7 Hot Lights, Real Tears
RON
I struggled a bit in elementary school. I'd rate myself academically as having been barely average. I later figured out, when my own kids were having some difficulties here and there, that I had what would today be diagnosed as learning disabilities. Mrs. Barton proved a boon in this respect; I responded well to one-on-one tutoring. But in the 1960s, my public-school teachers' diagnosis was pretty much "Well, he's a C student, but at least he's well-behaved." I flailed sometimes. Cursive, for example, did not come easily to me. But do you know what kicked me into gear to figure it out once and for all? Having to sign autographs.
Near the end of The Andy Griffith Show's first season, TV Guideconvened a bunch of child and teen stars to pose for a photo shoot in the swimming pool of the grand Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard, across the street from Grauman's Chinese Theatre. There were about twenty of us in total in our bathing suits: I waded near the front, in the shallow end. Jay North was also there, along with Rusty Hamer and Angela Cartwright from The Danny Thomas Show,Jon Provost from Lassie,and, for sex appeal, some older actors like the twins Dack and Dirk Rambo, who were starring on The New Loretta Young Show,and Donna Douglas, who played Ellie Mae Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies. (The term "teen" was used loosely: the Rambos were in their early twenties, and Douglas was around thirty.)
This was my first taste of Hollywood glamour, and the perks and perils it held. I'd never experienced the excitement of fans, gawkers, and paparazzi, calling out our names. But it was daunting to have kids thrusting pieces of paper and pens at me, asking for my signature.
Johnny Crawford, who played Chuck Connors's boy, Mark, confidently obliged everyone who wanted his autograph, which made sense¡ªhe was in his midteens. But I was still in first grade. I was sweating it out self-consciously, doing my best to sign my name for a fan in my slow, rudimentary scrawl¡ªR ... O ...¡ªwhen he grew impatient and just ripped the piece of paper right out of my hands. "There's the Beav!" he said, making a beeline for Jerry Mathers, who was six years older than me and consequently could write a whole lot faster.
I thought, This is too embarrassing. I gotta figure out this handwriting stuff.
AS IT HAPPENED,I didn't attend regular school at all in first grade. It was studio school all the way. With the first season of Andy's show coming to an end, my newfound fame presented an opportunity: Warner Bros. was adapting the 1957 Broadway hitThe Music Man,by Meredith Willson, and they needed a little boy to play Winthrop Paroo, the lisping, much younger brother of the female lead, Shirley Jones's Marian Paroo.
I don't think I auditioned¡ªThe Andy Griffith Show essentially served that purpose. But my father left the choice of whether or not to take the part to me. Dad explained that the movie would shoot while The Andy Griffith Showwas on hiatus, when I was supposed to resume my schooling at Stevenson Elementary School. It would mean sacrificing the few months when I would get to live like a normal kid.
"You don't have to do this if you don't want to, Ronny," Dad said. "With The Andy Griffith Show, it's different¡ªthat's a seven-year contract. That means that if the show keeps going, you have to do it. But you don't have to do other things."
I was torn. I was looking forward to returning to Stevenson, where I had spent kindergarten. Though we now lived in Hollywood, my parents had wangled permission for me to stay in the Burbank school system. But I could tell that Dad wanted me to say yes. He knew it was a rare opportunity and he clearly had a bullish attitude about the movie's prospects, telling me, "This is a really good script, it's from a successful Broadway musical, and there'll be other kids in the cast."
I really mulled it¡ªin fact, it's the only time in my childhood where I took my time and thought through the question of "Do I really want to do this?" Having seen Dad sit waiting by the phone for days, I already understood that, as an actor, you take what you can get while the getting's good. But I was on the fence. I wanted to go to school and play with other kids.
Ultimately, I agreed to do to The Music Man. A little bit more out of respect for Dad than for any career-building purpose. At that point, I still didn't really understand what a career was, nor did I think that what I was doing on TV and movie sets had any bearing on something as serious as my future.
But I sure am glad that I said yes. The experience proved to be a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, and, for me, a new frontier in entertainment-making, creative energy, and clockwork professionalism.
Andy Griffith was excited for me, too. He had been approached by Meredith Willson about playing the male lead, Professor Harold Hill, in the original Broadway production. He paid a visit to Willson's house, where the composer and his wife performed the whole show at the piano. Andy said it was one of the most mesmerizing performances that he ever witnessed. But Andy withdrew from consideration. Though he had serious theater chops and a genuine musicality, he felt he lacked the slickness and dance skills to pull off the role persuasively. The part of Harold Hill went to Robert Preston, its rightful owner, then, now, and forever. And now Preston was about to bring his signature role to life on the big screen.
This being a big-budget studio picture, the studio invested some time and money preparing me to learn how to sing: a good move, since I had inherited the Harold Beckenholdt gene for being hopeless at carrying a tune. And Winthrop had two big musical spotlights, singing a verse of "The Wells Fargo Wagon" and his very own song, "Gary, Indiana."
