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Eric Scott's real wife appeared once on The Waltons
Blink and you'll miss Ben Walton’s real wife on the show.
In The Waltons episode "The Fox," Ben Walton starts hunting animals to profit off their skins after a fox makes trouble in a chicken coop.
The family becomes distraught and by the episode’s end, Ben has learned to value all animal life, setting the fox free and giving up any future fur trade.
This kind of plot was typical for Ben Walton, one of the Waltons’ most endearing kids.
Playing Ben Walton was Eric Scott, who appeared on The Waltons from age 14 to 23, growing up and morphing as a young man on the show before audience’s eyes.
Just like his character Ben, even as a teenager, Scott was a big family man and even went beyond his Boy Scout image on TV to become an Eagle Scout and then a troop leader in his real life.
In his free time, he loved camping in the mountains so much that he started investing as a teenager in parcels of his own mountain land.
The whole time he filmed the show, he lived at home with his parents and his two brothers, even sharing a room with his younger brother long after he’d become a successful TV star.
During days with long shoots, Scott wasn’t snacking on junk food on set but longing for his mom’s cooking, considering her the best cook in California and working to eat as many meals as possible with her.
"The only real difference between my real family and the Waltons is that we don’t quarrel as much in the studio," Scott joked to United Press International in 1975.
That year, he turned 16 and bought his first car, a brand-new 1974 Alfa Romeo. By the time he was 18, his tastes had matured, and he’d added a second car to his parents’ driveway: a sensible Volvo sedan.
By this time, Scott was already plotting for his future, working with an architect to build his own family home in the mountains on the land he purchased as a teen.
He was also taking business law courses in hopes of becoming a savvy director-producer.
While he was taking those business courses, he met his future bride Karen Louis in 1979, at 21 years old.
A sensible girlfriend, she became one of the people whom Scott turned to for advice, as close as one of his castmates.
Together, they planned to wait to wed until Scott had figured out what he wanted to do next with his career: continuing acting or start producing and directing.
But that decision became harder and harder to make as The Waltons continued to be renewed season after season.
Eventually, the couple wed while Scott was still figuring things out and Karen started acting, too, taking her first role with a minor part in The Waltons episode "The Threshhold."
For Eric, it became hard to plan his next step when he had no idea when The Waltons would end.
He said every year after Richard Thomas left the show, producers threatened it could be their last season, but still the show endured. After several seasons announced as "the last," with the series then continuing, Scott was ready to buckle in for however long his journey on the show would go.
"If they let the character of Ben grow, I would be willing to do another 10 years," Scott told Knight News Service in 1980.
Of course, like all good things, The Waltons did come to an end, not 10 years later but in 1981.
Surely, Scott savored that final season more than most.
When he rewatches the show, he watches himself grow up all over again, from Eagle Scout camping out in the woods to the moment he got married in the real world and brought his first wife onto the show.
"We have done 202 hours as of now," Scott said. "It’s a wonderful thing for me to be able to look back on at age 21. I don’t know anyone my age who has ‘a library’ like this tucked away."
13 Comments
Theresa Fargo (m. 1989–1992),
Karey-Louis Scott (m. 1979–1981)
Appears he's still married (if the bios are accurate).
Boatwright University trustees for his first television broadcast.
The story was odd, it invokes the episode, but onky to stretch tye point that his wife was in the show.
In true MeTV style their opening sentence about " The Fox is on next week LOL.
