The Boys : A Memoir of Hollywood and Family(24)

And that was that. Except for one last thing. “But Ronny,” he said, his voice a little firmer than before, “you shouldn’t ever draw penises on bathroom walls.”





6


The Truth About Mayberry


CLINT


The Andy Griffith Show community extended itself to everyone in the Howard household. There were days when Dad had an acting gig of his own and couldn’t be with Ron on set, so Mom would take over as his guardian, with me in tow. Many of my primordial memories are of the same stuff that Ron speaks of: the cigarette smoke, makeup melting under the hot lights, and the booming sound of Andy’s voice.

I was a free-range toddler, roaming everywhere with few limits placed on me at Desilu Cahuenga. Parked in corners of the soundstages were what are known in our business as flats, lightweight timber frames with plywood “skins” that are used as sets. When not in use, the flats were folded up and pushed together, creating fun three-dimensional passageways, a Habitrail for a little kid like me. Even at home, The Andy Griffith Show provided me with play space. General Foods, the program’s sponsor, sent us a massive supply of powdered Jell-O pudding mix. That was great, but the giant cardboard box that this stuff came in kept me occupied for hours.

I hung out with Mrs. Barton at times in Ron’s one-room schoolhouse. And I loved to visit in the makeup room, the domain of The Andy Griffith Show’s larger-than-life makeup man, Lee Greenway. Lee was a proper southern gentleman from Andy’s home state of North Carolina, with white hair and a stocky body that made him look like Colonel Sanders minus the goatee. He kept a beautiful shotgun in the corner of the makeup room, a gift from Andy, with whom he sometimes went hunting.

Lee was a polymath: makeup artist, marksman, musician, and practical joker. He once somehow tricked Andy into stepping into a pair of shoes that were nailed to the floor, causing Andy to pratfall. Everyone, including a slightly pissed-off Andy, laughed uproariously. And when the bluegrass group the Dillards made their occasional appearances on the show as the Darlings, the musical hillbillies, Lee took out his banjo and jammed with them, proficiently.

I loved Hal Smith the most. He played Mayberry’s town drunk, Otis Campbell, and, more impressively, he performed a ton of voices for the cartoons that Ron and I watched, such as Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones, and Quick Draw McGraw. But coolest of all: Hal was the spokesman for the holiest of places in my early-childhood universe, the International House of Pancakes. In this capacity, he made personal appearances in chef’s whites and a puffy toque as the Pancake Man. He even hosted a local “Pancake Man” kids’ show for a time. And I knew Hal personally. The Pancake Man. Are you kidding me?

Mom was no less delighted to be on set, befriending nearly everyone with whom she came in contact at Desilu Cahuenga. She and Helen McNear, the wife of Howard McNear, who played Floyd the Barber, really hit it off. Three seasons in, Howard suffered a serious stroke that immobilized his left side and rendered him unable to stand or walk—less than ideal traits for an actor who was playing a barber. But Andy, ever magnanimous, didn’t want to lose Howard or the Floyd character. So Helen came along to assist Howard in his comings and goings, appearing at the studio almost as often as Mom and Dad.

I picked up my acting chops and on-set savvy by osmosis. My clothing landed me my first job. Dad loved anything to do with the Old West. Knowing this, Mom dressed me up as a toddler in a perfectly sized cowboy getup: hat, kerchief, snap-button western shirt, fringed buckskin jacket, and boots. With my tousled blond hair and chubby cheeks, I looked friggin’ adorable. Bob Sweeney, the show’s director, certainly thought so. One day, Mom brought me to set in this outfit, and Bob instantly came up with a role for me. At first I was just an extra, but then the writers developed a running bit for my “character,” such as he was, named Leon.

Leon, like Harpo Marx, never spoke. We never found out who his parents were or if he even had parents. But he always wore a cowboy outfit and was always eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, usually with about half its contents smeared all over his face. A generous soul, Leon would come across a grown-up and thrust his sandwich in the adult’s face in a Here, take a bite gesture. The adult, usually flustered, would say “No thank you, Leon.”

Leon’s most common foil was Barney Fife, to whom he offered the sandwich at inopportune moments. The best-known one is when Barney is undercover in the sporting-goods section of Weaver’s Department Store, hoping to apprehend a shoplifter by posing stock-still as a mannequin. Andy is fooled by Barney’s disguise, but not Leon, who immediately recognizes the deputy and blows his cover by proffering the PB&J.

In another episode, we did a bit where Leon accidentally locked Barney in the jail cell. That day, I took a swig from Otis’s jug, which was filled not with hooch but apple juice, my then drink of choice.

Just like that, I, too, was in the business. Like Ron’s career, mine began organically, as a matter of circumstance. The difference for me is that Ron had provided a blueprint. My folks now knew that if I wanted to go down the same route, they could manage it.





RON


The way Andy dealt with Howard McNear’s stroke was such a lesson to me on multiple levels. Andy had the crew rig up a wooden support with a small backrest for Howard to lean against in the scenes that required Floyd to stand. To create the illusion of Floyd as a working barber, the wardrobe people draped his smock in such a way as to hide the stand that supported Howard’s half-immobilized body, and made sure that Howard always clutched something in his nonworking hand, a comb or a newspaper. Then the cameramen framed the shot just so. This taught me yet again that there were almost no limits to what can be achieved in motion pictures through ingenuity. Where there’s a will there’s a way. And the illusion came off with viewers none the wiser, an accomplishment as humane as it was heroic. Pulling off this operation took grace and strength by Andy, and by Howard and Helen, too.