Many Heads
Make Light Work
“I’m confused,” said the redhead plaintively. She was
sitting on the porch of the Ponderosa ranch house with Joe and the blonde,
drinking coffee. “Isn’t that Farmer Perkins? I thought he was hanged in
Death at Dawn?”
The other two looked across at the tall man leading a horse
from the barn. It was white, and not the most beautiful horse they had ever
seen, although it was very distinctive. “Hmm,” said the blonde. “Well, I
thought he was Cap Fenner, from Amigo. And he was in My Friend, My
Enemy.”
“He’s Danny Morgan,” Joe said, firmly. “A friend of Adam’s
and he keeps us up all night with his blooming sing!” He rolled his eyes
expressively.
“And isn’t that the horse you bought for your father in The
Gift?” the redhead went on. She had a keen eye for horseflesh, and could
sex a horse at 50 paces.
“I think it must be its identical twin,” Joe responded. It
really was an extraordinary looking albino-brute, with a wild look in its red
eyes. The blonde privately thought they must have borrowed it from the circus,
but wisely decided not to say anything, as Joe still seemed to labour under the
assumption that it was beautiful.
Ben Cooper walked passed and the redhead almost fell off her
chair in shock. A large mouthful of coffee went down the wrong way and she
spluttered in an alarming fashion. Clearly she would be a very handy contender
in any tobacco-spitting contest. “I thought he was paralysed in The
Horsebreaker! Mind you, I could never quite work out why he had to sleep on
a campbed in the living room, when there was a perfectly good downstairs
bedroom just three feet away.”
The set-dressers gave her a dirty look: hadn’t she learnt by
now that only shady characters slept in there? Besides which, they were kept
too busy moving Joe’s bedroom around to be erecting other sets.
“That was Johnny Lightly,” the blonde explained. “At the
moment he’s clearly Sam Kirby from Showdown.”
A small smile played around the corners of Joe’s mouth. “I
wore those flowery chaps in that episode!” he reminisced. “I always wondered if
cowboys did have appliqué details or if wardrobe were just winding me up. Mind
you, they did fit extraordinarily well.”
The sister nodded in agreement, not quite trusting their
voices enough to speak. That particular scene had caused the blonde to re-title
the episode Showcase.
Ben had been listening to the conversation and stepped
forward. “It’s quite simple, really,” he said in his patented re-assuring and
avuncular manner, patting the blonde on the knee. “You may see the same head
appearing on a completely different character, but don’t let it bother you. I
think the record is held by Claud Atkins, who played four completely different
characters in Desert Justice, The Mill, Sam Hill and The
Deserter.”
“Don’t mention this to anyone else though,” Adam urged,
pouring himself a cup of coffee from the amazing insulated coffee pot that kept
beverages piping hot for hours on end. He lowered his voice and continued in a
confiding tone, “They powers that be don’t think anyone notices these little
things.”
“Little things!” the redhead stuttered. “Like Jamie
appearing first in The Real People of Muddy Creek as Tommy? Let’s face
it, he’s pretty unforgettable isn’t he?” It was only when she saw the bemused
expressions on the faces of the three Cartwrights that she remembered this was
a much later episode. Covering up for her sister’s faux pas, the blonde quickly
pointed out that when Deputy Clem Foster first appeared it was as Poindexter,
an escaped prisoner in The Long Night, and then as Major Reynolds in The
Honour of Cochise. “He seems to have been demoted since then,” she
mused. “Oh, but remember, he was Sheriff Walker in The Other Son, too!”
Ben shot an angry look at the director. “No-one will
noticed?” he thundered and half the valves on the soundboard blew. “They
noticed!”
On a roll now, the blonde said, “And then there was Stacy
Harris. He was In House Divided, and Twilight Town and a Far,
Far Better Thing.”
“I remember him,” Joe agreed. “Bit funny, isn’t it, a bloke
called Stacy? Especially as in Twilight Town I kissed his daughter, and her
name was Davey! Is that odd or what?”
“Isn’t that Dave Donovan over there?” the redhead asked,
reminded by the reference to Davey. “Your foreman in The Quest?”
“You just had to bring that up, didn’t you?” Joe protested.
He glared at Adam, who found the whole thing funny. “Then he was someone named
Gavin in Lonely House when he beat me up, and then he appears as
a lieutenant in Second Chance.”
“Second Chance,” sighed the sisters. “Shirtless,
maimed Joe.” He beamed all over. “But no nice JPM at the end,” the blonde said,
glaring at Ben.
