Leon, like Harpo Marx, never spoke. We never found out who his parents were or if he even had parents. But he always wore a cowboy outfit and was always eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, usually with about half its contents smeared all over his face. A generous soul, Leon would come across a grown-up and thrust his sandwich in the adult’s face in a Here, take a bite gesture. The adult, usually flustered, would say “No thank you, Leon.”
Leon’s most common foil was Barney Fife, to whom he offered the sandwich at inopportune moments. The best-known one is when Barney is undercover in the sporting-goods section of Weaver’s Department Store, hoping to apprehend a shoplifter by posing stock-still as a mannequin. Andy is fooled by Barney’s disguise, but not Leon, who immediately recognizes the deputy and blows his cover by proffering the PB&J.
In another episode, we did a bit where Leon accidentally locked Barney in the jail cell. That day, I took a swig from Otis’s jug, which was filled not with hooch but apple juice, my then drink of choice.
Just like that, I, too, was in the business. Like Ron’s career, mine began organically, as a matter of circumstance. The difference for me is that Ron had provided a blueprint. My folks now knew that if I wanted to go down the same route, they could manage it.
RON
The way Andy dealt with Howard McNear’s stroke was such a lesson to me on multiple levels. Andy had the crew rig up a wooden support with a small backrest for Howard to lean against in the scenes that required Floyd to stand. To create the illusion of Floyd as a working barber, the wardrobe people draped his smock in such a way as to hide the stand that supported Howard’s half-immobilized body, and made sure that Howard always clutched something in his nonworking hand, a comb or a newspaper. Then the cameramen framed the shot just so. This taught me yet again that there were almost no limits to what can be achieved in motion pictures through ingenuity. Where there’s a will there’s a way. And the illusion came off with viewers none the wiser, an accomplishment as humane as it was heroic. Pulling off this operation took grace and strength by Andy, and by Howard and Helen, too.
Another of Andy’s attempts at accommodation didn’t work out so well. In a 1963 episode called “A Black Day for Mayberry,” a top-secret gold shipment passes through Mayberry en route to Fort Knox. Two U.S. Treasury agents come to town, on the lookout for a crook who has designs on the gold. For one of the agent roles, Andy cast an old friend. I could sense that Andy was both happy to see his friend and a little anxious. During rehearsals, Andy was not his usual relaxed, wisecracking self. His eyes were full of concern rather than their usual sparkle.
Opie was in the scene with the Treasury agents, so I was on set when they did the master shot, in which the agents sit on wooden chairs in the Mayberry courthouse, waiting to meet with the sheriff. Everything went smoothly to that point. Then the crew repositioned the cameras for a closer shot on Andy’s friend, who would explain the case and describe the suspect. In the first take, the actor fumbled his lines. No big deal. Bob Sweeney, the director, simply called for another take, and the makeup people attended to the actor’s brow.
I sat right next to the camera during the second take, which went disturbingly wrong. Andy’s friend began the agent’s speech, performing it reasonably well at first. But then it drifted off course into something . . . personal, not having to do with the character or the episode. It was instead an apologetic monologue, delivered with a pained expression. He rambled on about Andy’s success and his own personal and professional frustration. Then he broke into sobs.
Bob Sweeney whispered “Cut” to the camera operator. We were no longer rolling, and for a moment, no one knew quite what to do. Then Andy’s friend literally slid off the chair he was sitting in and fell to the floor, curling up in a fetal position and bawling uncontrollably. Andy rushed to his friend’s side, and, with Bob’s help, got him back upright and loosened his tie. Then they gently walked him off the set.
Later, Andy told everyone that his friend had been struggling with emotional and psychiatric issues. He had hoped that giving his buddy a part on the show would help in the man’s recovery. Alas, it seemed to have had the opposite effect. This incident marked the first time I was conscious of mental illness and its toll. I’ve carried the image of that actor’s anguished, helpless face with me ever since. I drew upon my memory of him more than thirty years later when I made the film A Beautiful Mind. The film stars Russell Crowe as John Nash, a real-life mathematician and Nobel laureate whose schizophrenia led to his institutionalization. When we filmed scenes depicting Nash’s mental unraveling, I innately understood not only his suffering but that of those who bore witness to it. I recalled the visceral fear and panic that rippled through the set that day back in the 1960s, the disruptive impact it had on a roomful of people who couldn’t fathom what they were seeing. These recollections influenced my approach to Nash’s story.