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By
ROBERT EICHBERG
Those Bar-X Days and Nights ring true because of Carson Robison and the life he's led
(Bill's the very dapper one; John wears the glasses) and the girl is Pearl Pickens, otherwise Mrs. Bill Mitchell (but hardly anybody knows that). And here's another secret for you: when Johnny Battle, who plays the juvenile leads in the show, is supposed to be strumming a banjo, it's really Bill who's doing the fretwork. The program takes place in a small studio, with maps of various states painted on the walls. Only about fifty people can fit in the audience section, as compared with the 1300 who can witness broadcasts in the NBC's biggest studio. So when you've learned what goes on during this program, you'll be a member of a very, very exclusive club. When he isn't playing his guitar during the songs, Robby directs with his right hand. He doesn't use a baton, but pinches his thumb and forefinger together, in the position required to pick up a dead mouse by the tail. He does it without the mouse, though.
Little John Mitchell sits up on top of a high stool, with his feet on the seat of a chair, to bring his banjo near enough the microphone, and leaves his perch only to play big bad bandits in the sketches. Brother Bill is the cowboy who "Yip-eees" in the songs. He stands on the floor, with one foot on a chair. When the chair squeaks a man runs out of the control room and signals about it by sticking his fingers in his ears and making horrible faces. He can't speak a word because the program's on the air, but Bill catches on and puts his foot down, while Pearl silently giggles. Perhaps you've wondered about the sound effects used to produce the noise of galloping horses, pistol shots, and other sounds typical of the West that was wooly and wild?
Well, two sound effects men beat their hands on a plank for 'the hoof-beats, and one of them snorts and whinnies, too. The pistol shot is perfectly imitated by the simple process of firing a pistol — and the first time they do it, nearly everybody in the studio audience jumps and gasps. They give the effect of breaking in a desk with a rifle butt by smashing a peach box with a billet of kindling, and when the script says "BOOTED FEET RUNNING ON PLANK FLOOR," one of the sound men runs along a board.
All too soon the program is over. But don't go yet; Robby's going to tell something about himself. "No, I'm not really a cowboy," {Continued on page 87)
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