Lessons from the Mountain Read online

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  WELCOME TO THE MOUNTAIN

  The Homecoming earned a thirty-nine share in the ratings, which means that of all the people watching television at the same time, thirty-nine percent were watching us, a huge number in the biz. Christmas shows traditionally do well, and the mood in the country lent itself to a nostalgia piece where family values were paramount in a tight-knit community of neighbor helping neighbor. The CEO of CBS, William Paley, learned of the movie’s success, and as Earl Hamner described in his book Goodnight John-Boy, Paley screened it while on vacation in the Bahamas and ordered it to be developed immediately into a series.

  I was ten when The Homecoming aired in December of 1971. Connie Reynolds came over with a special gift of Almond Roca and watched the show with me. We ate the whole can as we watched the show. I was unaware of the business decisions, the political climate, or how my life was about to change forever. It was really a time of uncertainty for all of us, a constant in the entertainment field. Other shows, such as All in the Family, tackled issues like racism, religious intolerance, and the war in Vietnam, but ours was the first dramatic series to include these progressive topics in weekly storylines. Slotted to air against The Mod Squad on ABC and The Flip Wilson Show on NBC, the critics predicted we wouldn’t last the season.

  THE DEVIL OR THE WALTON

  No matter how I look at it now, something in my life was about to change, and it had to do with Hollywood. The only other role I auditioned for between The Homecoming and the series starting was The Exorcist.

  Before they went to New York to find Linda Blair, I was one of six girls narrowed down in Los Angeles. My agent called my mom and told her there was going to be a hypnotist at the audition, asking if that was all right with her. My mother told me years later she anonymously called the hypnotist and asked him what he was going to do. She thought it odd that he was going to an acting audition. He told her they might want to use hypnosis during the movie, and he, too, thought it odd that she was the only mother who called him. This made my mom nervous. She sent me and my dad to the store to buy the book. As a Catholic woman, she needed to know what The Exorcist was, before I auditioned.

  We’d ask, “Do you have The Exorcist?”

  They would say, “Exodus? Yes, we do.”

  We told them about the book by William Peter Blatty, and suggested they might want to stock it, as they were about to make a big movie based on it. We finally found a copy, and my mom read the entire thing the night before my audition. When I woke up, she was trembling and pale. She said, “You are not doing this movie.”

  She called the agent, who assured her I would never get the part, but I should just go on the audition so we wouldn’t upset them.

  I went and all of us girls pretended to be hypnotized. At least, I did. It was acting, right? He told us to hold hands and that we couldn’t let go, so we didn’t. Then he told me I couldn’t pick up a dollar bill off the floor. He placed it there, telling me it was glued and there was a million pounds on top of it. I told him I thought I could. He told me again how I couldn’t, and we went back and forth. He said I could have the dollar if I could pick it up, but that I wouldn’t be able to because it was stuck and weighted to the floor. Then he egged me on, “Try and pick it up, let’s see. There’s no way you can do it.” I walked over and picked it up. I was escorted out of the room, and I never even got the dollar.

  Years later, I met “Blair,” as I call her. She became a close friend. She was so supportive when I started In the Know, a resource for women seeking information on body image issues. She bravely told her own implant story for a congressional education video I made.

  She is a great girl, whose laugh I can hear as I write this. I am not the only girl with a cackle. The two of us could make people crazy with our laughter. Our laughs even cracked us up. She was not like most people assumed. She stayed home making cookies while I was out on dates. She was the tame older sister—nothing like the image people have of her. We became roommates, and she brought rescued animals into my animal-free house. Her passion to save animals is honorable and unavoidable. Just ask my pink chaise, or what was left of it. At an animal show recently, my girls worked in her booth and helped with the dogs for adoption. She is a rare combination of being funny, beautiful, and passionate.

  WALTON, IT IS

  To my mother’s relief, I didn’t book the movie, but I was asked to return and play Erin on the show that would be called The Waltons.

  It was a time filled with excitement and energy. Everything was changing for this little Valley girl. I’m sure my parents had no idea just how much all our lives were about to change, but the flurry of activity was electrifying.

