- Welcome to another segment
of "Behind the Scenes of The Waltons."
Today, we're doing another Ask Judy.
if you're enjoying these, please do like and subscribe
and share them with anyone you think might enjoy them,
and do keep posting those comments below
because that is where I pull questions
for my Ask Judy segments.
I've been asked a couple of times about braces,
cast wearing braces.
Sometimes, I guess, with shows,
there's a lot that goes into actors figuring out
how to deal with needing braces during those years.
When I was coming up as an actor, agents tended to say,
"Go away until your braces are off."
Obviously when you're doing a series, you can't do that.
Nobody in our cast wore braces, so we either just dealt
with our teeth being crooked or dealt with it later
or were fortunate enough at the time not to need them.
So I do understand there was some stories
from "Little House on the Prairie,"
so maybe you can source some of those cast members
to find out what they did.
'Judy' asked about the wedding gown
that Mary Ellen wore marrying Curt
and wanted to know where it came from
and... doesn't seem to remember,
but did Erin wear the same one?
The wedding gown I wore when I married Curt
was from the wardrobe department,
so I'm not sure where it came from before that,
if it was part of stock
or they sourced it someplace specifically for the episode.
The gown that Mary wore when she married Paul
was actually her own mother's wedding gown
that she used for that episode,
so that was pretty special for her.
Obviously, Mary's gown was never used again.
Nobody else on the series ever wore the gown
that Mary Ellen wore, and when I married Jonesy,
I wore a lovely suit.
So I did not reuse that original gown
when I remarried either.
Next question.
Kay asks, "Which episode taught you the most about life?"
Wow, that's a great question.
I feel like I learned so much
during the years of "The Waltons"
that so many episodes taught me different things.
The Firestorm always stands out to me,
that whole message about burning books
and what happened around the campfire there
with Mrs. Brimmer then reading that German Bible
and that whole message that John-Boy
was trying to get across to people
that if you try to censor and destroy books and things,
that people can't know, then,
things that could be important or dangerous.
So that one stands out to me.
The lessons from episodes
like "The Scholar" about illiteracy.
We tackled a lot of subjects,
so I was so proud of the show for that.
That we took on some of these topics and addressed them.
So it was an ongoing learning experience for me.
And then just behind the scenes stuff
like learning to milk a cow.
I grew up in the city. What do I know about milking cows?
Or dealing with some of these animals that came through.
Who gets to play with a peacock?
(laughs) So it was wonderful.
It was work. It was a joy.
I learned. What more can you ask for?
Thanks for that question
and raising all those great points for me.
Christopher asked, "Did you ever go mind blank
on a line and ad libbed?"
Definitely went blank on lines occasionally.
There would be times I'd be doing a scene,
and I was going through and I was doing it,
and I'd be like, "I have no idea what my next line is,"
and the other actor would be talking, and I'd be like,
just responding to what that actor was saying, going,
"I sure hope when it's my time to talk,
I remember what I'm supposed to say."
Sometimes I did. Sometimes I didn't.
If it was a moderate ad lib,
like I changed a word or something,
they usually let it slide.
But I rarely could come up with great ad libs. (laughs)
Now on stage, and I think Christopher mentioned that,
you have no choice.
Onscreen, you can go, "Oh, cut.
God, I can't remember my line," or just "Line,"
and the script supervisor will throw you a line,
and you pause for a second, you reset,
and you just go on because then they can edit
because each time there's a pause,
there's an opportunity for the editor to make a cut.
So as long as if you fumble or something like that,
even if you know the line and you fumble,
if you're just "Blah blah blah blah,"
then you just pause, reset, and start the line.
There's room for the editor then
to get in there and clean it up.
But if you go, "Blah, blah, blah, blah,
oh yeah, here's my line," there's no place for a clean cut.
So we learned things like that.
Onstage, of course, you can't retake,
so you always just have to say something,
and I've had those experiences
where I went completely blank, fortunately, not very often.
In one case, I was on stage alone, (laughs)
and had to come up with something on my own.
If there's other actors, they will usually help you,
and you guide each other back
to where you're supposed to be.
So all those things happen, and that is part of the thrill
and excitement of doing live theater.
'J Mom' asked if it was hard to fit
in when you went to public school?
It was.
In the 70s when we were in public school
in between seasons of "The Waltons,"
"The Waltons" wasn't considered cool
in Los Angeles in the 70s.
Kids that I went to high school with
were watching other things or, I don't know,
they just weren't into "The Waltons."
Yeah, I think they just thought they were too cool for it.
So people would make fun of me.
I'd walk down the halls, and they'd go,
"Oh where's John-Boy?
Goodnight, Mary Ellen." So they'd do things like that.
What was interesting to me was that they seemed
to know an awful lot of this show
that they were making fun of.
So I always thought, "Well, how do they know so much
if they think it's a silly show and they don't watch it?"
So I think I caught 'em on that one. (laughs)
Next question.
'Jeff 'asked, "What was it like when Ralph or Richard directed
and how did the crossover work
when they were also in a scene?"
Ralph and Richard were great to work with as directors.
Because they were actors and they knew the show so well,
it was very seamless to work with them as directors.
I remember Ralph in particular liked to get very creative
with some of his shots and what he could do with them
and where he put the camera and stuff like that.
He was fascinated by directing and actually directed,
wrote and directed a film called "On the Nickel"
about homeless people,
which was a passionate subject for him.
So he did that film all on his own.
I think Ralph directed more episodes than Richard did.
Since "The Waltons," I have gone on
to do writing and directing, and there have been times
where I have directed something I'm in.
What happens can be a number of different ways,
but when you're rehearsing, usually,
you will have a stand in, somebody walk your part for you
so that visually, as a director,
you can see what's going to happen
and look at it through the camera.
Then when you step in, you trust that the camera operator
is guiding you relative to - did you get the shot you wanted?
You have to know your own performance.
That's the main thing, which on a series
when you've been doing... you know your levels.
You know what your performance is about,
who your character is, what those interactions are.
So I think it was much easier for them with something
like "The Waltons" by the time they directed.
It wasn't a question about what's my character doing.
When I directed things I was in,
I would just make sure I knew everything I was doing
as an actor really well because there was no time
for me to prep, really, between scenes as an actor.
So I treated it like a play and just learned everything
before I showed up to do the show, to do the TV show,
so that I could just at any time step
into a scene and I knew that scene.
Then I would, same thing.
I would have someone walk what I was doing so that I
could physically see what was going on.
By the time I was doing it, we were working digitally,
so I could look back at things if I needed to.
But usually, you're moving so fast that you don't
wanna take the time to keep looking back at takes.
There were a couple of people who I trusted
who were also actors that I would, when I was doing a scene,
I would sometimes say, "Could you watch this scene?
This is what I'm looking to do. Just let me know."
They were people I really trusted.
"Let me know if that read,
that you believed that performance."
Or I know a couple of my bad habits,
so I said, "Watch out for this and this,
and let me know if I do that because
(laughs) those are my bad habits."
So things like that.
I think each actor who also directs finds
how they do that for themself.
Thank you so much for your questions.
That's what I have for you on this segment of Ask Judy.
I will be back with more "Behind the Scenes of The Waltons"
and more episodes and segments of Ask Judy.
Thanks for watching.