How “The Boys” Ron & Clint Howard Survived Child Stardom

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Next, we turn to two Hollywood brothers who made their names in some of America’s best loved family classics. Ron and Clint Howard were the child stars of hit shows like “Happy Days” and “Gentle Ben.” Now, you might not know Clint as well as Ron but they both had successful individual careers. Despite that, it’s their decades of brotherhood that they’ve chosen to celebrate in their new joint memoir “The Boys” as they explained to our Walter Isaacson.

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And welcome, Ron and Clint Howard, welcome to the show.

RON HOWARD, ACADEMY AWARD-WINNING FILMMAKER AND CO-AUTHOR, “THE BOYS”: It’s a pleasure, Walter. Good to see you.

ISAACSON: Congratulations on the book, which is a wonderful memoir of both of you growing up, but there’s actually a deeper thing. I think your daughter, Ron, says it in the intro, which is about the unbreakable bond between two very different people who happen to be brothers. Tell me about forging that bond. I’ll start with you, Ron and then Clint.

R. HOWARD: Well, you know, it began as with a lot of things. We began — we discovered working on the book with our folks, you know, kind oof earthy, very logical grounded midwestern people who fell in love with the idea of show business and somehow, they made that dream become a reality for them and then extended it to us. But they weren’t in it for some kind of sense of glamour or even money, particularly. They just loved being part of the business. And they loved each other. And they taught us to not be overly dazzled by this world that they’d invited us into and guided us through, but to instead cherish, you know, most of all, our relationships and our love with one another. And when Clint and I would get into fights and carry on and I’m five years older, you know, dad would pull us apart and he’d say, you’re going to have a chance to be something very, very special and very precious. You’re going to have a chance to be friends the rest of your life. It’s not automatic just because you’re brothers. You’ve got to make it be that way, and I think you ought to start right now. And it rubbed off.

ISAACSON: Clint?

CLINT HOWARD, ACTOR, PRODUCER AND CO-AUTHOR, “THE BOYS”: Well, you know, listen, I love my parents dearly, and dad was so special. It wasn’t necessarily what he said, it was the way, he said it. And I just — listen, I was best friends with my dad. He was dad, but I was best friends with and I had bonus time because I had this great big brother. You know, we wrote about it in the book about — I — my very first memory is laying on his back as he was reading me the “L.A. Times” account of the Dodger games, and there was just — you know, it was a real physical thing and I just — you know, I loved Ron and I still do and I cherish the relationship.

R. HOWARD: Speaking of physical, I’ve got to point out, Clint’s got his boxing tapes on there. We’re catching him at the gym. OK. Anyway —

ISAACSON: Clint is coming to us from a great gym. And, Clint, you all began this book right when your dad died, I think, about four or five years ago. Tell me why that prompted you.

C. HOWARD: Well, I had — Ron and I both had tried to control dad into writing a book about how he dealt so beautifully with us. He had no desire to do that. But with him gone, Ron and I were orphans. And his story, everybody loved mom and dad. We both felt their story was untold and we just felt like this is a wonderful opportunity for us to not just talk about ourselves, but talk about what influenced us, which 90 percent of it was mom and dad.

R. HOWARD: I mean, people would ask if we wanted — you know, if I wanted to do a book, I never had, you know, much interest in that. But I actually, one day, talking to Tom Hanks about it, who is an excellent author, I said, is this something I should tackle? And he said — he thought about it, and he said, yes, but only your childhood. We all want to know how you and Clint did it. We want to know how you made it through. So, we recognize that there’s nostalgia, there’s curiosity, but we also, as Clint would say, recognize, this is really an opportunity for us to share with people this sort of very distinctive unique kind of approach that our parents took to this challenge and, you know, what it meant to us.

C. HOWARD: Dad had this midwestern Zen sort of thing and mom was just a tornado of energy. She was a ringmaster and a leader and everybody that she was in — came in contact with, she — loved her. And I wrote this in the book. You know, mom could seriously make friends in an elevator in two floors. And, you know, I just — they were great people and, you know, I hope people get a glimpse of that after reading the book.

ISAACSON: Well, it comes across in the book, they are Oklahoma farmers and they fall in love with show business. They meet, I think, in theatre class. They drop out. They go to New York to do T.V. then to California. And then, they start with two child actors. Ron, why don’t you tell me about how at age three, your father trained you?

