I shook Henry’s hand, and so began a relationship that, in unexpected and sometimes complicated ways, would transform my career—and, indeed, my life.
CLINT
We were happy to see Ron stay in the acting business. Work is work, and a series could be a lucrative job. Directing could wait for a while. We were happy to see Ron, period. Though I seized the opportunity to claim his old bedroom, the best one in our house, I missed having my brother around every day. Still, he checked in fairly often—our place was close to Cheryl’s—and he sometimes met with Dad to work on scripts.
The year that Ron got Happy Days, he came by to hang out when Dad was away on a location shoot, leaving Mom and me by ourselves. Dad was in North Carolina, working on a movie called Where the Lilies Bloom. It was a great gig, one of the best of Dad’s career. The film’s producer, Robert Radnitz, was riding high on the critical and commercial success of his previous film, the Oscar-nominated Sounder, and this was his follow-up.
Like Sounder, Where the Lilies Bloom was a family-friendly movie about poor folk in the South: in this case, a widower and his four kids who work as sharecroppers in the Great Smoky Mountains. Dad played the widower, Roy Luther, a sickly man who instructs his children to bury him in an unmarked grave when he dies. By concealing his death, the kids will not be made wards of the state and split up. Roy meets his maker relatively early in the film, but for Dad, who was accustomed to being Mr. Two Lines, this was a substantial role, a lot to sink his teeth into. And it was a substantial film, well received upon its release in 1974.
Ron and I were contentedly lounging around in our house when we heard unusual noises coming from Mom, who was downstairs in the kitchen. She was on the phone with Dad and she was yelling. This was not normal. Our folks had occasional spats, but these never upset us much because every married couple does. One thing Mom and Dad definitely did not do was yell at each other. So this attracted my and Ron’s attention. The way our house was laid out, we could station ourselves at the top of the stairs in such a way that Mom didn’t see us.
The call went on for a distressingly long time. Mom would get agitated, calm a bit, and then build steam back up to a point where she was even more wound up than before—it was like a little earthquake that progressed into the Big One. Ron and I silently cast glances at each other, trying to get the picture of what was going on. It was like listening to a ball game on the radio, only there was nothing remotely entertaining about it.
RON
Little by little, the contours of the argument became clear. Dad was nearing the end of his trip, but he had told Mom that he needed to stay a little longer than expected. Mom had received this news poorly. She kept saying the name “Vera.” As in, “You’re with Vera, I know you are!”
Vera . . . as in Vera Miles . . . who had played Clint’s mom in the movie Gentle Giant and was the mother to both of us in The Wild Country.
I was confused. And rattled. Mom hung up on Dad at one point, only to pick up the phone when it rang again, to resume their arguing.
When she hung up for the last time, Mom was in tears. We wandered down to the kitchen. I said, “What’s wrong, Mom?”
She exploded. “He’s in North Carolina and Vera is there and she’s got her eye on Rance! And I’m not going to stand for it!”
It was true that Vera Miles was in North Carolina on location with the Where the Lilies Bloom crew. She had recently divorced her husband and was newly partnered with Dad’s friend Bob Jones, who was serving as the movie’s assistant director: the same Bob Jones who lent me his two horses for my film Old Paint.
The Lilies shoot had run over schedule, and the production had chosen to extend Dad for an extra week. To Mom, this had shades of “Don’t wait up for me, honey, I’ll be working late.” But it just didn’t make sense. Films run over schedule all the time. Mom and Vera had been such fast friends on the set of The Wild Country.
Then came an unburdening that knocked me sideways. “I was happy in Duncan,” Mom said, referring to her Oklahoma hometown. “I’ve put in all these years. I’ve been taken for granted. Well, I’m not putting up with that! I’ve had it. I’m just going to pack my things and go home.”