The Boys : A Memoir of Hollywood and Family(67)

Then I . . . well, I guess I stalked Cheryl. Whenever I was done shooting The Smith Family, usually around three o’clock in the afternoon, I drove back and forth between her house on Evergreen Street and Burroughs, casing out the route that Cheryl most likely walked to and from school. I did this over and over again, hoping that I might somehow happen upon her in stride. I had it all planned out: I would roll down my window ever so casually and say, “Oh, hey, Cheryl, it’s Ron. Ron from Mrs. McBride’s class. Would you like a lift back to your place?”

It never worked. All I ended up doing was drive in a continuous, frustrating loop while James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain,” the song of that season, played seemingly nonstop on my VW Bug’s tinny radio.

Finally, in late October, I gave up the stalking and decided that I would just call the listed number. I stared at the phone for a long time, sweating like Bert Lahr. Then I picked it up and dialed. A man I presumed to be Mr. Charles Alley himself answered. “May I speak with Cheryl?” I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling.

“Who should I say is calling?” the man asked.

“Ron Howard.”

Cheryl came to the phone. I bullshitted her about needing help with an assignment. We were reading Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities in class, and I claimed not to know what that night’s homework was. She told me which pages to read. Now it was time for me to put up or shut up.

“Thanks . . . and, um . . . Hey, would you want to go to a movie with me?”

“Yes,” Cheryl said, “but let me check with my dad.”

My heart pounded in my throat while I waited. She returned to the phone. “What movie would it be?” she said.

I told her that Stanley Kramer’s 1963 all-star comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was playing at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, and that I had seen it and loved it. I thought that she might like it, too.

Once again, Cheryl said that she needed to check with her dad. This prompted another short wait that somehow felt like it lasted an eternity. At last, she got back on the line.

“Okay,” she said.

Or should I say, Okay, she said!

I laid out my plan to Cheryl: I would pick her up, we would catch the Sunday matinee, I would take her to dinner at Barone’s Pizzeria in Toluca Lake, and then I would drive her home.


AND THAT’S EXACTLY what happened on November 1, 1970. The night before, I had covered my face in green makeup with dark circles around my eyes and gone out trick-or-treating with my six-foot-tall friends, still idiotically excited about free candy. This on the eve of my first date with the woman I would end up marrying. Again, the push-pull of adolescence.

But that Sunday afternoon, I combed my hair neatly and forswore my usual T-shirt and letterman’s jacket, opting for a shirt with a collar and a V-neck sweater. I drove to Evergreen Street to pick up my date. Cheryl looked beautiful—she was wearing a lightweight white sweater, a navy blue skirt that was a few inches above the knee, and pantyhose that, because she was so skinny, bagged at the knees. Her long, lustrous red hair was held back by a hairband.

At the Cinerama Dome, I touched Cheryl for the first time, cupping her elbow in my hand to guide her into her seat. I had seen gentlemen do that in old movies.

At Barone’s, we talked nonstop over our pizza, downloading the better part of our life stories to each other. Cheryl’s parents were divorced and she lived with her father, an aerospace engineer and licensed pilot who flew a single-engine Cessna. Cheryl, too, knew how to fly and was in the process of receiving her certification. She was outdoorsy, she told me, a tomboy. She and her dad went camping a lot.

I told her that my dream was to direct movies. I yammered on excitedly about a screenplay for an independent picture that I was writing with my friend Craig Hundley. That’s right: I was such a film nerd that doing a story pitch was my way of trying to impress a girl.

Being a gentleman, I moved to serve Cheryl a slice of pizza, maneuvering it from the metal tray to her paper plate. In my nervousness, I screwed up and flipped the slice so that it landed toppings down on the table, the tomato sauce splashing and just missing her skirt.

But Cheryl just laughed. I was utterly besotted. In my mind I couldn’t believe it: Wow, my ideal actually exists on this planet. Henry Winkler later joked that I must be some kind of monstrous narcissist, because to him, Cheryl and I looked like twins.

I dropped her off on Evergreen Street, stood with her in front of her house, and bade her good night. I decided that I wouldn’t try to kiss her, not this soon. But I wasn’t sure about this. I worried that perhaps I wasn’t being as forward as she wanted—maybe I was blowing my chance. It turned out not to matter. Cheryl strode purposefully to her door, opened it, and then, safe on the other side of the window screen, smiled at me and said, “Thank you.” Perfect!

I drove home on cloud nine. A few years later, as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, I would celebrate my dating triumphs by suggestively singing, “I found mah thrill . . . onnn Blueberry Hill!” I was possessed by that kind of giddiness that November night. I wanted to figure out a way to convey it to my parents and Clint.

Andy Griffith had a tendency, when he was in a good mood, to speak in loud, declarative sentences: “Well, that was out-standing!” I remembered this and literally did an Andy imitation. I walked into the house, leaving the front door open behind me. My folks were sitting in the living room. They looked up at me expectantly.