The Boys : A Memoir of Hollywood and Family(38)

Then I asked the teacher if we would be getting a real cake for the proper performance of the skit in front of the whole class. She said no, it was going to be all pretend. At that point, I couldn’t help myself. My Andy Griffith Show training kicked in, and, like a mini–Bob Sweeney, I asked everyone to hop to their feet so we could block out the scene, choreographing our movements. I had the other kids putting on pretend party hats, blowing out make-believe candles, and using imaginary forks.

My teacher recognized what was going on, and, rather than rebuke me for bigfooting her, she indulged me. I sensed that she knew I was struggling as the new kid and the TV kid, and she granted me this latitude to give me the chance to build my confidence.

It worked. Our performance before the whole class was a hit, and that day marked the first time that I felt I had something to offer to the other kids, something that they appreciated. I started feeling better about myself.

Wow, I thought as I put the other kids through their paces, I’m directing! One kid in particular, a new boy from Alaska and a fellow redhead—his name was Don, I believe—was seriously good at acting. The pro in me allowed the thought to cross my mind: If this Don kid wanted to get into the business, he has the goods.

The rest of the kids were terrible actors, but I wisely kept that thought to myself.


BEFORE LONG I had my own posse of buddies. One nice thing about Cordova Street is that the lots were only fifty feet wide, so each block was packed with families whose kids were the same ages as Clint and me. Three second-grade boys who lived on Cordova, Noel Salvatore, Bob Wemyss, and John Matheus, became my best friends, with whom I bonded over our mutual love of baseball and basketball; sports was another great social equalizer. I am still close to Noel, Bob, and John. Every year, around Christmas, we reunite for a Cordova Street Boys dinner at the Smoke House, the swankiest joint in Burbank.

In our adulthood, I found out from Bob that during my early struggles at Stevenson, my mom, who was close to his, had approached Mrs. Wemyss to see if Bob might consider getting into acting. Mom offered to help set up Bob with an agent and walk Mrs. Wemyss through the ins and outs of being a child actor’s parent. But Bob’s mom shut the idea down, not wanting that life for her son.

Mom was just trying to give me a comrade in arms, a friend who understood what I was going through. Fortunately, such extreme measures proved unnecessary. My friends were there for me as I returned to Stevenson from The Andy Griffith Show every February after our season had wrapped. And mind you, I needed them to be there. Every year, not just at Stevenson but also at David Starr Jordan Middle School and John Burroughs High School, I would still be put through some sort of gauntlet, some sort of teasing and bullying by a group of kids who wanted to test me.

What’s bizarre, when I think back upon it, is that my time in front of the camera is what gave me the confidence to get through the social trials of my childhood years. In Mayberry, as Opie, I was at ease. It was away from Stages 1 and 2 of Desilu Cahuenga that I had to prove my value and self-worth. Which is crazy: the tenuous, competitive, and often merciless world of show business was actually a safer space for me than the familiar hallways and playgrounds that the rest of my generation was inhabiting. This paradox is the crux of why so many successful child actors struggle in their adult lives.





9


But First, the Tranya


CLINT


I was lucky enough to have Ron pave the way for me, so I avoided a lot of the grief he endured. With a big assist from Dad, my brother had already cracked the code of how to be a kid in show business—so I felt totally at home in that environment. And Ron always included me with his buddies when they played touch football, Wiffle Ball, and basketball on the mean streets of Burbank. That put me ahead of the curve when I started playing sports with kids my own age.

I also benefited from the simple fact of birth order. I wasn’t kept in the same bubble wrap that Mom and Dad had put Ron in. They were overly protective of him. They didn’t let him ride a bike until he was eight, and even then, he wasn’t allowed to go beyond our block of Cordova Street—and only on the sidewalk. I was pedaling all over the neighborhood by the time I was six.

I got to do a lot of other normal-kid things several years earlier than Ron did, too. He was pissed about this, but he never took it out on me—he was mad at the system. After I got in the flow of working like Ron, Mom and Dad reconsidered some of their parenting choices and gave their second-born a longer leash. And sometimes I just ground them down.

At school, I didn’t face the harassment that Ron did. I was on TV a lot, but always playing different characters. He was Opie. Jeez, I felt bad for him. Later on, in junior high, after I’d been on Gentle Ben, I did have a taste of his experiences. My version of “Hey, Dopey Opie!” was “Hey, where’s your bear?” Kids tried to provoke me into fights. There was a corner three blocks away from Burbank’s David Starr Jordan Middle School where the boys my age met up: “Yeah? Why don’t we meet at Beachwood and Oak? After school, Clint, Beachwood and Oak!”

You know what I did? Not go to Beachwood and Oak! I shrugged that stuff off. Everyone’s hormones were firing like crazy at that age, and I was smart enough to recognize that taking their bait was stupid. While I never witnessed one of Ron’s fights, I frequently saw him come home red-faced and flustered. I didn’t like how he looked and avoided dustups at all costs.