wonderful
realism to it
so i thought the combination of the
casting and the direction
just all guided us
with earl's beautiful words down just
just the perfect path then of course
there's the whole scene with the
missionary uh this was another scene
shot in jackson hole wyoming
and it was a freezing night i mean
freezing for us a lot of children from
southern california who were not really
appropriately dressed to deal with that
kind of cold
uh and
poor mary didn't even have like
winter boots on she just had like shoes
and socks or stock you know sort of
tights on so we were all quite cold our
i would say our coats weren't all that
warm
uh we had mittens we had hats but we
were out there for many many hours that
evening
and it was cold and we were standing
around in the snow and there wasn't a
lot of ways to to warm up while we were
there but it sure
it sure made for realism when we were
shooting and of course then there's all
those
fun exchanges with the bible verses and
again you get an opportunity to see that
that relationship between mary ellen and
john boy and the sort of
the the
one-upsmanship as
as john boyd tries to one-up mary ellen
on the bible verses and again the humor
in that moment
uh capped off by
that doll that we all decide it's going
to be okay to let elizabeth get this
doll aaron of course is very
indignant that this is happening and
we're not entirely sure that aaron isn't
going to go home and tell
another another thing in terms of
shooting the scene with the doll and the
unwrapping of the doll it was important
that the camera be able to see the doll
and the
cracks in the doll's face so there's a
point here where they're trying to
unwrap it and reveal the face and the
doll starts to
slip down and somebody in there with
their hands you know holding the doll
makes sure that the doll
remains upright and that as we
unwrap it that you the camera can
actually identify
this
broken face
uh which then of course drops to the
snow and we all head on back home the
scene between john boy
and olivia
another absolutely stunning scene uh
between patricia neal and richard thomas
and i found it just heartbreaking
because when he
finally is talking to
his mama and revealing
what's going on in his life and his
concerns and his dreams and his sense
that he's going to
he already feels like he's going to have
to give up on these dreams
to become a writer and then things have
been different there hadn't been a
depression that
maybe he would have been able to do
something with his life and a mother
whose heart is breaking to want to
give her son
his heart's desire and not
and wanting to support him but not
necessarily knowing how
and and not fully understanding this
child who
his dreams and the direction he wants to
go is so very different from what she
knows or has been around
so
again a shot that a scene that was done
predominantly in one shot because of the
way the actors were placed
they didn't worry all the time about
being in front on close-ups
they allowed the camera to
capture it from
the side of the two actors and just
let the scene play out without chopping
it up a lot with
extra editing
so that doesn't happen as much anymore
but
i love when it does and perhaps it was
still
a factor of the time period that we shot
the waltons and the homecoming in and
that perhaps the crew and the director
and everybody having come from
an earlier era where
that kind of time
and attention was given to the way
things were shot and how perfect it was
for this show at that time we're just
sending john boy off to go search
for his daddy
and of course he heads off and ends up
at ike's store looking for charlie
because his
he's been told to go find charlie c
about borrowing charlie's truck having
charlie drive him to go look for his
daddy well of course he arrives at ike's
and there is charlie in handcuffs
because the sheriff has arrested him for
those turkeys and hams and things that
are in the back of his car
another case of
john boy making a
moral choice uh because basically
charlie says
you know if you're okay with taking the
car the truck then that's fine so even
though the evidence is still there
john boy decides the most important
thing is trying to find his daddy and
make sure he's okay so he's willing to
take the chance
so he takes those keys and off he goes
in charlie's truck and charlie now john
was supposed to be 15 at this point but
you know he's driven a little bit so
there he goes off on those
icy slick
dark roads driving this this truck so
good for him of course charlie's uh car
runs out of gas
and frustrated john boy slams the
steering wheel and then he tries to get
out of the car and and he you see him
try to open from the inside and
ultimately reach outside and open it
from the outside which i've talked about
in episodes of the waltons that people
tend to do do that he particularly did
that with john boy's car during the
waltons he hears singing and that takes
him to
reverend dooley's
church and he goes in and he shares
in the experience that
of the service the christmas eve service
that reverend hawthorne is having with
his congregation
afterwards
uh hawthorne suggests that if they are
in need of gas that they go by the
baldwins and hope that perhaps a
customer has come by
and that they might be able to siphon
some gas from one of those vehicles so
off they go to the baldwins where
my all-time favorite christmas tree that
they are decorating with the live
lit candles on this tree this was just
the most amazing tree with all these lit
candles and i just i remember being on
set when they
had it all done up and lit and it was so
gorgeous but i kept thinking oh my
goodness what a fire hazard
so that was amazing to me um
