The Boys : A Memoir of Hollywood and Family(76)

I poked my head in, introduced myself to the receptionist, and said that I would like to talk to Mr. Jacks or Mr. Hamner about auditioning for the John-Boy role. She seemed to recognize me, but her expression betrayed some discomfort at my request. She asked me to sit for a moment while she made a call. I recognize now that while doorstepping a casting director or a producer was commonplace in New York in the 1950s, it was highly unorthodox in Hollywood, where every meeting was coordinated through agents and managers. Spontaneous acts of self-promotion were frowned upon.

Still, Mr. Jacks graciously agreed to meet me right away. My guts were churning as I was led into his office, where a few people, including Earl Hamner, sat silently, looking at me. I awkwardly explained that I was in the building for another audition but had read and loved their script, and since I saw Mr. Jacks’s name on the door, I figured that I should introduce myself. I told them that my father had told me many stories of his life on a farm during the Depression, and that I was sure that I could relate to the John-Boy character and deliver for them.

There was an ominous pause. Finally, Robert Jacks spoke up, reminding me that he had produced the episode of Gunsmoke that I had guest-starred in. He complimented me for the work I had done in it, which had impressed U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon himself, James Arness. With due modesty, I thanked Mr. Jacks for his kind words, assuming that, between this demonstration of familiarity and my long résumé in prestigious network TV, I was on my way to being rewarded for my audacity and bagging the part.

But there was another pause before Mr. Jacks finished his response. He broke it by saying, “Listen, Ronny. It’s great to hear that you like the script and think it rings true. But we’ve been casting for a while, and we think we know who we want in the John-Boy role. But we’ll certainly keep you in mind if something comes up and we have a change of heart.”

Unaccustomed as I was to rejection, I nevertheless recognized this brush-off for what it was. I said that I understood and thanked them for their time. With my heart pounding and a lump in my throat, I slunk out of the office and trudged back to my car in the off-lot parking to which I had been relegated as a nonstar. The John-Boy role went to Richard Thomas, and The Homecoming became the basis for the series The Waltons, which ran for nine seasons on CBS.

Richard was absolutely deserving of the part and flourished in the show, becoming a TV star. By contrast, I was on the precipice of irrelevance. Being rejected stung, but it also motivated me. It reinforced my already burgeoning belief that what I really needed to do was get on the other side of that casting table, as a director. By my junior year of high school, I had built up an impressive portfolio of student films that would act as a good calling card if I chose to seek admission to the University of Southern California. For the first time, USC was admitting rising freshmen to its school of cinema.

This was huge and fortuitous news for a film geek like me. USC’s film school was the gold standard of undergraduate programs for aspiring filmmakers. Among its recent alumni was a rising young hotshot named George Lucas, whose name I had first seen in one of the books that Hank Fonda had given me, The Film Director as Superstar; Francis Ford Coppola had mentioned Lucas to the author as someone to watch. So, when I was a high school senior, I decided that my future lay on USC’s campus in South Los Angeles and sent in my application.

While I endured the agonizing wait to learn if I had gotten in, I began to envision the freewheeling life that Cheryl and I would enjoy after college. Cheryl wanted to see the world and study foreign cultures. Maybe we would move to Australia or Africa, and I’d work as a documentarian and photographer for National Geographic. Or maybe I would be a guerrilla independent filmmaker like John Cassavetes or Jan Troell, with Cheryl pitching in as sound person and editor, the two of us living as itinerant bohemians with no fixed address. Or maybe I could plunge into the artfully trashy world of grindhouse pictures and make something like The Thing with Two Heads, a recent sci-fi film starring Ray Milland and Rosey Grier that also served as a parable about racism. I kept spiral notebooks with lists of movie ideas, my febrile mind overrun with possibilities.

I dreamed up schemes to finance independent movies—perhaps by going door-to-door and introducing myself: “Hi! I’m Ronny Howard. You may remember me as Opie from The Andy Griffith Show. It is now my dream to make independent movies, and I’d like to ask you to support my goal by donating to my moviemaking fund!” I was dissuaded from pursuing this early version of crowdfunding when someone explained to me that I would have to pay taxes on the money I collected.

I sincerely toyed with an even more radical idea, one that I never dared share with Cheryl, though I wasn’t entirely kidding about it. The year we graduated from high school, Gerard Damiano’s pornographic movie Deep Throat became a sensation, earning $3 million in its first six months of release—a cinematic record at the time. A long-game, Hail Mary notion developed in my head: What if I self-funded a serious independent film by doing another kind of film first, casting aside all shame and industry goodwill by making an X-rated movie? This skin flick’s title? Opie Gets Laid.

After a few days’ consideration, I thought better of this scheme. Cheryl would never forgive me. Nor, probably, would any moviegoer who paid money for a ticket and then saw me naked.


ONE OF THE few things that kept me tethered to acting was the looming threat of boot camp and combat. I was opposed to the Vietnam War on philosophical grounds, in that it seemed pointless, needlessly destructive, and unwinnable. More immediately, given my status as someone who was going to turn eighteen in the second semester of his senior year of high school, I didn’t want to fight in it. Dad was equally vehement, notwithstanding his status as a military veteran. He still resented his four-year stint in the air force for the time it took from him as a young man and the career opportunities that he had missed out on. He found the justifications for our country’s involvements in Korea and Vietnam hazy, unlike the unequivocal call to action that World War II presented. He had no desire to see Clint or me in uniform unless we chose to volunteer.