The Waltons - The Ordeal episode - with guest KAMI COTLER

welcome back to another segment of behind the scenes of the waltons today i'm going to be talking about the episode from season six episode 19 the ordeal where elizabeth has an accident and loses the use of her legs i'll also be joined by a very special guest kami kotler hi cammy and welcome and thank you for agreeing to talk with me about the ordeal no it's my pleasure it's exciting to get to talk about it early in the episode you see mary ellen out feeding the chickens just one of those regular chores around the house and grandpa and john are working to brace a pile of logs so that they will be secure sequentially early in the episode the whole way that this starts is because you and amy see this baby bird it's funny because i didn't really remember anything except for that i'd fallen off of the wood pile and i think maybe somebody on my facebook page had had seen the episode and asked asked me about it so i i i think i got to watch that segment over again to try to like trigger whatever memories i have i mean the storyline the boys were supposed to have finished the pile of logs like putting um like wedges or something under it to stabilize it and they got distracted i guess maybe it's ben's character who's most at fault he wanders off and then elizabeth and amy see a bird that's fallen out of a nest climb up the wood pile and the wood pile collapses and i know that that the log pile didn't collapse so what they would have done um i do kind of remember having to do a fall and i think we've we've all at some point in time on the walton's had to fall off of something and they just put a big um like kind of mattress or netting full of bits of foam like a gymnastics pad kind of thing and then you just fall out of camera right um and then you land on the pad and it's easy and i think what they would have done is they shot me theoretically on top of the wood pile probably just standing on a platform and then i fell out of frame onto this this mattress and then they would have put me on the ground and kind of strategically put logs over and around me so it looked like i was buried in logs but really nothing was even touching me was it was that scary at all did you feel trapped in any way or no i mean i'm not really um was it claustrophobic or anything okay um i always liked when we had to do stunty things um it was a change of pace and in fact those are the things i tend to remember the the most and elizabeth did fall off of a lot of things [Laughter] i fell off a bridge i fell there's a tree house that i dangled out of there was the ferris wheel um but also i fell down a mine shaft there was a fair amount of phone after elizabeth is injured she is taken to the hospital via epbridge's car and once at the hospital you see me all geared up in my official surgical outfit here and i'm pretty tough on jim bob and ben who were responsible in my opinion for elizabeth's injuries with mama and daddy and mary ellen all being at the hospital aaron is running things around the house by herself the baldwin sisters think that they can be of help they want to do something so they say they can come and help aaron only thing is i don't think they're very much help they can't figure out how to properly fold a diaper they aren't all that much help around the kitchen trying to make food so it's very sweet of them but not very helpful elizabeth finds herself in two casts in traction and i spoke with cammy about shooting these scenes so clearly not real cast that you wore 24 7. they were real casts like they what i remember is some funny little man from the prop department who had expertise in this somehow coming down to the set maybe the week before or two weeks before we started filming to measure me and then to to make the cast so he he totally put me in cast like he wrapped my legs and put the plaster on had to sit and wait for it to to dry and then i'd lie on my belly while he cut up the back of them so i remember that being a little scary because he had like big heavy clippers and i'm like and you could feel the cold metal on the back of your legs and that was a bit like okay and i don't remember he wasn't something about him did not inspire confidence [Laughter] it doesn't hurt me um and then when he was done with that he had to measure me for the braces which as i recall involved lying on a big piece of butcher plate paper well when he he drew around my legs with a bit of pencil and i wasn't crazy about that either when we filmed the scenes in the hospital it was such a hassle to get in and out of the um the cast but i just sat there so whereas normally you know when they're lighting you go do something else the stand-in will sit in your place i just sat so i spent most of the day sitting in that bed in those in those casts and i do remember by the end of the day like my legs were sore just from not moving um so that was that was new and different would they lower the traction at all when in between shots or when there was a bit of a break i don't really remember i don't really remember um i mean i would assume they would have done whatever they could to make me comfortable and no one like made me stay there i just when you grow up on a set you know you want you're part of a team and you want to get it done as quickly and efficiently and well as possible and if you look around and go if i leave set every time i could theoretically have a break it's going to take 20 minutes to get me back in these casts and that's just doesn't seem responsible you know we people will be late for lunch or something important so now i did notice that this hospital was a different building than what we often used for the hospitals and i believe this particular set was on the columbia ranch uh another lot that we use sometimes it was very close to warner brothers and where the exterior baldwin's house was and where we ultimately filmed the exterior of the walton house for our very last reunion tv movie the baldwin sisters want to do something for elizabeth get her some sort of a gift they decide to get her a pony when it's delivered amy is all excited and amy rides it around but elizabeth of course can't ride the pony i don't remember having a pony like people would people said what did you think about that horribly sad scene where amy rides your pony i'm like i had a pony and then i watched a cliff i'm like there's a whole pony yeah and where did the pony go after pony goat baldwin ladies welcome sisters gave you a pony gave me a pony and that was the last we saw of it i loved when you got on it towards the end because you were a lot taller than rachel was at that point and your feet were practically on the ground it was a recurring problem because i i'm not a tall person i've never been tall i've typically like all through school i was the smallest kid in my class but they managed to cast as my best friend somebody who's so tiny like rachel is such a just a petite human being and so i just like a massive giant through my entire like pre-adolescence standing next