  I remember when they took me to Our Lady of Lourdes to pick up my textbooks, all fourteen of them, to bring to studio school. California entertainment laws require working children to log at least three hours of school every weekday during the school year.

  My life was about to explode into two lives, lived simultaneously, yet worlds apart. My own McDonough family was about to collide with the Walton family. One set didn’t supplant the other, but the Walton siblings were immediately more present in my day-to-day life.

  BACKLOT BABY

  People often ask me where the show was filmed. I tell them “Burbank,” and watch their eyes widen, since it looked so much like rural Virginia. The exterior house set was on the backlot of Warner Brothers. Ike Godsey’s store was literally down the road from the house set. The back roads and Drucilla’s Pond were there, too. If you went a bit farther, you would be on Western Street.

  To this day, whenever I visit the backlot, it’s still a sensorial experience for me. The roads, overgrown bushes, and divots on the path return me to hot summer days, rainy winters, beloved crew members, refreshing lemonade from the craft service wagon, and us kids running around the barn and mill.

  The earthy aroma from the eucalyptus and pine trees overwhelm and instantly remind me of walking barefoot on the dirt roads, wearing depression-era clothes often held together with duct tape. I especially remember one dress whose seams came apart one hot summer day. Sweat dripped down my back and the tape stuck, ripping my skin when I moved. I hated that dress and was so glad when that episode was over, so it could be “retired.”

  No such luck. They just sewed it with a patch and put it back in my wardrobe stall. My favorite was a pink dress with a smocked bodice. It was a shift, so at least it was cool; it seems like I wore it all summer that first season. I also remember carrying prop lunch boxes everywhere. We were always taking them from the house, carrying them to school, using them in the school scenes, and then back home again. We lugged those antique metal boxes everywhere.

  With the freedom of summer and no school requirements, we had a great time and got to know each other better. We ran all around the backlot, exploring our new home and “neighborhood.” We met all our cast animals and wandered the back road to Ike Godsey’s store. It was such an adventure, always something new.

  We explored the sets on Western Street, one of my favorites was used as Shangri-La in Lost Horizon. This enormous outside set would soon be reshaped into a Shaolin Temple for the television series Kung Fu. It was huge, probably three stories tall. I had never seen anything like it before. We ran up and down its steps and hid in the rocks. I tried to imagine what the fountains looked like with water and flowers. It was an imaginary playground turned real life—well, not really. It was amazing to me and so different from Northridge. What better playground could a kid ask for?

  EDUCATING MARY

  Every script brought something new. We learned some sign language for “The Foundling,” about a little deaf girl left on our doorstep. Then there was “The Hunt,” where John-Boy doesn’t want to kill an animal, but he saves Pa when he shoots an attacking bear. It wasn’t scary, because the “bear” was actually a costume we got to see and touch. It was so much fun for me. I mean, what kid gets to be exposed to this kind of stuff?

  We were work
ing with the best. They brought in Russell Metty, the Oscar-winning director of photography, to create the look of the show. When I went to film school, I realized he was an icon. He worked with Orson Welles to shoot the famous opening scene for A Touch of Evil. As a kid, I didn’t know, of course. He was just a man who sat in a chair and chewed a green cigar. He would wave his best boy over and mumble something to him. The lighting changed and the show had an incredible look and feel for the era. Magic. We were surrounded with talent.

  There was so much to learn about acting and sets and all the equipment and terminology, I felt like I didn’t have a clue what was going on. I knew how to follow directions because of my dance training, so I did that, and I watched the other kids to see what they did, because they had all worked before. It was a thrilling, wild ride and I was glad to be on it. I felt I was part of something special.

