The Chicken Thief

FILMED August 1973

The year following TO TASTE OF TERROR on THE ROOKIES was a bleak year professionally. I was back directing the longer form, but the days of going from a great script on TWILIGHT ZONE to another on DR. KILDARE to a ROUTE 66 to a NAKED CITY to an EASTSIDE WESTSIDE to a BREAKING POINT were gone. The work was there, but most of the work was a chore. And then I was booked to do an episode in the second season of a new hit series.

It was back to the Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, where I had directed 16 episodes of THE FBI, 4 of THE COSBY SHOW and 3 of BANYON. I liked that lot a lot, but in a way it was like coming to a new studio. I had always entered at the main gate on Barham Boulevard, but because of the location of the Lorimar production offices, this time I entered by one of the back gates, the one near the water tower.

I have read Earl Hamner’s fine Goodnight John Boy in which he relates how THE WALTONS was born, and I do not mean to refute what he has written. As I stated when I first began this long journal, I am not reporting a carefully researched historical record; I am relating the experiences of a soldier on the battlefield of early television. How I came to believe then what I did, I don’t remember, but what I believed then differs from what Earl related. Earl wrote THE HOMECOMING, a further adventure of his family that he had portrayed in his novel and later film, SPENCER’S MOUNTAIN. THE HOMECOMING was produced as a two-hour movie to be shown on CBS. Television was going through another of its periods of criticism by the public because of its excessive violence, with the outcry being so loud there was the fear of government intervention and censorship. CBS was not a network to sit around idly during a situation like that, so as the story that was floating around the soundstages of Hollywood went, they decided to turn THE HOMECOMING into a series. Their reasoning was that once this family-oriented series aired and proved a failure, they would have shown they had only been providing the television that the public was demanding. But the show did not prove to be that expected failure. It took a little time, but it found its audience and CBS unexpectedly found itself with a smash hit on its hands. Now again I state, I am not reporting fact. I am telling the story as it was believed by a lot of us down on the Hollywood soundstages. So I’m sure Earl’s facts are the correct ones. But as I’ve also stated, when there is a difference between legend and fact, which is usually the more tantalizing?

The script I had been sent was THE CHICKEN THIEF, and when I read it, I realized it was a television script unlike those I had been receiving. In the decade since I had begun directing film I had seen the early scripts that had been influenced by live television change into a more action driven style, more intent on exciting than in probing the human psyche. THE CHICKEN THIEF was a return to the study of human behavior; it was leisurely, more in the vein of William Wyler’s FRIENDLY PERSUASION or John Ford’s YOUNG MR. LINCOLN. I felt very comfortable with the material. It was a return to the kind of family comedy-drama I had directed so often in theatre, but almost never on film, the closest being THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE’S FATHER. On stage I had directed Ruth Gordon’s YEARS AGO, Rose Franken’s CLAUDIA, Robert Anderson’s ALL SUMMER LONG, my friend Max Hodge’s A STRIPED SACK FOR PENNY CANDY, and in a darker vein William Inge’s COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA, Arthur Miller’s DEATH OF A SALESMAN and most importantly, the show I almost didn’t do that proved so beneficial to me, Paul Osborn’s MORNING’S AT SEVEN. It was the kind of material to which I seemed to have an affinity.

THE CHICKEN THIEF was beautifully written. I was to learn the extra step taken to arrive at that high quality, a step I never found taken at any other production. Two or three days prior to the beginning of photography, the five adults in the cast (Richard Thomas, Ralph Waite, Michael Learned, Will Geer and Ellen Corby) would assemble in producer Robert Jacks’ office during a lunch-hour. A tray of sandwiches was ordered at the Jewish Delicatessen, owned and operated by Chinese, just down the street in Toluca Lake. With series creator Earl Hamner and story editor Carol McKeand present, the script was read by the five actors, which gave Earl and Carol a chance to HEAR the words of dialog. After that a discussion was held. Any objections the actors might have had were offered; any ideas for something new to be added were requested. It was a way of adding texture to an already rich script and a deterrent to possible future rewriting on the set.