R. HOWARD: Well, he was directing theatre, you know, and he was delighted with the fact that, you know, he was able to make a living in this business. He never quite reached the Gary Cooper, Gee Notrill (ph), you know, level of his dreams but he made a living and worked as a character actor and also as a director, directed a lot of summer stock theatre. And when I was two and three, my parents would both be working on these plays all summer and I would just be hanging out. And they, slowly but truly, they began to realize I was mimicking the actors. I was picking up on the dialogue. And they thought that was funny. And one of my earliest memories is actually doing a scene that we memorized from the play, “Mr. Roberts”, that my dad had been in on Broadway with Henry Fonda, and we would do this scene and he would play the Henry Fonda part. And if you know the movie, I would play the Jack Lemmon part. And I remember getting laughs, you know, just kind of in our living room doing the scene for people. And one day, when he was making the rounds in New York, which is what actors used to have to do in those days, he stumbled upon a casting director’s lobby filled with kids for a movie called that MGM was making called “The Journey” starring Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr. And he couldn’t get in to see the casting director himself, which was a goal, but he leave a message and wanted to try to say something memorable. So, he said, Rance Howard stopped by, blah, blah, blah. By the way, I have a son who’s a fine actor. So, lo and behold, he got a call back saying, well, bring your son in. And I went in and I did this thing where I played the Jack Lemmon part in “Mr. Roberts.” And they laughed and they said, do you think he can learn anything else? And my dad said, I’ve got to tell you, I have no idea.

ISAACSON: Clint, you have something about your father knowing that there was a third way to teach and coach a kid to act, not just to sort of mimic the lines, not just — but to actually be himself. Tell me how he taught you that at age two?

C. HOWARD: You know, we’re somewhat of a circus family, you know, and I just learned how to walk the highwire as I was learning how to walk. So, I don’t really remember the details. But I’ll tell you what, dad was very simple. Honesty. Look other characters in the eye. Know where you’ve been. Know what you want. And know where you want to go. And he would boil it down. It wasn’t a matter of learning the dialogue. It was learning the emotion of the scene. And, you know, we called it homework, but it was fun. It was a fun exploration. And I really, really enjoyed being a child actor. It wasn’t until I hit adolescence to where I started to develop the insecurities that, you know, 99.9 percent of the actors have. You know, as a kid, it was — I was — it was all confidence and it was mom and dad, they were responsible for that.

ISAACSON: But you say in the book that you had some emotional scar tissue from that period. Explain that.

C. HOWARD: Listen, you know, getting emotional is something I think there’s a little pay that you got to — you know, it takes a little bite out of you. And crying and delivering those emotions, dad taught me how to get there. The one particular moment that I had where there was scar tissue is when I was required or asked to kill a buzzard on film, to pick up a buzzard by the back of the legs and smash his head against a rock until he was dead. And I was 13 years old. And, you know, I did it. I took one for the team. Just like it was explained to me that the buzzard was going to take one for the team and we were making this fairly important movie. It was “The Red Pony.” And that, in particular, was something — it still haunts me. It still — it’s hard for me — I love that movie, “The Red Pony.” I got to act as Hank Fonda, Maureen O’Hara, Ben Johnson. And yet, there is one scene in that movie that I basically have to turn away from because, you know, listen, I’m not that guy that I picked up a buzzard and killed it.

R. HOWARD: A thing like that would never be allowed to happen today, what Clint’s describing. The tone, you know, around the set, it was crass, it was cowboy, it was sailor talk. It was, you know, Uber masculine to a toxic degree. And, you know, there are many things that I’m incredibly grateful we’ve evolved out of as a culture. Yet, there is this fundamental collective effort to tell a story, to maximize the potential of the story. Dad taught us that. So, that we weren’t performing. We weren’t play acting. We were understanding and engaging. And it earned us a lot of respect within — among adults. Can you imagine what that means to a child’s self-esteem to recognize they can actually function in this environment? Yes, later when you’re a teen, the rug can often get pulled out from under you and that can be emotionally brutal. The business is kind of designed to generate some emotional wreckage. But if you can get through it, you know, there were so many valuable lessons to be learned and so many little fundamentals, that’s what I built my adult career on and sort of built my family around.

ISAACSON: Ron, what piece of advice did your dad give you about playing Opie on “The Andy Griffith Show”?

R. HOWARD: He didn’t really directly give me any advice, but he did reach out to Andy Griffith early in the show, probably the first episode that we were doing. He gained enough respect that he could have this conversation and he basically said, look, right now, there — I can see that that they’re writing the Opie/Andy relationship the way most sitcom relationships are written between fathers and sons. He’s kind of a wise ass. He, you know — and he outsmarts the dad and it’s kind of funny. And Ronnie can do that. But what if it was different? What if Opie actually respected his father? I think you can find comedy in that truth as well. And I didn’t know this at the time. Andy told me this story when I was about 38 years old, that this is the way the Opie/Andy relationship was tailored and shaped was through this conversation, and then, Andy saying to the writers, let’s write Andy/Opie the way we see Rance/Ronnie.