  KID IN A CANDY STORE

  When we weren’t working, the interior sets were another place we explored and poked around. First we explored our new “home.” The interior of the house was in Soundstage 26, the exteriors were filmed in the backlot. The house was modeled after Earl Hamner’s childhood home in Schuyler, Virginia—a common structure in the area because of its practical design, usually a two-story, with three windows across the top floor. For the Hamners, the upstairs was divided into bedrooms for all the kids, but the Waltons had to squeeze the girls in one room, the boys in another, Olivia and John in theirs, and another one for John-Boy, who had his own room. And with the bathroom, that made…too many rooms for the facade. To make it work, the furniture for all our different rooms would have to be removed and replaced each week depending on the script.

  The girls’ room and the parents’ room were actually the same set. So, when we filmed a hallway scene, we didn’t have enough doors. Whenever we ran out of the room into the hallway, we’d have to “appear” from our room. To make it look believable, Kami, Judy, and I squished together, hugging the wall. At “action,” we would walk out of the “wall,” like it was a door.

  We loved exploring Ike’s store, with its antique props from the 1930s. It was like a museum. I looked in awe at all the toys, the bolts of old fabric in gingham and heavy ticking, the vintage clothes and the canned goods with nostalgic labels. The candy counter was our favorite. When we filmed, the props department filled it with licorice, hard candies, and all kinds of tempting treats. We were warned not to touch anything, but we snuck a few here and there, when nobody was looking.

  Eric, David, and I once went into the store set when we weren’t filming. It was dark and all the counters were covered with sheets. We peeked under the protective cloths, hoping they’d left some candy behind, but no such luck. One of us did find some ancient tobacco leaves for roll-your-own cigarettes. Eric dared us to try it. He took a small piece, David took a chunk, and then they looked at me. The good girl in me was challenged; I knew we shouldn’t, but I didn’t want to be left out. I broke off a small corner and we all put a taste onto our tongues. We stared at each other, trying to be cool, but the tobacco was old and tasted like acid. We spit it out, but tiny pieces stuck to our tongues. We frantically searched for somewhere to wipe off the foul taste, but we were in wardrobe, so no using our sleeves! We ran to the craft service cart and threw back glasses of the very welcome, ever-present lemonade to wash the disgusting taste out of our mouths. We laughed and realized how old those tobacco leaves must have been. Lesson learned: don’t eat antique props.

  We used Frazier Park for location shooting a few times a year. Now, that was a great time. We were in a beautiful setting, with mountains and trees, and would spend the night at a hotel in Gorman, California. This was the high life to me. Imagine us kids running around the hotel, enjoying ourselves. Jon Walmsley once jumped into the pool in his pj’s. It was all harmless, but so much fun.

  We ran around the hotel, and one night we saw Richard Thomas in the bar with some crew members. We wanted to be with everyone, so we went in for a visit in our pj’s. I remember watching the bartender make a drink they called a Cardinal’s Cap. In a small glass, he floated a thin slice of lemon on top of the liquid. He carefully placed a clove-dipped sugar cube on top of the slice. Then he lit it on fire. Amazing to me. I had never seen anything like that before…or since, now that I think of it. This was incredible for a ten-year-old. My memories are so vivid, and each new experience touched me. Suddenly I was a part of a new life and family that made me feel unique, to say the least.

  The first episodes were incredible—so many memorable stories. When I saw the amazement on my mom’s face and realized how different this new life was, I became as enchanted as she was to meet and work with Hollywood legends. In “The Carnival,” Billy Barty, who had been acting since 1925, played Tommy Trimble. Once again, I took out my orange corduroy autograph book. He signed it for me and was so nice; we were all enthralled with him. I can be as starstruck as anyone, and every time we saw him on TV after that, my mom and I would say, “Oh, look, there’s Billy,” like we were his best friends. I still jump when I see someone I have met or worked with on TV. The magic is never lost on me.

  AN ACTING LESSON FROM BOB BUTLER

  On the set, I was just a kid, and a bit lost when it came to the acting part. They wanted us to be kids and act like kids, so not a lot was said about our technique. Without formal training, I made mistakes. I wanted to be so good and perfect (I equated perfection with grace, like memorizing the answers in the Baltimore Catechism; if I followed the Catholic Church’s rules, I was good. To me, a mistake was a sin, something bad to be ashamed of. Every time I made one, I felt evil inside. It took me years to learn it was a miss-take, not a sin.) I didn’t really know what I was doing; so the more mistakes I made, the worse I felt about myself. I started hearing whispering and mumbling, “She keeps looking…ruining the shot….” I knew they meant me.

