* * *
RON
I was bursting with pride that week. The ratings were published in Variety, and I ran all over the soundstage holding a copy of the latest issue, showing it to Andy and the rest of the cast.
* * *
Gentle Ben was wholesome bordering on corny sometimes, and the critics condescended to us just as they did to The Andy Griffith Show. But I was proud of the end product. We never pretended to be anything other than what we were advertised as, family entertainment. We did an excellent job and our fan base loved us. In the 1990s, I attended a party hosted by Brian Grazer, Ron’s business partner in Imagine Entertainment. One of the guests was Eddie Murphy, then at the peak of his fame and Hollywood heat. He was surrounded by swarms of people and I figured that it wasn’t worth trying to introduce myself. To my surprise, Murphy excused himself from his clique of friends and hangers-on to walk up to . . . me!
We spent about fifteen minutes talking. The upshot was that Eddie loved Gentle Ben. When it was on, he told me, he was going through a rough time in his childhood. His family was poor, his father died, and his future felt uncertain. What gave him comfort, he said, was that every Sunday night, Gentle Ben took him somewhere else. He escaped to Florida and played with the animals. He imagined himself as that little boy—me.
What moved me about this moment at the party wasn’t that it was Eddie Murphy. It was his tone—the warmth and honesty, and the way he conveyed how meaningful our show was to him. I hear similar stories from nonfamous people of Eddie’s vintage when I’m in an airport or making a public appearance. Much as Balok has followed me around, so has Mark Wedloe, reminding me, over and over, of the lasting impact of good TV.
RON
Mom gave Clint and Dad a hero’s welcome whenever they came home from one of their long stretches in Florida. This was especially true when they came home for Christmas.
Christmas was sacrosanct in the Speegle household of Mom’s upbringing, requiring elaborate lights, decorations, and festivities. She brought this spirit with her to Burbank. Every year, as soon as Thanksgiving was over, she would festoon the house with tinsel and bunting that she pulled out of storage. Our tree always dripped with shiny ornaments. Every tabletop was covered in Santa figurines, and two replica toy soldiers from The Nutcracker, each about three feet high, stood sentry outside our front door.
Mom’s enthusiasm was contagious, and Clint and I got as hyped up for Christmas as she did. We helped her with the decorations and annually visited Santa at the May Company department store to tell him what we wanted.
Inevitably, there came a year when I began to question whether or not Santa Claus was real. I put this question to Dad, who was ready with a considered but no-nonsense Rance Howard answer.
“Well, no,” he said, “there is not actually a Santa Claus who lives at the North Pole and drives a flying sled. That’s just a legend. And that man whose lap you sat in at the department store? That was just an actor pretending to be Santa Claus.”
Hearing these words was a lot like coming upon those wrestlers working on their routine in the hallway of a TV studio: the truth was mind-blowing and kind of cool to know about, but it also hurt.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to maintain my composure and stifling the urge to cry, “I thought I could see the fake beard. And I think I saw a Santa suit like that for sale at Western Costume.”
“But it’s a great story that people tell to get in the spirit of Christmas,” he said. And then he added pointedly, “And we want Clint to enjoy it for as long as he can.”
I kept mum for Clint’s sake. But I won’t lie; I was shaken by the definitiveness of Dad’s debunking of my belief in the sleigh-driving Santa. In the end, however, I felt respected. Dad had honored me with an honest answer.
If you’ll forgive the diversion, allow me for a moment to cut to a generation later, when it was the 1980s and I was the father of young kids. Christmas was nearing, and my eldest child, Bryce, asked me the same question that I had asked Dad: “Is Santa real?”