ISAACSON: There was one week in American when “Gentle Ben,” which you were in, Clint, and the “Andy Griffith Show,” which you were in, Ron, were number one and number two in the ratings. How did you all avoid developing a rivalry?

C. HOWARD: Well, listen, you know, a healthy competition, I think, is good. Listen, “Gentle Ben” was the little show down in Florida that was trying real hard and we rose in the ratings that year. And, you know, I would be lying to tell you that I didn’t want “Gentle Ben” to top out one week, you know, but it was an absolute thrill when I think, one week, we were one in four and then, one week, we were one and two, and that was a good week to be a Howard.

R. HOWARD: And I found the variety, Hollywood variety that had the ratings, and I was parading it around the set showing it to Andy and showing it to everybody. I was, you know, so happy about that. That was a thrill.

ISAACSON: When those shows ended, did you have to face some professional insecurities?

R. HOWARD: I definitely — well, I didn’t feel insecure at that time, but I was in for a rude awakening. Which was, yes, I’d always gotten pretty much every role I ever went on. Now, when “The Andy Griffith Show” ended, I cried like a baby, which is pretty embarrassing when you’re 14 years old, but those people meant that much to me. In another couple of years, I would fall into that that difficult period where people who are over 18 who can work non-stop hours with no restrictions whatsoever start to get your roles, and that is a time when child actors who are also dealing with acne and, you know, all kinds of insecurities and identity crisis and everything you can imagine, are then suddenly finding themselves kind of persona non grata or certainly limited in terms of the industry that had been so welcoming, so celebratory. You know, suddenly, they’re — they kind of turn their backs on you. I definitely suffered through that period. And I also began to dream, more than ever, about having autonomy, creative autonomy, professional autonomy, and it led me, fueled me, not only to recognize I was going to have to compete for jobs as an actor, if I wanted to do it, I would have to make the rounds the way my dad did. I would have to be assertive but I also wanted to control my own creative destiny and professional destiny. I wanted to be a director.

ISAACSON: Clint, there is a part in the book where you talk about a little bit of an envy of Ron in which he has a girlfriend, you know, he’s doing well. And you say that pot, you started smoking pot and then, into harder drugs and alcohol, that that became your girlfriend. Tell me about that dissent into drugs and alcohol.

C. HOWARD: Well, I’ll tell you, Walter, you know, listen, I loved smoking weed. I mean, in fact, listen, I don’t know, check me if I’m wrong, but it’s a little odd when a fellow is so anxious to smoke marijuana that he takes the pencil shavings from his pencil sharpener and twists up a doobie and smokes it. You know, I don’t know where that came from. I had good self-esteem when I was, you know, 14 or 15, 16 years old. I was having a little trouble with, you know, getting dates and having female relationships. I looked at Ron and he had this solid thing going on with Cheryl. And I’m not sure envy was the right word but I guess if you want something that somebody’s got, that’s envy. But, you know — and again, the way I did equate it was, you know, smoking dope became my girlfriend and it was, you know, a nasty trap and I paid a pretty heavy price later on in my life. You know, I don’t regret the past. I don’t want to shut the door on it, but I certainly don’t want to go down that road again.

ISAACSON: Clint, a lot of child actors’ stories are — they end up being tragedies. I think you use pretty strong language about how, you know, waiting to be a tragedy. How did you and Ron avoid that?

C. HOWARD: I had great, great role models. I had dad and then, I looked over to my left and I had this beautiful big brother that loved me and he will always include me in games of over the line and Wiffle ball. And, you know, it was — I had the best of both worlds. From my chair, it was — you know, life was beautiful, life was great. Let me just back up and say one thing. I had a great perspective of watching my brother break in as a director because I saw how little credibility he was given. And from my perspective, from very early on, I thought, this dude’s got the goods to do it. He’s good — at 15 years old, he could have directed television. Without a doubt. You know, there was not — he was as good as anybody. And listen, with the Opie shaming, listen, that’s probably the worst thing Ron ever dealt with, was — well, maybe not the worst thing, but, listen, I would not have wanted to have been Opie. It was just, you know, too easy to get picked on, and the cheerleaders of the other schools, Opie, Opie, you know, and I watched him have this dream to be a director and I just knew, I knew, man, my big brother is going to kick ass. And all through my early adulthood and Ron in his early directing career, I was so freaking proud that, look at him. You know, yes, he’s kicking ass, you know, I was going to say, I’d say so from the beginning.

ISAACSON: Clint Howard, Ron Howard, thank you all so much for joining us.

R. HOWARD: Pleasure, Walter. Thank you. Thanks for having us.

C. HOWARD: This was awesome. Walter, thank you.