- Welcome back to another segment
of Behind the Scenes of the Waltons.
I'm going to take some more of your questions
in another segment of Ask Judy.
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Question here from Gregory.
Speaking of windows, why didn't the show
show the stained glass window
that Grandpa put in their room for Grandma?
It was facing the front of the house,
so it should have been in every episode
and season from that moment on,
but it was never seen again.
And what a shame, because it was a gorgeous window.
That's a good question.
I need to look at that episode again.
When Grandpa got that stain glass window
and where exactly he put it.
I believe it was the front window,
we did not see that front window very often
from inside the house set,
when we were actually on the sound stage,
because usually that was the wall that was out.
So typically we shot from that angle.
Every once in a while they would put the window back in
and it would be, and then you did see it.
From the outside, I'm speculating a couple things.
One, it may not have been the same size
as the window on the exterior set
and so it might not have fit into there correctly.
And it could also be that it was delicate
and they didn't wanna take any chances
of it getting broken on the exterior set and you know,
to constantly be having to take it out
and put it in and take it out and put it in
each time we were filming to keep it safe.
Probably more than they wanted to deal with.
So another case of something that just was sort of,
you know, like maybe they won't notice
or we'll just have to take some dramatic license with that
and not do it.
Those are my best guesses on why those decisions were made
and why we didn't see that window more.
Here we have one from Donna.
Judy, when filming your part of the story was finished,
did you then go to school on the lot?
Yes, during the school season between scenes or, you know,
if there was a longer break they were relighting something,
yes, I would go back to our school room.
So it wasn't that there was a general school for any minors,
any school-aged kids on the studio lot.
We had our own sort of trailer where we went to school
or initially we had a school room,
literally on the sound stage, which was tougher,
'cuz we kind of had to stay quiet more.
But then later we had a trailer that we went to school in
and it was parked right outside the sound stage.
So we really didn't have far to go.
Then said, how often when you were in class on the lot
and they came and say they needed you for filming?
Yeah. Yeah. That definitely happened.
And sometimes they thought you'd have more time than you did
and you'd come in, you'd barely pick up a book
and start to do some work and they go, oh, need you back.
So if we were there for less than 20 minutes,
we couldn't count it.
We were supposed to accumulate three hours
of school time each day.
Some days we made it, but if you had a really heavy episode,
you might not make three hours.
So in which case we would get what we could.
And then on a day where we had less filming to do,
we would do more than three hours.
So we would bank school time.
Okay, did the teacher on set grade your work?
Or was your work sent back
to your regular school for teachers to grade?
Our teacher on set handled everything
during the time that we were at the studio
for all throughout the filming season.
They would handle, do all our grading and all our papers.
Nothing went back and forth with our actual high school
or junior high or whatever grade we were in.
However, you'd asked here,
did the work come from your regular school teachers
or was it created by the set teacher?
At the beginning of each school year,
I would go to my own public high school
and I would find out what my requirements were, you know,
what classes I had to take,
what book they were working out of.
And so I would get those,
I would coordinate with my own high school
and I would take that to the teacher at the studio
and she would help me and we'd work out a plan
for getting through the class
during the time we were at the studio.
And then I would get a set of grades
at the end of our school year at the studio
and I would take those back to my public school
for the time that we were on hiatus
when I went back to public school.
And that was always a mixed bag on how close,
what the class was doing at the my real school,
was I to - what I had been doing at the studio.
So sometimes that got challenging
when I went back to public school to play catch up
or they were doing some side assignment
that I had to get up to speed on really quickly.
Sometimes they were doing something totally different.
So I had to very quickly get in sync
with what was happening with my public school.
So definitely some challenges there,
but we had great teachers at the studio,
so I really enjoyed that.
And I enjoyed the one-on-one time
that you had with these teachers,
because you could dial in on
the things that you needed extra help with
and the things that you didn't,
you could just get through quickly.
So you did really work at your own pace.
Question here from Blackiekitty1,
how far in advance were the shows filmed?
I know some shows like, soap operas were filmed way ahead
of the air date and when any of you fell ill, okay,
so question number one.
So at the beginning of the season,
we would start filming around the end of May
and those shows would be ready to be aired by September.
So at that point we were, what,
three and a half months ahead.
But because we took six and a half days to film
and we only filmed five days a week,
that started catching up with us.
And then we would take, you know,
four day weekend at Thanksgiving,
or we would take maybe a week at Christmas or something.
So by the end of the season we had caught up considerably
and there was nowhere near as much lead time by then,
but that's why I talked about, you know,
Christmas things or winter scenes being shot in the summer,
because we were filming 'em then,
but they were gonna be on in the fall,
or in the fall or, you know, beginning of the year
when it was still cold
or we were shooting things that were going to be on,
you know, in the spring or summer.
So it got a little bit like that in order
for the timelines to work.
And then you asked if you've,
and if you felt ill, who had the responsibility
to rewrite the episode or episodes?
That would be with the production office, with Earl Hamner,
with the story editor.
Any of those sorts of changes
would happen through our in-house people.
We did not have a writer's room, like shows do today.
We did have a story editor
and Earl could at any point write of course.
And then, who wrote the theme song for the Waltons?
That was the brilliant Jerry Goldsmith.
Thank you for joining me for this segment of Ask Judy.
I'll be back with more
Behind the Scenes of the Waltons and more Ask Judy.
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do put it in the comments below.
I'll see you next time.
Thanks for watching.