Episodes of THE WALTONS were filmed in six and a half days. THE CHICKEN THIEF started at the half day, after lunch. My first scene was in the Walton kitchen with eight of the ten members of the family involved. Did I spend that final morning of my prep reviewing my plans for my first sequence of this brand new show? No. I remember my biggest problem was trying to sort out those damned kids. I didn’t have any problem with Richard Thomas. I had directed Richard two years earlier when he guest starred on THE FBI. I knew he was John Boy. But I didn’t want to go on a set and say to the others, “Hey, you!” so I spent a half a day drilling myself to learn that Jon was Jason, Eric was Ben, David was Jim Bob, but the real killers– Kami was Elizabeth, Mary Elizabeth McDonough was Erin, and Judy was Mary Ellen.

Our third day of filming was a location day. We went to the Cuddy Farm in Lake of the Woods, CA. Unlike Quinn Martin, Lorimar had no objection to filming day for night. And when it came to filming night scene exteriors like the ones we were doing, I agreed with them. I thought that filming during the day with night filters produced a moonlight effect that was more realistic than filming at night with spotlight beams projecting from behind trees. The following day we did have a major tragedy. Half of the film was destroyed at the lab during developing. No problem. We returned to the location for added filming, and I think the tab for that was picked up by the lab’s insurance.

Three camera dolly setups to film thirty-eight seconds of bantering dialog while traipsing down a dusty road — and just to remind that Ben is acting strangely! That would never have happened back at QM Productions.

Remember that first scene in Ike’s store when John Boy stared at Ike and said he didn’t know anything about him. There was no further reference to that in the balance of the script, but I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to have a follow-up to that scene. During my prep I went to Earl and presented my thoughts on the matter. The following day Earl presented me with an added scene he had written.

This was my first time working with John Crawford, the Sheriff. In fact it was the first time I met him. But I had been aware of him for quite some time. Eighteen years before when I had been involved at the Players’ Ring Theatre in Hollywood, John had been a founding member of that group. It had taken all those years for our paths to cross.

I identified with Ben, not because I submitted a poem to Liberty magazine, but because I sold Liberty magazines in the summer on Wednesdays starting when I was about nine years old. I had my Liberty bag and I went in and out of the stores on Federal Avenue in downtown Mason City. The magazines sold for five cents. I think I made a penny on each sale. Yes, I remember the Depression!

The little old lady who got eggs from Yancy was Marie Earle. She had made a soundtrack appearance on THE WALTONS the year before. This was her first speaking role on the series. The producers were very pleased with her. Her character, Maude Gormley, appeared another thirteen times in the following years. At the time of this show she was eighty-four years old.

There were two identical porches. One was on the exterior of the house on the Warner Bros. backlot; the other was part of the interior set on the soundstage. The one on the soundstage was used for all night sequences. The choice of which one to use for day sequences depended on whether the scene on the porch connected to activity in the yard or was connected to activity that flowed from the Walton living room.

This was only the fourth screen appearance for Dorothy Meyer, who played Mrs. Blankfort, the black lady who brought Yancy the fried chicken. She really impressed me beyond the limitations of her small role, so that I used her again in a major role in a major project that followed THE CHICKEN THIEF. And I cast her several times in the years ahead. The final time was in an episode of HOW THE WEST WAS WON, when she and Davis Roberts played slaves in a story about the deep south. We were filming the burning of the Tara-like plantation home on MGM’s backlot. Dorothy and Davis had the crew in hysterics as the two of them roamed around from person to person pleading, “Please, find us another plantation or get us our own series.”

This was the second time I worked with Meg Wylie, who played Charlie Potter’s wife. The first time was when she played the lady with icicles in her veins at the immigration office in THE PROMISE on THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE’S FATHER. She too was a graduate of the Pasadena Playhouse. And don’t feel sorry that she was playing such a small role. She had a scene at the Cuddy Farm location on the third day and a scene in the Potter set on the soundstage on the fifth day. She was paid for three days work at her rate. She may have made more money for this small role than for the role on COURTSHIP. That’s show biz!

In Martin Ritt’s THE OUTRAGE, an unfortunate remake of the Japanese classic, RASHOMON, Laurence Harvey, in relating  his version of the crime, had the line, “I tripped.” Somehow his reading of the line sounded like, “I twipped.” I remember being very aware of that as I had Richard O’Brien say the same line in his confession.

I have always considered this gentle tale one of the lesser of THE WALTONS that I directed. But in a way it was one of the most important. Upon its completion Lorimar executive producer Lee Rich immediately signed me to stay on and direct a two-hour movie and pilot for a projected series, a story of a black minister and his family from the south who move to Los Angeles in the 1950’s. Much more about that later. There’s more to do on Walton’s Mountain.

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.

The journey continues