- I get asked a lot about the Walton house.
So today, I thought I'd take you behind the scenes
of the Walton house,
both the interior of the house
and the exterior of the house.
The exterior of the house was on the backlot
of Warner Brothers studios in Burbank, California.
And it was really just a facade.
There was a front, there were sides,
and not a complete back.
There were a couple of actual workable spaces inside.
When you went in the house from the back porch,
where you actually saw that there was
sort of a root cellar there, too,
that wasn't really a practical root cellar,
you couldn't actually go down inside it.
But that room, if you went
in the back door of the house,
the space there lead into what became
our makeup room when we were
on the backlot at the studio.
So that was where every morning
or whatever time the actors came in,
when we were called to get our hair and makeup done,
we would go into that room
and our hair and makeup people were all set up
with their tables and lights and whatnot in there.
The other space that was available
was off of the front door.
And it was really just sort of a small holding area
and there were some stairs that went partway up
and turned a corner.
And then again, just a holding space,
you could also get to the second story of the house
via sort of an inside ladder that took you up
to a landing that sat behind
the various different windows that you could see
from the front of the house.
So at any point, if we were clearly outside,
and you could see all of the house
and there were lights on or you could see maybe John Boy,
you know, in his - in his window,
or leaning out or something like that,
that would be basically standing
on just a wood platform up there.
And they could put lights up there
so that you could see John Boy's light on at night.
But that was the extent of all of the spaces
that you could get to inside the house.
Sometimes when we were outside,
we would shoot the actual porch scenes
on that exterior set.
And when we were shooting on the exterior set,
you couldn't actually see through the windows
into the living room.
So anytime you see anyone on the porch,
and you're able to actually see into the living room,
that would have been shot on the porch, inside.
All of the interiors of the Walton house,
were all on Stage 26 at Warner Brothers studios.
So we had the living room and kitchen as one section
and you could see the stairs
that went up to the second level of the house.
But those steps, once we turned the corner
and went out of sight,
there was really just a very small holding platform there.
So when we all had to come running down,
we all had to be pretty crammed up there
on that little area, up at the top of the stairs,
and we'd all come running down.
Or if we went up,
we all had to kind of cram into that little space.
And then there was the door off of that mid platform
that went into the grandparents room.
People ask about the door
near the front door of the house,
there was a door there off to the left
and I have no idea what that was supposed to be.
We never really established what it was,
whether it was a coat closet
or another entrance into Grandma and Grandpa's bedroom.
I don't know.
There was also another door in the kitchen
in between the stove
and where the sink and counter was off to the left.
That again, we never established what it was,
probably some sort of utility closet
or pantry type space.
But what was really out there,
you go out that door and there was a space on the set,
where the property department would have
a working kitchen where all that food
that you saw us eat,
they would prepare in that kitchen
and then bring it through that door to the table.
And then of course there was the back porch area
that - where we exited
to leave the house if we were going
to be going out the back porch.
All of the bedrooms were on another part of Stage 26.
So John and Livvy's room
also doubled as the girls room.
All they did was change the furniture.
And then there was the boy's room
and there was John Boy's room.
So there were actually only three bedrooms
that we used that became four bedrooms.
And then there was a little bit
of up at the top of the stairs you could go
down and around the corner just a bit again,
small holding space.
And then what was sort of the access to the attic,
which if that was ever used Swould have been a separate set someplace on Stage 26.
The other things that were on Stage 26
were the interior of Ike Godsey's store.
So that was always fun.
We knew when we were going to be shooting
at Ike Godsey's store,
that it would - all the props and everything
would be put in place,
and the candy counter would be stocked.
So I remember when I was young, it was like,
"oh, we're filming in Ike Godsey's store today,
So there will be like fresh candy in there."
And I'd go in and I'm sure I wasn't the only one
who went in and sampled the candies in,
Ike Godsey's store on the counter there.
Also on Stage 26 would be the interior
of the Baldwin's house.
So their parlor that you saw all the time,
and sometimes you saw the room
where the recipe still was.
So those were sets that they would
put together on Stage 26,
when those sets were going to be used.
It was a pretty big stage.
So sometimes when there was another set
that only got used once,
for some other purpose,
they would build it right there on our stage,
and then it would be there for the duration
of that episode.
And then it would be torn down
and repurposed for something else.
None of these spaces on Stage 26
had ceilings to them.
Virtually all the walls were movable.
So if the camera needed a different angle,
they could take one of those walls out
and set up the camera from that angle.
Everything had lights rigged from above,
and it was very tall in there
so they had lots of catwalks
and things up there
and they could move lights all around,
drop down rigging all around the edges
of the of the given space and light from there,
or they would just move their big lights around
on the big stands that they were on
and light in that way.
So that's a sneak peek behind
the Walton house both the interior and the exterior.
So hope you enjoyed this.
Please subscribe if you're enjoying the videos,
and I'll be back with more
behind the scenes of The Waltons.