Grandma Comes Home

FILMED February 1978

Ellen Corby had suffered a serious stroke sometime after we had worked together on THE PONY CART in October, 1976. When I reported to begin prep on GRANDMA COMES HOME, I was told that as an amnesiac aphasic. she had been in intense therapy to regain her speech for over a year. I was well acquainted with the subject of aphasia. In 1962 when I directed HASTING’S FAREWELL on DR. KILDARE, the authors of the script and I visited the aphasia unit at the Long Beach Naval Hospital and incorporated in our production a great deal of the information we learned.

A welcome change had been made in the opening format of the show. No longer were dramatic highlights excerpted to tease the audience. The story now began where it should: at the beginning.

By now it should come as no surprise that I had some reservations about the script. I thought the first act was static and uneventful, that the story didn’t get under way until Grandma’s arrival, and that didn’t happen until the end of Act One. I envisioned Act One starting with Grandma’s arrival, just as Martha Corinne’s arrival occurred at the beginning of Act One in THE PONY CART. A script conference meeting was held with Earl Hamner, producer Andy White, authors Rod and Claire Peterson and me. I met with resistance, mostly from Rod, for every cut that I suggested. By the time I reached the scene where Grandma finally arrived, without having any success, I blurted out, “Well we’d better find something to cut because the first thirteen pages are just (expletive) dull.” Claire, with an amused smile said, “Well that’s pretty definite.” A fairly stormy story conference provided some needed script cuts, and later in the editing room further tightening occurred. And I admit now that I was wrong to want to start the show with Grandma’s return. Her return was an event; it was a theatrical entrance that needed to be set up. And it was a double event. Not only was Grandma returning to Walton’s Mountain, Ellen Corby was returning to THE WALTONS.

Ellen was scheduled very carefully, spreading her work out over the span of the shooting schedule so she would not be overworked and overtired on any one day. The show was given a seven day shooting schedule, and they also allowed me to have two cameras whenever I felt I could use them to advantage, thus cutting down on the number of times she would have to play a scene.

There were two identical Walton porches: the one on the exterior of the house on the back lot and a duplicate porch as a part of the interior of the house on the soundstage. Scenes involving the porch and the surrounding grounds were filmed on the backlot; scenes involving action on the porch and the living room were filmed on the soundstage. When a scene involved neither it was usually filmed on the soundstage. Sometimes a scene would incorporate shots filmed on both porches.

I was not sure before filming commenced what it would be like communicating with Ellen, since she could not speak. I don’t know even now what her preparation at home had been. How much did she understand of what she was going to have to do? Before each scene I would carefully explain what the scene was about and what her reaction was to be. I could see she was intense in her concentration as I spoke, but not until the camera rolled did I realize how completely she had comprehended; that she was the perfect example of how important it is for an actor in a scene to LISTEN.

When I posted GRANDMA COMES HOME on my blog in December, 2009, the following comment was left by a viewer:

Ralph, I remember this episode vividly, although I only saw it only once, thirty years ago. At the time I didn’t know about Miss Corby’s condition, but guessed that she was being greatly challenged by what she had to do. Reading your blog, I now see that EVERYONE was challenged by this story, for various reasons.

It was fascinating to revisit the subject of aphasia from a different perspective. In the DR. KILDARE production Harry Guardino had to act not being able to speak. Here Ellen, who really couldn’t speak, had to struggle to speak. I think the amazing thing that in their struggles to speak, how similar their performances.

The young actors were just great in their relationship to Ellen and that affected their performances. Note the way sixteen-year old David Harper (Jim-Bob) takes her from the porch to the car.

Things had changed from the early days of DR. KILDARE, THE FUGITIVE and BREAKING POINT when there was a single plot line to a story. With the advent of larger casts of running characters double plot lines were used to utilize the many actors in the cast. I didn’t mind it when the two plots would collide like they did in THE FIRE STORM when John-Boy’s publishing an article about Mein Kampf and Erin’s entering the local beauty contest created an emotional climax. I had some reservations about Elizabeth’s adventure raising a pig, but it did resolve in a touching way.

And now we come to THE BIG SCENE. At this point in the story, in the first draft of the script, Grandma spelled out in some sugar that had spilled on the table the words “needs me.” Without any intervention by me that scene was very quickly replaced by a scene between Grandma and Olivia, and I was very heavily involved in getting that scene rewritten.

Michael told me that in that scene she had to keep herself from responding to Ellen’s performance. She had to play the scene technically, not organically; she knew if she allowed herself to respond to Ellen, she would have been devastated.

I think that was the first time (and very possibly the last) that the final fadeout was not the exterior of the house as the lights went out, that the final shot was of Ellen after she said, “Good night, everyone.” That was done in the final editing and I very strongly feel that it was probably the work of Gene Fowler, the supervising film editor.

Ellen was nominated for an Emmy for this performance. She didn’t win. (She already had three of them at home on her mantle.) How this performance came out of her in the condition she was in was truly a miracle. What she should have won was an award for a Profile in Courage.

When we finished the final shot, I filmed a promotional of Will talking about Ellen’s return. As we finished that, we said our goodbyes. I hugged Will and thanked him. He, referring to the fracas over the Indian casting for THE WARRIOR and with a twinkle in his eye, said, “So you’ve finally forgiven me.” And I, with a twinkle in my eye, said, “Not entirely, Will, not entirely.” Those were our final words to each other. Will died two months and five days later.

The journey continues

(The film clip of me is from a recent interview by the Archive of American Television,
a division of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation.)