and of course they stopped by they have
a little bit of the recipe
and they sing and
cleveland was quite a singer he had a
beautiful voice and of course john boyd
doesn't really want to be there he
doesn't really want to be drinking the
recipe and
but but hawthorne keeps letting him know
no this is this is the way we do this
and that another one of my favorite
moments when they're they finish singing
and they're laughing and then
[Laughter]
we got to have some gas
gas
they don't have gas but they do have
their papa's sleigh and so off they go
for a horse-drawn sleigh ride in the
snow
and during the time that we were
actually filming up in jackson hall
wyoming i remember getting to go for a
sleigh ride in that slaves the only time
i've ever had a chance to do that it was
just magical you know it was just like
it was like being going back in time to
my favorite christmas movies from
earlier eras when people did go for
sleigh rides and
the types of things that growing up in
southern california were never an option
we might get to go on a hayride or
something like that but never a sleigh
ride so those were some of the very
special memories that i took from
that time filming all those years ago
once they're on the sleigh ride and they
run across the block in the road and
have to turn around
um
one of the next things you see is them
hearing the jingling of those bells as
the baldwin sisters are going to jaw
drop john boy off back at home
and
you see all of us
sleeping in the same room and it looks
like maybe a couple of beds but
all piled in there together another
sequence with beautiful photography
as john boyce starts telling the story
about
the the stable
and
you see the shot across him and he's in
focus in the foreground and then you see
sort of the
out of focus
uh children sitting on the stairs behind
him
and then when he gets up and goes to the
door that you see him initially in
close-up and then he closes the door in
that beautiful shot through the door
with
what looks like you know
frost on that window that they're
shooting through and
just stunning shot choices then of
course daddy does arrive and we are so
excited and he has a whole bag of
presents and he tells that wonderful
story about
wrestling with santa up on the roof and
grabbing toys and
i love the expressions on mary and cammy
and you know just the it they were so
real they were so excited about these
presents and they were going to get to
open the presents and
and then of course everyone does and we
we all get wonderful
gifts that we weren't expecting this was
a really big deal at that time during
the depression these were amazing gifts
and then of course the beautiful moment
when
john boy gets those writing tablets and
knows that there is
he's going to be supported by his family
in
in his dreams and
you know there's nothing like that as a
child
and as a parent to recognize that and do
what you can to support your child's
dreams so lovely stuff
andrew duggan was lovely to work with we
didn't get to work with him very long
because there was just this one sequence
so
it was maybe a day or two that we worked
with him
but
you know we
we bonded right away
we never got to work with him again and
i don't think we've ever crossed paths
again since which is you know was kind
of sad but we did have
those you know those
brief times together which was very
special
and of course it all wraps up with the
first time we get to hear those iconic
good nights
and
what that has meant over the years and
the number of people who have told me
that their family did that or the people
that have started to do that because of
the waltons or the ways in which it has
influenced pop culture
i remember hearing
a headline one time
on one of the um
space missions where
the headline said astronauts say good
night walton style
so
it just
the way in which that has become iconic
with the waltons
and in people's
lives is just so moving to me uh
and you know that that's the thing we
get asked about people want to hear us
say you know good night and that that
became part of every single show
um
so that was that was very special we had
no idea at the time that we recorded
those what that would mean for the next
50 years of our lives but
there you go it's still with us a lot of
wonderful things happened during the
five weeks we were filming not only did
i
get my first opportunity to bond with
this amazing cast and family that is
still in my life
um
but
you know we we had such fun we filmed
for four weeks in um at the studio
then they charted a plane and took us to
jackson hole wyoming my first time on an
airplane and then we stayed at this fun
lodge
in jacksonville wyoming at the base of
the teton mountains edgar bergen put on
a show with
with um charlie mccarthy and
and um mortimer and that was very
special for the children in the lodge
that he put on this
this show we built snowmen for real like
around the um
in the at the hotel at the at the
lodge that we were staying at we had
halloween there and went
trick-or-treating to each other's hotel
rooms and i remember our our teacher had
um
brought halloween treats for us so that
we could go trick-or-treating um
so by that time we'd been together we
were going into our fifth week of being
together and we were super close by then
so all that was it was just great fun
and i remember it was during
that last week in wyoming that i started
hearing rumors about them considering
taking it to series
that's what i have for you for this
second part of behind the scenes of the
homecoming i will be back with more
behind the scenes of the waltons and
more ask judy and i wish you all very
happy holidays and good night to all of
you
thanks for watching