- Welcome back to another segment
of "Behind the Scenes of the Waltons."
Today, I'm talking about some of the locations
that we used on the back lot of the studio.
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Oh, spoilers, sorry, okay.
I'm gonna be talking about things
that may kind of disillusion you
or blow some senses you have of what went on.
So if you don't wanna know how things were really laid out,
I'll see you in the next episode.
But for those of you who'd like to know
some of the little secrets behind,
the way this was all laid out, stick with me,
I'll take you on a little tour of the back lot.
The locations on the back lot
were much more condensed than they appeared to be
when you saw an episode.
The house, as I have mentioned, was just a facade.
When we worked on the back lot, the entire company,
all of our drivers, everything was towed from Stage 26
out to what we called Lima Road,
and everything would be parked out there.
Our dressing rooms and equipment trucks
and the school house that the actual cast,
Walton children, where we went to school,
all of that would get moved.
All the equipment, there'd be like a caravan,
a train of these big lights being moved
and everything would be taken out there.
It wasn't a very far distance,
but it did take some time to move all of that equipment.
That would all be parked there.
From the house, when you stood and you faced the house,
to the right of the house was the existing barn set.
That barn, we did shoot interiors and exteriors of.
Next to that was the old saw mill,
which you saw them work at,
and that was a functioning saw mill.
They were able to actually cut wood there,
although they rarely cut real wood.
And when I was talking to Eric about that,
he said, a lot of times they did things like sanding things
and you didn't see as much actual cutting of the lumber,
but he said, Ralph had no qualms about doing it
and no safety equipment, no nothing.
They were pretty brave working with some of that stuff,
but there you go.
Behind that barn area was the old smoke house.
Next to it was the chicken coop where we did have chickens.
I can't remember if the chickens were there all the time
or whether they brought the chickens in and out.
I know some of the other animals like the cow
and the mule and the peacock,
they did not stay there on a regular basis.
They had owners, wranglers, people who cared for them,
and when we were going to use them,
they would be brought in for the day
and they would be hauled in
and they would be used for the day,
and then they would go back to wherever they lived
the rest of the time.
The front of the house was the section
where you saw the grass and the teeter totter.
And of course, the treehouse was over there by the barn as well.
As you moved past the house towards the shed,
the shed again, was a much smaller
actual physical structure.
It didn't get really particularly expanded on for real,
so when we saw more to the shed,
it was typically that the interior
was being shot on the soundstage,
so we could see a larger interior.
In front of the shed was the vegetable garden,
which Will Geer actually planted and cared for.
You continued along that road
and you got the section where the new mill was built.
Again, that was a usable set.
They actually were able to cut wood,
fake wood, whatever it was that they were doing
in that actual location.
Then if one were to continue past that road
as you see occasionally like here,
when someone drives in, it kinda curves around
and you don't really see where it goes,
that very shortly went out to a paved road
and that was Lima Street
where all of our equipment and our dressing rooms
and everything were set.
And they would put these lights, these like a tripod,
there would be a red light.
And when we went, when we started filming,.
a bell would ring and that red light would come on
and it would flash, it would circle, flash.
So anybody coming up along that road would see
that a production was actually filming at that moment.
So they would know to be quiet, cut their engines,
anything like that until there were two bells,
which meant we were done filming
and the red light would go off.
When we left the house and we headed up this section
between the chicken coop and the front yard,
and you continued along,
right around the corner virtually from there
was where Ike Godsey's store was. Also just a facade.
You could go in but there was really nothing in there.
It was even less in there than there was
in the actual Walton house. (exterior facade set)
In later years, right across from there
was what became Jim Bob's garage which was built later.
But early on, it was really just an open dirt area,
and that was when we did things like The Ferris Wheel,
that episode or things where,
or the horse race, like The Thoroughbred,
those were areas where it was just open dirt
and we could have large gatherings,
different carnivals, different things were held there.
Across where Jim Bob's garage ended up being,
you would see some sort of rock formation type things.
Those were mostly fake rocks.
And in, like for instance, in The Ferris wheel,
you see the man who ultimately gets hit by the Ferris wheel.
You see him up there
and kinda hiding something in that area.
In The Wager, when we had the horse race,
you see us ride those horses up and over that area,
that went up and down into another area
and very close to there, you were back out on Lima Road.
If you went past Ike's store and you took a strong right,
that went out to Lima Road,
and there would be a red light there too.
So both ends of where you could enter, our shooting area,
they would have lights on.
From Ike Godsey's store,
you had paths it just went down dirt roads,
and you would see us enter from those directions at times
coming from school, things like that.
If we were coming to Ike's from the house,
usually we came along one of those paths.
When you started down those dirt roads,
we were in the section we called the jungle.
It was just basically dirt roads
and we could do shots with the truck driving along,
in the horse race, we did that, and The Thoroughbred,
so various different, The Motorcycle Race,
all of those types of things
utilized those sections of road.
That road also led to Druscilla's pond
which was only a short distance away down that path.
And that area where the pond was
had a couple of different access points.
On the other side of the pond, there was a little shack,
sort of a little small house structure
that was used for various different locations.
If you proceeded further through the jungle,
you would come out the other side,
again, not a terribly long distance,
and then you would be at the edge
of what we called Western Street.
So that was where the church was that we utilized at times.
And then you proceeded on further into Western Street.
At times, it really just looked
like a deserted Western street.
When we would use it, it was more 'set decorated'.
There would be more people, more vehicles on the streets.
Sometimes, you'd see horses or mules or whatever carts
because they were actually building a look
and building the set decoration for that.
Otherwise, it was a set.
The Western street had been used for years
on various different locations.
So there you have some more behind the scenes information
about the locations on the back lot
of Warner Bros. Studios that we utilized
during the filming of "The Waltons."
I hope you've enjoyed this segment.
I'll be back with more "Behind the Scenes of the Waltons"
and more episodes of "Ask Judy."
Thanks for watching.