The Boys : A Memoir of Hollywood and Family(32)

But for me, this episode was a big deal because it included some classroom scenes in which Opie and his pals tested the patience of Miss Crump. This meant I’d have company at Desilu Cahuenga for the week: Keith Thibodeaux as my sidekick Johnny Paul Jason, along with, among others, the child actors Dennis Rush and Joey Scott.

As the (relative) veteran among this crew of moppets, I felt like showing off. This was my hit show, my set. I took on the role of ringleader, strutting around like I owned the place, goofing off and telling jokes right up until the camera assistant clapped the slate. In other words, I let things go to my head and forgot about the process, the discipline, and the etiquette of the set.

I must have been hard to control that day, because Dad took me aside to remind me to concentrate, something he hadn’t needed to do since the first season. But hey, I was feeling my oats, and even my father wasn’t going to put me in my place. I continued to act the wiseass, wriggling in my desk chair, firing paper airplanes into the air, and showing off for a couple of the girls sitting next to me in the scene.

Then, between takes, Bob Sweeney, the director, took me aside, an uncharacteristically serious expression on his face. Very quietly, and without any harshness, he said words that are still imprinted upon my brain: “Ronny, I know it’s fun for you to have all these other kids around, and that you want to make them laugh. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about. Ronny, you’re a good young actor. But you still have a lot to learn. In fact, you aren’t even the best young actor in this scene today.”

That honor he bestowed upon Dennis Rush, who was indeed doing a bang-up job. “It’s not just that he is paying attention and behaving well, Ronny,” Bob said. “It’s that he is really thinking about the scene. He is connecting.”

Bob had more to say. He noticed that I had been slipping into some sloppy acting habits, falling into the classic series-regular trap of phoning it in. He urged me to bear down, to focus my attention on some small real-life detail like the lint on my shirt or a chipped corner of my school desk, to put my mind in a place where I wasn’t caught up in the lights and microphones, but, rather, grounded in Opie’s reality. In short, Bob challenged me.

I still feel a twinge of queasiness just thinking about this gentle but firm dressing-down. Bob was right: I was falling into bad habits, such as reciting my lines in a lazy singsong way instead of linking them to the real ideas that the words in the script conveyed. One reason that so many child actors fail to evolve into adult professionals is that, under pressure, they default to a perky autopilot, an artificial cuteness that some directors are willing to settle for. Left alone, these kids never grow as actors, and they reach their young adulthood unable to react, improvise, make spontaneous discoveries, or develop multiple approaches to their scene work. And then one day they’re no longer little and no longer adorable, and they have never really learned how to act. The business is done with them.

I pulled it together for Miss Crump’s debut episode, and Bob told me that I performed . . . acceptably, if not superbly. He saved me that day from sliding further into bad habits—and, arguably, from becoming a toxic Hollywood brat, forevermore resting on laurels earned in short pants. I don’t recall any other director ever having to crack the whip in my direction again.

Later on, in the 1970s, when I had the chance to work with some of the greats from Hollywood’s golden age—acting with John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Henry Fonda, and directing Bette Davis in a TV movie—I saw firsthand what separated them from the lower ranks: a remarkable work ethic and an unwillingness to brook substandard work, whether their own or someone else’s.

I also had Dad. He set an example in two ways. First, he armed me with the fundamentals so that I had the tools with which to grow. Second, he kept hustling for parts in the face of constant rejection. His career struggles were a sobering reminder of just how rare a position I was in as a series regular.


WE WERE STILL living in Hollywood when Clint and I experienced our first tragic death. Gulliver, our beloved Weimaraner, somehow broke loose from our backyard one day and ran into the street, where he was struck by a car. We were all home. I heard a horrible yelp and ran out to the street, a few steps behind Dad.

What I saw didn’t seem real: my dog whimpering on the blacktop, his life draining out of him, his blood strangely dark and thick like motor oil. Dad cradled Gulliver and carried him into the house, still alive but fading fast. We Howards are not a particularly tearful family, but I lost it, sobbing as Gulliver breathed his last.

This sad moment came to bear on my Mayberry work not long afterward. We began the fourth season in 1963 with an episode called “Opie the Birdman.” This was only about six months after my misbehavior during the Miss Crump episode, and a big test for me. The episode had two big emotional scenes for Opie. In the first, Opie is outside playing with a new slingshot he has made with Barney’s help. Though Andy tells him to use it only to shoot stones at tin cans, Opie aims at a tree and accidentally kills a little songbird, which falls to the ground.

At first, Opie tries to talk the bird—and, really, himself—into believing that what just happened isn’t so bad. “It’s probably just a scratch,” he says to the animal, which is lying still on the sidewalk. He picks the bird up and holds it in both hands, begging, “Fly away. Please! Fly away!” But when he opens his hands and gives the bird a little upward push, the bird falls back to the ground like a lead weight. In tears, Opie backs away in horror and then runs into the house, aghast at what he has done.