- Welcome to another segment
of behind the scenes of The Waltons.
Today, I'm going to be talking
about the episode from Season 5, The Ferris Wheel.
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The Ferris Wheel episode was significant
in a few different ways.
Probably most importantly, this was the episode
we were filming when Ellen Corby had her stroke.
She didn't show up for work one day
and being the consummate professional that she was,
Will Geer said, "Something's wrong.
She would be here if she could."
And he, along with a couple of the producers
went to Ellen's house and found her
and took her to the hospital and likely saved her life.
So it was a very surreal episode to film
because we felt very unsettled about Ellen not being there.
And if you watch the episode, you'll see that early on,
when Elizabeth is sleepwalking
there's a point where she falls down the stairs and Grandma
and Grandpa come out of their room and go,
"What's going on?"
But subsequently in the episode
when there's noise during the night, Grandpa appears
but he comments about Esther still sleeping
because it was such a rough night
or various different things
but we don't actually see her again
which means sequence-wise, the way we filmed,
she was there for a couple of early things
and then she was no longer in the episode
and they would've had to work around her
and you didn't see her anymore.
It wasn't particularly common for us to be involved
in stunt work on The Waltons because
it wasn't really an action show.
In the case of The Ferris Wheel, both Kami Cotler
and Eric Scott had to do some stunt work.
Kami, Elizabeth of course is sleepwalking.
So she stands on the roof of the house.
She stands in the tree house and threatens to jump off.
And then of course, everything on The Ferris Wheel
where she's doing that.
Plus then the nightmare sequences where she appears
to be falling, which was shot on the sound stage
with her in a harness.
And she said she was flying around eight feet off the ground
and doing all of that.
They would have had a big wind machine blowing wind
so that her hair and everything was flying around.
So that was kind of an adventure.
For Eric playing Ben,
I spoke with him and he said that
although they did have stunt people for him and for Kami,
but Eric said he really didn't use his stunt person.
They did have a rope, a harness on him as he did all
that climbing but he said he did do that all himself.
He said for the closeups, when he is going across the beam
of the Ferris wheel to drop down into the seat with Kami
that they took pieces of the Ferris wheel
or rebuilt it or did something on the soundstage
so they could do all those closeups.
So he was not particularly off the ground doing that.
And he said, indeed, that Jon Walmsley at one point did sort
of a little bit of a blooper fun thing
where he kind of came up next to Eric and pretended
to flap his arms as if he was up there flying
just to have some fun.
Eric said, "Yeah we were always trying to do things
that would end up in our Christmas blooper reel."
So Jon did that and kind of flew up and said,
"Oh, you need a hand?
And Eric said, "No, no, I got this."
And Jon kind of flew off.
So just a cute moment.
So that was sort of how the stunt work was done.
So a mix of, for real on the backlot of the studio
where they put that, erected that Ferris wheel
in front of the space where we had Godsey's store,
and then some close-up and work
like that with both Kami and Eric on the soundstage.
This episode was written by Rod Petersen
and Claire Whitaker who wrote a number
of episodes of The Waltons, and also served
as producers on the show for a number of seasons.
In this case,
they talk about how this particular storyline came to Claire
literally in her sleep, where she kind of woke up and said,
"I saw the whole thing
and had this dream and wrote it."
The episode was directed by Larry Dobkin, Lawrence Dobkin
who was both an actor and a director,
had quite an extensive acting career
including playing Colonel Bell in the movie Patton
which I saw and was very excited to see him in.
I loved him as a director because he was also an actor.
I always found that easier as an actor to relate
to a director who had been an actor
because we just speak a different language.
And oftentimes they were better able
to help bring other layers
to the performance where sometimes the actors, I'm sorry
the directors who had been,
come up as directors, perhaps
through being an assistant director or through camera work,
they came at the process a little differently.
And sometimes weren't quite as adept
at working with the actors on performance elements.
So a lot of those cases, we were pretty used
to who our characters were and what was going on.
So in a lot of cases we didn't need a lot of direction
for our characters
but when we would get an actor as a director
then sometimes you could just add extra elements
with the help of that director.
This episode has a subplot about Ben, who is feeling
like everyone is getting taller except to him.
So he has this crush on Darlene Jarvis
at the local car dealership where he is selling ads.
In this case, Debi Richter played the role
of Darlene Jarvis in later episodes.
When Darlene reappeared,
she was played by actress, Melody Thomas Scott,
who went on to star and is still
on The Young and the Restless.
I had an opportunity to also work with Melody very early
in our careers on a show called The Tammy Grimes Show.
And we both appeared on an episode of that together.
So it was great to work with Melody again.
So in this case, Ben decides to try and get elevator shoes,
so he'll be taller.
And then ultimately decides that height isn't what makes
a man, a big man or a hero
or anything else and decides to return them - smart move.
I think it was interesting that they talked
about Elizabeth sleepwalking.
When I was younger, evidently I used to sleepwalk,
I never left the house but my mom would tell me stories
about - she might still be up and I'd come walking out.
And she talked to me and I talked to her
but she clearly knew that I was asleep.
You know, I might walk out - at one point, she said,
I came out in the middle of the night
and went into the kitchen and got a pumpkin pie
that she had made for Thanksgiving
and started to walk back into the bedroom with it.
And she asked me what I was doing.
And I said, I was getting the pumpkin pie or something.
She took it away from me and sent me back to bed.
So there were a few things like that
that I experienced when I was very young
and have no recollection of,
but they were fun stories to hear from my mom.
Kami obviously would have spent some time
on that Ferris wheel, shooting all of those sequences
where it went round and round and round.
And she obviously did very well with it
'cause I don't remember her saying anything
about getting seasick or anything.
I remember very early in my career one of the first things I did was this commercial,
this Hostess Twinkie Commercial,
and we shot it at Griffith Park
and they had this merry-go-round and they wanted just a lot
of children on the merry-go-round and whatnot.
There was no dialogue in the commercial.
So I was very excited to get as a child
to go and ride on the merry-go-round all day.
And then there was a point where the director wanted
a couple of children to run by the camera
which would have been a much more prominent featured role
in the commercial.
And I was one of the children chosen.
Well, I was disappointed
because I didn't get to keep riding the merry-go-round.
So I didn't particularly care at that moment
about being more featured in the commercial.
I just wanted to ride the merry-go-round.
(laughs)
So that's what I have for you,
for this segment of behind the scenes
of The Waltons, the episode, The Ferris Wheel.
I hope you enjoyed it.
I hope you'll join me for more episodes
of behind the scenes of The Waltons and more Ask Judy.
I'll see you soon.
In the meantime, thanks for watching.