- Welcome back to another segment
of "Behind the Scenes of "The Waltons."
Today, I'm going to be taking more of your questions
in a segment of "Ask Judy."
First of all, happy Halloween, everyone.
We never did any official Halloween episodes on the Waltons,
although we did have a couple that were a little unusual
and could have been considered a little spooky.
There was the one where Elizabeth was sort of haunted
by a poltergeist, "The Changeling."
So that could have been considered
a bit of a Halloween segment.
And then, there was the one where we played
with the Ouija board.
Again, some spooky things happening there.
So those were probably the closest we came
to having any Halloween episodes.
And I don't really remember what we used to do
around the set during Halloween.
There might have been some people who came
with some partial costume, some of the crew.
The cast couldn't really
'cause we would've had to be in wardrobe,
unless someone was just there for school that day,
in which case we could have come in costume.
They may have put up a few decorations
in the makeup room or something, but Halloween.
And we may have also gotten candy.
They probably had candy on the craft service table.
But I used to enjoy Halloween and went out trick or treating
with my friends and I got dressed up and things like that,
so it was always a lot of fun.
I am also about to head out to North Carolina to Pinehurst
to the Sunrise Theater to do a couple of concerts
in November.
So November 12th and 13th,
I will be doing concerts at the Sunrise Theater.
So any of you who might be in that general area,
please do come out and catch my show.
It'll be songs from "The Great American Songbook"
and maybe a few Broadway songs,
but songs that I have been singing my whole life
and love and some stories about my life, "The Waltons,"
stuff like that, so it'll be a lot of fun.
So if you're in that area and can come out,
I'm going to post the promotion in the information
on this particular episode.
So if you're there, I hope I get a chance to see you,
meet you and all of that.
I have a question here from Mark.
"Your trip sounded wonderful.
The food looked fabulous."
It was. (laughs)
"Which brings me to a question
related to your kitchen table scenes on "The Waltons."
In watching reruns, I noticed that you all pretty much sat
in the same spot around the table."
I think that's true in real life as well.
Yeah, that was kind of why we did it.
I know growing up,
I always sat in the same seat at the table.
We didn't move around a lot.
Maybe if you had company, things might get shifted a bit,
but pretty much people had their seat at the table.
So we sort of established that very early on
and periodically a director would come in
and because of the way the scene flowed,
they might want to be able to have the camera
go from person to person to person.
And if we weren't sitting next to each other
in the right order, they couldn't do that.
But we tended to dig our heels in and say,
"No! This is where I sit."
Kami's even talked about that when she was very little.
She was like, "No! This is where I sit."
So we kind of established that
and didn't really change it around.
In later seasons, it tended to when John-Boy was gone
and then when mama was gone at times
and when I had John Curtis so I kind of had to sit
at the end so the high chair could be there.
So, and then when Cindy
when she was married and Cindy lived at the house too
and then Ben and Cindy had a baby.
So things kind of started shifting around a bit then
and Grandma and Grandpa were gone.
But the first 5 seasons,
we were pretty much, we stuck to that.
So then Mark said,
"However Michael sometimes would sit to the left of Ralph
and at other times, sit to the right of Ralph.
I saw this happen within the same episode.
Was there a reason the seating changed?"
Probably with Michael,
it did have to do with how they wanted to set the camera
and where it was best to position her.
So yes, she did change back and forth at times.
That would be my best guess was just, again,
how they wanted to frame different shots
and include the two of them.
From Kris.
"Can you talk about any fight scenes?
How were fight scenes staged on "The Waltons?"
Did you have a fight coordinator come in
or were fights always done by stunt people?"
That kind of depended.
In some scenes,
you could tell that it was the actual actors involved.
There was one time when John and John-Boy
ended up in a bar brawl,
so there were times where you actually physically saw
them close up, so it was obviously them.
So there would've been a like fight coordinator
or stunt coordinator who came in and staged all of that
and worked that out.
And then stunt people who probably did
some of the other stuff.
I know in one scene, John-Boy had been robbed
and then he sees the guy and he goes
and he takes a flying leap at him.
That was a stunt person.
So things like that.
It kind of varied depending on how physical the action was
and obviously keeping your actors safe
and how much they could coordinate what was happening
and how the actors do it,
but nobody actually getting hit or hurt.
So that was usually the way it sort of worked on most shows
that I've worked with where there were
stunt things like that and fights that happened.
A question here from Sterling.
"You've been asked whether you prefer acting on stage
or screen better, but how about being a viewer?
Would you rather watch a stage play or a TV show movie?"
Ah, gosh,
I think it depends on the show.
I mean, I love seeing live theater.
I love going to see musicals.
I love when I have an opportunity
to go to New York and see Broadway shows.
And I love seeing movies in a movie theater.
Certain movies just play better on a big screen
with the sound, all the surround sound and everything.
But I like all of 'em.
I do not watch stuff like on my phone
or I even tend to not watch it on my iPad.
I like a bigger screen.
So trying to watch anything on my phone,
I just feel like I'm missing so much of what's there.
And particularly when you talk about movies
that don't play all in closeups,
if it's all closeups and what we call
a bunch of talking heads, kind of like me,
here, I'm a talking head,
that it doesn't matter as much,
but if you wanna really get the full scale of things,
you really need to be on a bigger screen.
And live theater is great, but again,
if I have good seats,
if I'm like way up in the third balcony,
with a lot of shows, you just, again, miss so much.
But kind of like how I feel
about performing in all of those different genres,
I kind of feel the same way about watching.
And then you had another question.
"You brought up schooling on the set.
Did you get a lot of homework
or did they take into account all those lines
and direction you needed to learn
for each day as enough homework?"
They weren't allowed to give us homework,
which was kind of cool. (laughs)
So I didn't miss the whole homework thing.
And I think it probably was because we had other homework
at times to do.
Most of the time, it wasn't so many lines
that it was a big deal and because I learned lines fast,
it wasn't much of an issue for me.
But there were times when yes,
there was work to do and you'd basically worked...
You worked an eight-hour day,
but then there was an hour for lunch
and then there was driving there
and then there was driving home.
You ended up with a pretty long day
and I think they thought that to add on a bunch of homework
just didn't work.
So they allowed time for us to get our work done
actually when we were at the studio.
That's what I have for you for this segment of "Ask Judy."
I will be back with more Behind the Scenes of "The Waltons"
and more "Ask Judy."
Thanks for watching.