ON THE SET OF AMIGO
by
Lynne C.
"Don't say anything, just keep smiling!" said Lorne. "They
want to
take some publicity shots, boring, I know, but a very necessary part
of the day."
"I'm trying, but I'm afraid this gun in my waistband's gonna go off
and that will most certainly lessen my chances of being a father, ever
again."
Lorne laughed and patted Greg on the back.
"You haven't got any more plans in that direction, have you?"
Greg shook his head.
"Well, no, but you never know what might be round the corner. I mean,
who'd have thought that I'd be back here at the Ponderosa, this time
terrorising your family?"
"I think I preferred the terrorising to the singing, in Song in the
Dark, Greg," said Lorne. "Wouldn't have been so bad if you'd changed
your repertoire, occasionally. But, that same song, all week, as we
were filming, really began to get on my nerves. And even after the
episode was in the can, I couldn't get the darn thing out of my head.
Mike, Pernell and Dan threatened to lynch me, if I sang it, once more."
"Although I didn't much like the song, Dad, it was better than the
beating I got in this one," said Mike, brushing himself off, after
spending a good part of the episode, lying on the floor. "It's going
to take a heck of a lot of scrubbing to get these fake bruises off my
face; I'll end up red raw."
"I told you, Mike, use that cleansing cream in my dressing room, it's
good stuff," said Lorne.
"Well, I would, but I can never get in there," said Mike. "You've
always got the door locked, in case any of us get to see you without
the rat on your head."
Lorne made to give Mike a cuff round the head, but the younger man
ducked, and then ran and hid behind Greg.
"Save me," he said, in a high, squeaky voice. "You can see
what I
mean, can't you, Greg? I get all the abuse round here, as Little Joe
and as Mike."
"Yes, of course you do, son," said Lorne, laughing.
Greg always enjoyed working on the Bonanza set, as the cast was very
much as you saw them on the screen, a happy family.
"I don't think you do that badly, Mike," he said. "You might
get hurt
the most, but you certainly get a lot of fussing over. I mean, this
man here couldn't look after you, any better, even if he was your own
father."
"Very true," said Mike, coming out from behind Greg and putting
his
arm round Lorne. "Dad here sure does look after me, except when he
will insist on lying me down on that awful settee, nearly every time
I'm injured." And Mike rubbed the small of his back, to emphasise his
point.
"Now you know why I have to do that, Mike," said Lorne, sounding
more
like Ben. "We have to tend to you in this room, so that we can move
on
the action and still have you in the shot. I mean, look what happened
in My Brother's Keeper? Pernell and Dan put you upstairs in your room
and then the viewers hardly saw you, for the rest of the episode, and
they don't like that. And the same thing happened in Deadly Ones, when
I did put you to bed. We got loads of letters, complaining that they
didn't see you, suffering, as much as they wanted to. You know what
those fans are like, if Little Joe is hurt, the ratings go up, and
they love seeing you suffer, as you do it so well. So, if we shove you
up in your room, they miss out."
"Yeah, I suppose you're right, I do suffer well, and we have to give
our public what they want to see," said Mike, with a resigned look
on
his face. "Mind you, if I get shot, many more times in my shoulder,
I
reckon Joe will be the first cowboy with an arm that can be removed by
tearing along the perforations, which are made up of all the bullet
holes."
Greg laughed.
"That's a good one, Mike, and yes, you do get shot rather a lot, don't
you? But I don't think I've ever shot you, have I?"
Mike pondered on that question, for a while. After more than 250
episodes, it was sometimes hard to recall them all, and then he shook
his head.
"No, you haven't," said Mike. "But, you might do, one day.
After all,
in this episode, you came close, but then Amigo asked to do it. Good
job, too, as he had no intention of killing me, but Cap Fenner did."
"I don't think the bosses have any intention of killing off a
Cartwright, Mike, so you're pretty safe," said Greg. "But I'll
happily
come back, again, and have a darn good try. Mind you, the Cartwright I
should really be gunning for is Adam, and he's not here, anymore."
"Very true," said Lorne. "He hung you, in Death at Dawn,
but then, to
be fair, Farmer Perkins did kill Cameron and turn my Nancy into a
quivering wreck. I never knew she could scream that loud."
"You didn't know, and neither did Dan and I," said Mike. "She
just
about busted my eardrums, cos I was in the same room, as she was, when
she did it."
"But I was living with her, when she was rehearsing the role,"
argued
Lorne. "I had days of that scream. I began to think that the
neighbours would report me to the police for beating up my wife."
Mike giggled at the thought, prompting Greg to give a rendition of the
evil, cackling laugh that he'd adopted, in his role as Farmer Perkins.
"Oh no," said Lorne, covering his ears. "Not the giggle,
too. I'm sure
I am driven beyond what even Ben could put up with, sometimes. Let's
go find Dan and go for a drink, I'm buying."
"Sounds good to me, Dad, thought you'd never ask," said Mike,
and the
three actors left the set, content that they had given yet another
sterling performance, on the country's best loved Western show.
THE END
Little Joe forever
Lynne
October 16th 2006
References made to three of the episodes that Greg Walcott appeared
in, plus a mention of Nancy Greene, who was in Death at Dawn, with
Greg, and Henry Darrow, who was in Amigo.