“An’ that there Lilli Valenty,” Hoss interjected. “She were
a gypsy in Dark Star, an’ Cesar Romero’s sister in The Deadliest Game,
and Madame De Marigny in Marie...”
“My Love,” they all chorused, being well rehearsed in
this.
“And then there was the gravel-voiced guy from MBK,” said
the redhead. “He was in Joe Cartwright Detective, too.” She snapped her fingers
to bring his name to mind. “Ken Lynch. He was in five eps all told.”
“And then there was James Cockburn,” the blonde said. “He
was in three eps. Did they all come on special offer, these guys?”
Ben decided that this was not the time to point out that
almost the entire casts of Star Trek and The High Chaparral had appeared in
various assorted episodes. (He had not banked upon the fact that the Sister’s
dear friend, Lillian, had compiled an encyclopaedic list of such
con-incidences, and therefore could sleep soundly at nights).
The blonde smiled fondly at him, although she was engaged in
rebuttoning her pet bear’s fair-isle cardigan correctly. Although more
intelligent than the average bear, Paw still tended to get a little overwhelmed
when it came to buttonholes.
“My personal favourite is Ellen Corby,” she purred in the
dulcet tones that endeared her to so many staff at the Registers. “It’s
wonderful to think that dear Grandma Walton not only appeared in It’s a
Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart, but was then recycled in both The Gunmen
and The Hayburner. Quite wonderful.”
“And Will Geer, who was Grandpa Walton turned up in The
Running Man, The Running Man and A Home for Jamie!” the
redhead added.
“Enough with quoting all those episodes!” Adam fumed.
“Alright, you both have encyclopaedic memories, but so what?”
The sisters gaped incredulously at him. Eventually the
redhead recovered her normal composure and sang froid to ask, “You don’t find
that odd? Even when you consider that really interesting characters, such as
Clay Stafford …”
“My half-brother,” Joe interjected helpfully, just in case
viewers hadn’t been paying close attention. The inept script girl flashed a
grateful smile at him and made copious notations in her notebook.
The redhead continued unperturbed. “… only ever appeared
once, in First Born?”
“Perhaps his head wasn’t interchangeable?” suggested the
blonde, who had studied philosophy. “You can’t expect everyone to be
interchangeable.”
“Exactly!” Adam bestowed one of his rather rare smiles upon
her. He’d been giving the matter some considerable thought. Truth be told, he
found life on the Ponderosa just a tad constraining and was considering a move
to pastures new. “I mean, did the fact that John Carradine appeared in Springtime
and Dead Wrong stop Keith and Robert appearing in Bushwhacked and A
Home for Jamie? Of course it didn’t! They were stars and infinitely capable
of playing numerous characters with the appropriate nuances and deft touches
that denote a true professional.”
A slightly strained silence greeted this proclamation. The
Giggly Sisters busied themselves with giving Paw a worm tablet, while the
remaining Cartwrights examined their fingernails with evident interest.
Eventually, the redhead plucked up the courage to ask the obvious question.
“So why did they only use David Cassidy the once? I mean, he
was a talented actor, great looking, good voice and became one of the biggest
stars of the seventies.” He paused and added “The Nineteen Seventies, that is.
Why did he only appear in The Law and Billy Burgess?”
Ben turned his stern and foreboding gaze upon her. He looked
like all the Old Testament Prophets rolled into one, with a dash of John Knox
and Martin Luther added for good measure. “We work on an equal partnership
here. I’m the patriarch and my fans tend to be the parents in the audience.
Hoss is the innocent, and he appeals children and those who wish life were a
little more simple. Adam’s the singer and pseudo-intellectual: his fans tend to
be ladies of a certain age and I don’t think they wear black in homage to the
French existentialists. And, of course, Joe’s the pretty one, with long hair
who appeals to the just about everyone!” Ben smiled fondly at his youngest son,
totally impervious to the fact that he had royally insulted his two elder sons
and their legions of fans.
“Still doesn’t explain the dreaded Jamie though,” the blonde
muttered. Unfortunately, her bell-like elocution meant that every word was
clearly audible. However, no-one had ever managed to explain that particular
phenomenon. It ranked along with the Bermuda Triangle and Atlantis.
Adam wondered if anyone would dare to give him a new head if
he ever departed the Ponderosa. Somehow, he rather doubted it.
Giggly Sisters Productions
May 2003