The Boys : A Memoir of Hollywood and Family(71)

One notable moment in the thawing process involved our monkey. Yes, you read that right. Cheryl and her dad kept a pretty bizarre array of animals at their place: an anteater, skunks, a snapping turtle that lived on a diet of beef heart, and a mature woolly monkey named Willie. There was a local pet store that we enjoyed visiting, to check out the exotic birds and reptiles that they had for sale. One day, Cheryl and I dropped in and saw that the store had a new occupant: a juvenile woolly, a female. Cheryl swooned over this beautiful little creature with deep, soulful eyes.

So I decided to surprise Cheryl. I returned to the store alone and bought the monkey for $500. That’s something I would never do now; doing so would support a black market of cruel animal traffickers. But it was perfectly legal then, and Sugar, as we named her, was a great companion, gentle and fun to be around. She lived well into the years when Cheryl and I got married and moved in together; she was basically our first child.

When Cheryl was still living at her dad’s, I asked my parents if she could bring Sugar on one of her visits to our house. I promised them that Sugar would wear a diaper indoors, just in case she felt the urge to go. They said yes.

On the appointed day, I went to pick up Cheryl and drive her over. When we entered, she witnessed a sight that moved her no end. Mom and Dad had hung ropes and lines everywhere; they had effectively transformed our house into a play space for a woolly monkey. This was when Cheryl realized that things were going to be okay between her and my parents.


I STILL WASN’T feeling so great about my professional life. The period between The Wild Country and The Smith Family had marked the biggest slump of my career. For a nine-month stretch, I wasn’t cast in anything. I disappeared from television. Factor in the adolescent rage that courses through a boy when he is in his midteens and you have a volatile situation. I was getting mad at everything my parents said to me. I was getting mad at myself when I had a bad basketball practice. I was getting mad at the phone for not ringing.

I felt a constant urge to put my fist through the sliding glass doors that led to the backyard. I never did so, but I did spend a lot of time angrily slamming a basketball against the garage door, making as much noise as I could. I felt diminished and betrayed by the entertainment industry. I kept shouting, “I’m missing the boat!” To this day, I can’t articulate precisely what was on this boat that I was convinced I was missing. But I was inconsolable most of the time.

Poor Mom couldn’t do anything right by me, but she tried. Mostly, she and Dad did their best to soothe me and assure me that this moment would pass. Inwardly, I recognized that my family was what kept me afloat: the big Christmases, going to the movies with Dad, coaching Clint in the Howards Hurricanes. Dad and Hoke Howell let me hang out with them during their writing sessions, inviting me to help them crack an episode of a TV show that they were writing.

I appreciated all this even as I told myself that I never again wanted to be in this position. I began to imagine—pun intended—a future in which I would build my own company and have control over my creative output, so that I would never again have to wait around to be hired.

Part of what I loved about Cheryl was that she and I, as a couple, had nothing to do with show business. Sure, she listened to my war stories and was supportive of my ambition to graduate to directing. But she was in no way dependent on my dreams. She had dreams of her own. She was going to go to college and major in psychology. She was going to travel the world. I had no intention of co-opting Cheryl. We could dream our dreams together.


THE SMITH FAMILY was a dull, indifferent show. The guy who put it together, Don Fedderson, had struck gold when he built My Three Sons around a film star of yesteryear, Fred MacMurray, and he thought he could do the same with Henry Fonda. But the quality of the scripts just wasn’t there, and after a few episodes, Hank Fonda’s enthusiasm flagged. His work ethic remained and he remained respectful of the cast and crew, but he didn’t have Andy Griffith’s passion to elevate the material he was performing, to make every scene matter. I learned from this experience that the work doesn’t just take care of itself—you need a leader and champion. We continued into a second season only because Fonda had a lucrative contract that he wanted to see through.

One lowlight of this period was an appearance on The Dating Game, which shared a network, ABC, with The Smith Family. I hated the idea. I was already committed to Cheryl and I found the whole concept ridiculous. But ABC’s publicity department was adamant—kicking off a decade-long string of embarrassments for me at the hands of those folks. In a few years, for Happy Days, I would be suffering my way through guest appearances on Donny & Marie and Captain & Tennille’s variety show—which is not a knock on any of the aforementioned but on my hopelessness as a song-and-dance man. It’s not fun being on TV when you absolutely know that your performance sucks.

I did The Dating Game twice. The first time, I was one of the three bachelors competing to win a date with a young lady. I wasn’t picked, which was fine. Well, not really. If I was going to go to the trouble of putting on a suit and sitting there like a dork with an audience watching, I damn well wanted to win! As my dad used to say, “You can’t separate the pleasure from the pain.” So honestly, I was pissed not to be picked.

The second time, ABC told me that I was going to be the one asking the questions and doing the choosing. It was a special double-date episode where two lucky couples would go on a romantic yacht cruise to the beautiful island of Catalina! With lots of plugs promised for The Smith Family, Wednesdays at 9 P.M. on ABC.