  Robert Butler, God bless him, directed many episodes of the show, and he gave me my first acting lesson—a huge one I am so grateful for. One day, he said, “Mary Beth, come over here, I want to show you something.” We headed to the sweeping pepper tree that held the swing in the front yard of the Walton house.

  “Watch this,” he said. “I’m going to catch a snake that’s asleep under the swing, but I have to be very careful not to scare it away.” He slowly approached the “snake,” his eyes glued to the target. He moved at a snail’s pace, his hands raised, the tension mounting the closer he got to grabbing the snake.

  I was mesmerized. He was so focused and intent on the invisible snake, I believed it was really there. He moved in slow motion, closer and closer. Suddenly his eyes darted away and he looked straight at me. He broke the moment. It was ruined. The magic was gone.

  He showed me how losing focus and looking at the camera destroyed the whole scene. I got it. I never looked at the camera again. I was always a visual learner, and he showed me in a way I could understand. I was relieved to know what I’d been doing wrong. He treated me with respect, and I am still grateful for Bob Butler’s lesson under the pepper tree that summer day.

  THE HORRIBLE SECRET

  The school scenes were fun because there were lots of other kids around. Our real-life siblings and some of the producers’ and some crew members’ kids came in to fill up the Walton’s Mountain schoolroom. It was a fun time to have all our families with us, most of the time.

  Early in the first season—I was almost eleven by then—one of the kids told me something that rocked my world and set me up for humiliation, insecurity, and constant fear.

  We were sitting outside the school set, and she sauntered up to me and said, “I know something you don’t know.”

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s a secret, and I’m not supposed to tell you.”

  “Tell me,” I pleaded. I watched satisfaction literally spread across her face.

  “I heard”—she paused, either for dramatic effect or because she enjoyed the attention—“…I heard something about you.”


  Now she had my complete attention. “What did you hear?” My stomach turned.

  “I heard you weren’t very good in The Homecoming, and they didn’t want you back when they picked up the series. The casting director didn’t like you and wanted a new Erin. You were lucky you even got to come back.”

  I crumbled inside. My mind raced back to when we were first cast and Earl Hamner’s remarks about how I reminded him of his real sister. So that was it. The only reason I got to be on the show was because I reminded Earl of Audrey. Not because I was talented or good. I thought about that stupid nose-rubbing incident in The Homecoming. I wanted to cry, but I held it in, numb, barely able to make it through the rest of the day.

  I cried for days, but not in front of anyone, of course. That secret became a gray cloud that lived deep inside me, reminding me I was out of my league. I wasn’t liked, I wasn’t wanted, and I’d never been good enough. I could be replaced. I lived in fear that this wonderful ride would end at any moment. So much valuable energy was wasted on this fear.

  This was a boulder on my mountain I would face over and over again, never feeling I was talented enough. And it set up a pattern: I learned to hide my sadness during the day and cried alone at night. I couldn’t tell anyone, because I feared what she said might be true. I didn’t want to remind anyone how awful I was. I never even told my parents what the girl said. I was afraid to be a disappointment to them if I was let go. I felt I would have ruined the most special thing about me. There would go all the attention and love that I craved.

  I’ll never know what caused that schoolyard bully to say what she did to me. Jealousy? Attention? I do know that if I had only felt safe enough and asked my parents, or Earl, or even my schoolteacher back then, I would have saved myself a lot of pain, and my life might have been different. I would have known the truth, instead of hiding a terrible secret, which wasn’t true at all. Over thirty years later, I finally got up the nerve to ask Earl. He said he had no recollection of any discussion about replacing any of us kids when it went to series. I also asked Claylene Jones, one of our producers. She said the same thing and wished I had told someone. Me too!