While I was still finishing up the first season of The Andy Griffith Show,I was required to begin side sessions with a voice teacher named Mrs. Webber. She was something out of 1940s Hollywood, an Olive Oyl¨Cthin woman with her own baroquely decorated bungalow on the Warner's lot. Frizzy cat-lady hair, oversized glasses, big, wide eyes augmented by elaborate press-on lashes, and bright red lipstick that never quite covered up the cracks in her lips. And the patience of a saint.
I did not take to singing easily. There was a lotof repetition, a lot of "Let's try that again, Ronny," as Mrs. Webber pounded out the notes on the piano ad nauseum, waiting for me to absorb the melody and rhythm of "Gary, Indiana."
Concurrently, my dad was teaching me how to do Winthrop's lisp. I wasn't aware of what a lisp was when I took the part. Dad explained, without judgment, "Some people have a speech impediment where the letter scomes out as a thsound." We worked it out methodically, line by line in the script. So much so that I can still recite from memory Winthrop's exclamation when he receives his prized cornet: "Thithter, thithter! I never thought I'd ever thee anything tho thcrumpthyuth ath thith thcrumpthyuth tholid gold thing! Oh, thithter!" (Translation: "Sister, sister! I never thought I'd ever see anything so scrumptious as this scrumptious solid-gold thing. Oh, sister!")
And it wasn't just a lisp. On certain s's, for comic effect, I also had to turn the sibilant sound into a spit-spraying raspberry. For example, the little kicker to that speech went, "Oh, thhh-thithter!" There were also raspberries built into my songs: "If you'd like to have a logical ex-thhhh-planation" in "Gary, Indiana," and "Thhh-umpthin' thhh-pecial just for me!" in "The Wells Fargo Wagon."
This was a lot to absorb. But Mrs. Webber kept drilling and drilling me until we finally arrived at a reasonably in-tune, rhythmically acceptable version of "Gary, Indiana." The next step was to prerecord the song in a studio; once the cameras were rolling, I would lip-sync to this recording.
The recording session took place on the large scoring stage at Warner Bros. The major studios still employed in-house orchestras, and I arrived to find about eighty musicians sitting behind their music stands, attired not in formal wear but in casual clothes, smoking cigarettes, filling out crossword puzzles, and reading the trades. That is, until Ray Heindorf, the movie's music supervisor, arrived and tapped his baton on his stand. On cue, the musicians sat up straight, poised to begin. This was a few years before the development of sophisticated multitrack recording technology, so I sang live with an orchestra. Me,Ronny Howard, live with an orchestra, like I was Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald.
Except I was the furthest thing from them. After five or six takes, I could feel some tension emanating from Mr. Heindorf. A Warner Bros. lifer who had been in the business since the advent of the talkies, he had worked with Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Cagney, and Judy Garland. Now he was trying to get his orchestra to play in rhythm with a seven-year-old kid who, while doing his darndest to nail the pitch and a fake lisp, had no innate gift for keeping time.
Mr. Heindorf conferred with Mrs. Webber, who coached me as best she could. We did a few more takes, but it still wasn't working. Then Mr. Heindorf hit upon an idea. He handed me his baton, positioning it in my fingers so I was holding it the correct way. An assistant brought out a box for me to stand on.
"Now, Ronny, you direct the orchestra while you sing," Mr. Heindorf said. So we tried that. The musicians were palpably exasperated, staring at me quizzically while barely hanging on, and I think that Mr. Heindorf was back-seat-conducting them from where he stood, a few steps behind me.
One way or another, we arrived at a take that was usable, and that's what you hear in the movie. I suspect that the powers that be, Meredith Willson and the director, Morton DaCosta, decided that my determined if off-key attempts to hit those high notes¡ª"Not Louisiana, Paris, France, New York, or Rohhhme"¡ªwere, if nothing else, kind of adorable.
Still, my troubles with this number were not over. My first day on the set was the day that DaCosta was shooting "Gary, Indiana" on the front porch of the Paroo house¡ªShirley Jones and me, along with Pert Kelton as our mother. (Pert was wonderful, by the way¡ªa stout, comically shrewd lady who, like Bob Preston, had been in The Music Man's original Broadway cast.) The problem was that I was supposed to do a little soft-shoe at the end of the song in time with the music, a cute little tippety-tap that ended with a pirouette.
As has been previously established, I got no rhythm. Poor Mrs. Webber was also charged with getting me to master my dance steps. We practiced for hours, both of us in tap shoes. I wasn't going to be wearing tap shoes in the movie, but this way, I could hear my steps as I took them, which provided confirmation of whether I was on or off the beat.
We thought we had the routine down, but before we shot the scene, Morton DaCosta asked us to do a rehearsal run. Mrs. Webber was there, as was Onna White, the choreographer. Despite their gentle encouragement, I kept messing up. After a couple of tries, I heard DaCosta sigh and tell the camera operator, "Dolly in and cut him at the knees."