What made up for the Cowardly Lion’s indifference was O’Malley’s invisible sidekick, a leprechaun named McSnoyd, played by Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird, Foghorn Leghorn, and Elmer Fudd. When Dad told me who the balding man with the mustache was, I zoomed up to him, eager to shake his hand. Blanc was clearly used to awestruck kids like me and obligingly performed a highlight reel of his characters, saliva flying everywhere as I delighted in his repertoire.
And to Lahr’s credit, he was amazing once the cameras were rolling. He provided my first exposure to an entertainer for whom the command “Action!” is like the flick of a switch. He rose to the occasion and transformed into the character, bringing a completely different energy to his performance than he did to his off-camera interactions with the cast and crew.
Mr. O’Malley was good television and I felt like I was a part of something special. Right before my eyes was a sight that I, at least, found entertaining and hilarious: Lahr floating into the frame with little pink wings on his back and Blanc off to the side, bringing his voice wizardry to the leprechaun character.
What I didn’t yet understand was the relationship between the scenes that we were shooting beneath those hot lights and a living, breathing audience of viewers. I made no connection between my own passionate viewing of Superman, The Lone Ranger, Popeye, the Heckle and Jeckle cartoons, and Laurel and Hardy comedy shorts and the work that I was doing. As for prime time, it was past my bedtime—I didn’t see myself on TV until The Andy Griffith Show, which my parents occasionally allowed me to stay up to watch on Monday nights. I was not aware that the camera was a portal, and that people outside the studio were actually watching my performances, until I started hearing shouts of “Hey, Opie!” when I walked down the street.
The Mr. O’Malley pilot got its shot at winning over America when it aired one evening on General Electric Theater, yet another popular anthology TV series of the era. The program’s host was a former movie star who was now in a career doldrum, reduced to being a television presenter. Give the guy credit, though: he liked what he saw in me. At the broadcast’s conclusion, Ronald Reagan ad-libbed the line “And special thanks to little Ronny Howard, who did a wonderful job as Barnaby.”
My performance also caught the eye of a major TV producer named Sheldon Leonard, the cocreator of the long-running hit sitcom The Danny Thomas Show. Leonard’s great gift was tailoring a TV show to a specific actor’s skill set. For Thomas, a successful nightclub comedian, he created a series in which Thomas played a family man who was also . . . a successful nightclub comedian. Leonard also helped Carl Reiner mold The Dick Van Dyke Show so that it played to Van Dyke’s strengths as an expressive actor with an elastic face and physical-comedy chops.
When Leonard saw me play Barnaby, he was building yet another program around a seasoned actor-comedian: in this case, a folksy guy from North Carolina named Andy Griffith.
5
Introducing Opie
CLINT
My parents used to sit face-to-face at the kitchen table like it was a partner’s desk, each of them pecking away at a manual typewriter, Mom on a big Olympia, Dad on an old, banged-up portable. In the days before copying machines and printers, everything had to be done manually, including addressing and stamping business envelopes. Lots of big companies contracted out this task to freelancers, paying a penny an envelope. It was tedious work, but Mom and Dad needed the cash. So this was a regular sight for me, the two of them with their heads down, making a mechanical racket.
This was an echo of their New York years, before Ron and I were born. Mom was a professional-grade typist, and when she gave up acting and took the job at CBS, she channeled her competitiveness into the typing pool. Every script for every CBS entertainment show had to be hand-typed. So if, say, The Jack Benny Program or Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts was about to be on TV, Mom was on it, her fingers flying across those keys.
But in our house in Burbank, the typing was an occasionally necessary source of additional income. Ron and I were disabused at an early age of any notion that acting is a glamorous profession. We understood that Dad was an actor, and we also understood that he and we did not have it easy. Mind you, Ron and I never wanted for anything. There was food on the table and there were toys all over the floor. But we saw Dad endure his share of dry spells and tense times, and, pretty early, we recognized what was going on.