The Waltons - The Car episode - behind the scenes with Judy Norton

welcome back to another segment of behind the scenes of the waltons today i'm going to be talking about the episode from season two the car when john boyd gets his first car after quite a bit of drama anyway if you were enjoying these segments please do hit that like button below and subscribe and if you'd like to know when i'm going to be posting hit that notification bell i usually post on monday and thursday mornings at the top of this episode you see an unusual shot of the walton front yard with a lot of storm damage clearly some sort of a storm with wind has come through and dropped a lot of branches and and created just you know kind of a mess in the walton front yard so in this panning shot across the front yard you see all the members of the family helping to clean up the storm damage up on the roof over in the vegetable garden in front of the yard all of that area john boy has a line on a car so he and john go out to take a look at this car uh this particular location i'm not quite sure where it was i'm i'm pretty positive it was some place on the warner brothers lot but that sort of house in the background that looks like either a two-story house or that it's slightly up a hill isn't a spot on the lot that i'm real familiar with so i don't remember where it was but in keeping with the theme of a storm you do see that set dressing has once again created storm damage in this yard then when they go over to the rudge house again the whole idea that john was going to work in exchange for this car that mr rudge has is based upon the fact that they have had some additional storm damage that john boy will fix in exchange for the car the rudge house is another house that was on the back lot i recognize some of the rock formations around the house but i'm not exactly sure i have a feeling this was shot across from where godzi store is that area was often used for different things ultimately it was where jim bob built the garage or had the garage that he and jody foster owned so around that area there were rocks and things like that fake rocks basically and quite often different sorts of sets were created in that area so i have a feeling this was potentially sets that were built there might have also been over some place further into the jungle area but somewhere on the back lot of the studio and set dressed to show the various different damage on the roof this would have been just a facade of a house there would have been no actual interior there that they could shoot so when we go inside the house and you see the kitchen area that would have been on one of the sound stages those kitchen table scenes yes the biggest challenge was always matching what we were doing by matching i mean that if we were in a wider shot and you passed potatoes by as you were talking if you started and we saw the potatoes moving and then they cut into a closer shot and potatoes weren't moving then you went what happened to the potatoes so it was always a challenge for the actors to try and get as much of it as consistent as possible and then the editors their job became more difficult in trying to match up things even head turns someone's facing this way when you cut in you don't want their head facing that way all the types of things that would be very distracting so editors do all that kind of finessing in this particular case we are dealing with peas so in this shot will has the peas in his hand he you know he's right there with him then they cut to this other shot and the peas are on the table so how did the peas get from will's hand to the table there were not two bowls of peas we never saw two bowls of peas so just one of those things because we shot the two things separately nobody would have remembered oh at this moment will had those peas so they would not be visible on the table but and most the time even the audience doesn't catch them but i bet next time you go back and look at this you'll notice that scenes on the front porch of the waltons were sometimes shot on the back lot and sometimes they were shot on the sound stage where we did have a recreation of the front porch actually in front of where the facade of that set piece was on stage 26. in this case this scene would have been shot on stage 26 because as you see here the beginning of the shot we're shooting through the window and you can actually see into the living room jason is playing the piano and grandma and grandpa are there so based on that when the camera moves we're clearly still on the sound stage if you had not been able to see into the living room then there was more likelihood that that might have been shot on the back lot of the studio as john boy is reading in bed and keeps getting interrupted with people asking about being able to take a ride in his car or mary ellen asks about him teaching her to drive at one point you see him lay his book down and lean back as if he's going to sleep and i thought why didn't he turn the light off and then immediately someone knocks on the door comes in and then in a little bit he does actually reach up and turn that light off uh that was likely a an actual wired light that had been rigged by the electrician so that it could turn on and off there most likely it's also possible quite frequently when we had light changes in a scene they they were being cued by an electrician there was somebody actually turning that light on and off in which case as an actor if you went to a light switch or something like that that was going to like light switches rarely actually worked like ceiling lights or something like that they were completely separate so if someone walked into a room and turned the lights on you would have to like hold your hand on that light switch long enough for the lights to either come on or go off because if you just went like this there might have been delay in whoever was actually manually making that change to be able to do that so we had to sort of cheat that a bit and just go okay well i'm going to pretend i'm just going to hold my hand here until that light comes on or i'm going to turn the lights off and i'm going to hold my hand there until that light goes off and in that case you couldn't tell that somebody else had actually thrown a switch from somewhere else on that set a number of times people have asked about why the color of jonboy's car changed in this episode it is a dark blue when mr rudge owns it and then by the end of the episode john boy has painted it tan in this episode he actually talks about when he gets that car he's going to paint it something like a nice dignified tan i don't know why that was the car changes color within the actual episode which leads me to believe there was some reason why they wanted that to happen it likely was two different cars i don't know why i don't know if there was some reason that vehicle didn't actually run or or what was going on it was already committed they found out something part way through an episode and then had him mention that but the fact that it was in the script already that he was planning to change its color uh you know makes it a little less likely that they shot the episode and then before they needed the vehicle again there was some issue and so for a subsequent episode they needed to find a new car and come up with a reason why so it is still a mystery to me i will see if i can ask around a bit if anybody knows why that car suddenly changed color or why we might have needed a different vehicle i did love the exchange between john boy and grandma when he thinks that even if she wants a ride that there's no way she'd want to ride in the rumble seat and then she's so sort of girlish when she comes in and says she'd like to ride in the rumble seat just one of those rare occasions when you got to see the character of grandma be a bit more lighthearted and girlish and you see the younger side of who she was as a young girl which is rather sweet ultimately john boy does work it out to get the car and is of great help to mr rudge and mrs rudge martha rudge uh wonderful actors ed lauter played hider rudge you may recognize him he did a lot of guest spots and tv shows and bonnie bartlett who played martha rudge went on to do a lot of work including winning two emmys for the tv series saint elsewhere piece of trivia in real life she was married to william daniels who also played her husband on saint elsewhere so there you have it the addition of jonboy's car to the walton vehicle family that's what i have for you on this segment of behind the scenes of the waltons the car i'll be back with more behind the scenes and more ask judy thanks for watching

Channel: Judy Norton

Views: 35,816

Keywords: The Waltons, Judy Norton Taylor, Judy Norton, Waltons full episodes, Richard Thomas, John Boy Walton, John Boy’s car, Michael Learned, Olivia Walton, Ralph Waite, John Walton, Will Geer, Ellen Corby, Mary Ellen Walton, Kami Cotler, The Car, Elizabeth Walton, Mary McDonough, Jon Walmsley, Eric Scott, David Harper, Walton House, Grandpa Walton, Grandma Walton, youtube, Behind the scenes, Classic cars, goodnight john boy, the Waltons cast, Earl Hamner Jr, Ask Judy

Id: 9SzPTooyGIM

Length: 9min 42sec (582 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 01 2021