to amy i'm like i'm a small person why did they do that to me and you're right i now that you mentioned my legs dragging you on the ground now that that rings a bell one of those moments with me going they don't know how they don't know what size i am i can't convince them that i've gotten taller the whole family finds themselves taking on different activities ben wants to be able to help and buy things for elizabeth trying to in a way buy her forgiveness uh he would like to have an important job or something that he's can brag about but the only job available is being a janitor basically at the dew drop so he sucks it up and agrees to take that job meanwhile grandpa is seen feeding john curtis which is just so cute once elizabeth is sent home from the hospital she's out of the cast but she has braces which she wears for most of the rest of the episode the braces were hard um because i was on crutches and then with my legs fully braced and and it was just super hard to get around i didn't really have the muscles to do that and i know by the end of every day my legs were super achy from just being immobilized and then trying to find ways to get from point a to point b with these braces on and again it was a it was a hassle to take them on and off so and then if they're filming a lot you sort of leave them on and just wait to the next scene so that was hard i do have one really clear memory of a scene where i guess i was lying in the grandparents bed and maybe um olivia was washing my legs or something there was some sort of quiet scene between the two of us where she had to roll me over and i remember the director larry dobkin when we did the first rehearsal we rehearsed it then he came back he says there's something really specific that should happen when she rolls you over your leg should end up crossed which was a detail i guess he knew about people who don't have use of their legs which i as a little kid didn't know and just unconsciously you you move your legs right you use the muscles you're used to using and so he's like there's something specific that should happen here if you really don't use your leg muscles and he sort of rolled me over and he showed me how how the cross would occur and i remember being like oh wow okay so for some reason that well i loved larry dobkins so that kind of detail yeah he was always great to work with yeah and because he was an actor he really i always felt like he he gave us extra things extra actor direction as opposed to just staging and you know go do it yeah yeah so i i appreciated that with what little time there was for that to happen yeah he tended to find some time and he was also super direct you know like he didn't um because i know there were at least a couple occasions where he hurt my feelings because i was very sensitive but i also learned through working with larry that um that he cared enormously about me and my performance and that it was feedback it was useful feedback and he wasn't hurting my feelings it was me being too sensitive um and i through that kind of actor director relationship i think i really learned how to appreciate his directness as something just efficient and true and you could count on him you'd know he'd tell you right yeah no that's a good point yeah because sometimes we never heard anything and you just go well did we print that because it was good or because we're out of time and that's good enough and i'm not going to be able to get anything better there is a visit to the hot springs was it warm was it cold with dry ice in there to create you know a sense of steam what i remember for sure is like air hoses that went into the water to make it bubble i also remember being in the um because there were two ponds on the back lot yeah there was a pond yeah right the big palm druzillas that we used for you know if we were swimming or i was falling off the bridge you know that was called the pond um but there was a littler pond which i think was the pond that someone at some point in time told me it was the camelot pond that they'd used in camelot and this it was a smaller pond and it had like a little sort of rocky bed that fed into it it had like shallower pools right i remember being in one of those with it being full of water and then they put like air hoses to make it bubble and then i would put money that it would have been dry eye somewhere to make okay no there was no hot water involved okay it was it cold cold i mean were you in there freezing and trying to pretend like it was nice and warm probably i don't actually i don't remember that that part of it i just remember like being like oh okay so poses with up air and bubbles all right fine then in order to just take little trips around the area they arrange to bring the pony cart in and they hitch up the pony named judy hmm i wonder where they got that name from and whether i should take that personally anyway uh it's kind of sweet because this is something that then ben decides he can do for elizabeth that doesn't involve just trying to buy her favor and her forgiveness so it was kind of sweet and of course then amy and elizabeth take the pony cart in the dead of night to ada corley's place ada corley was played by virginia greg and they are going to try and get her to heal elizabeth's legs because she uses all these natural herbs and things to heal people i remember that when we got when amy takes me up to see the old scary kind of medicine woman ada corley yeah right play by virginia i think your name is right greg yeah who if i'd known who she was while she was there i might have talked to her about like working with cary grant or something like that but i missed it me too i do remember that the herbs that she put on my legs were more like a green cold cream in the end jim bob is the one who encourages elizabeth to finally take a couple of steps to him and it is a happy ending for the waltons i i really appreciate you filling everybody in on all the things that i didn't know about the episode well i i appreciate the information exchange because i i get the same thing i have people ask me questions i'm like i wasn't there that day i don't know i want to thank cami very much for joining me for this segment i'm going to speak with cami a bit more soon so watch out for that video in the meantime thank you so much for joining us and i will be back with more behind the scenes of the waltons and more of your questions in a segment of ask judy thanks for watching you

Channel: Judy Norton

Views: 46,312

Keywords: The Waltons, Judy Norton, Judy Norton behind the scenes, Waltons full episodes, Ask Judy Norton Taylor, Richard Thomas, John Boy Walton, Michael Learned, Olivia Walton, Ralph Waite, John Walton, Will Geer, Ellen Corby, Mary Ellen Walton, Kami Cotler, The Ordeal episode, Elizabeth Walton, Mary McDonough, Jon Walmsley, Eric Scott, David Harper, Walton House, Grandpa Walton, Grandma Walton, youtube, 70’s TV, goodnight John Boy, The Waltons cast, Earl Hamner Jr, Ask Judy

Id: T74PxkFDgE4

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 24 2022