Alas, we slipped badly in the ratings. Disney made a point of knocking us off. We had caught them with their pants down when we became a hit, so, the second time around, they upped the ante, supplying Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color with higher-grade programming.
This was also the beginning of the Rural Purge era, when CBS canned a bunch of shows despite their good ratings because they didn’t reach the urban, high-spending demographic that advertisers coveted. So that meant the end of Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and The Beverly Hillbillies. We weren’t a broad comedy like those shows, but we were decidedly unhip and no longer a part of CBS’s future plans. They were moving in a more provocative, socially conscious direction, with such programs as All in the Family and M*A*S*H.
We had wrapped the second season thinking that we would head back to Florida in due time. The network had scheduled an in-store appearance by the cast at the new Tower Records shop on Sunset Boulevard in L.A. to promote The Bear Facts. But the album never went on sale—it was hastily withdrawn from circulation and is now a collector’s item that can be found only on eBay.
I was out in the backyard playing basketball one day during hiatus when I heard the phone ring in Dad’s office. A few minutes later, he beckoned me up the stairs. With a solemn look on his face, Dad said, “We’re not going back to Florida, Clint. CBS decided to pull the plug.”
I was confused but not devastated. I was ten years old and had already contemplated what it would be like if I worked on Gentle Ben all the way to age fourteen, as Ron did on The Andy Griffith Show. The more I processed this, the more I believed that I would look pretty silly pulling a bear’s chain as a teenager. And I was accustomed to looking forward and moving on. I simply went back to a routine with which I was already familiar: auditions, scoring one-episode guest shots, running lines with Dad in the evening, and driving over the hills into Hollywood to shoot the next morning. Staying in Burbank also allowed me to focus on my passions, sportswriting and baseball. I pivoted to banging away on a typewriter and perfecting my curveball.
I never saw Bruno again in person—or in bear, I should say. But it made me happy when, a few years later, I was watching John Huston’s movie The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean in a theater and saw Bruno up on the screen, performing opposite Paul Newman. Every bear has a unique look, and I had become good at distinguishing one from another. I recognized Bruno instantly and felt a pang of pride for my guy.
RON
I quickly discovered that I had overestimated the demand for my services as an actor. There was no “Opie bounce,” no clamoring by the networks and the studios to get their mitts on the kid from The Andy Griffith Show. The work I was getting was pretty underwhelming: a Disney TV movie （yes, broadcast as part of the Wonderful World series that knocked off Gentle Ben） and guest shots on such long-running shows as Lassie, The F.B.I., and Daniel Boone, as well as the fleetingly popular, of-their-time shows Land of the Giants, Lancer, and Judd for the Defense. These parts were perfectly fine as jobs but sobering as my new reality, in that I received no special billing or higher pay for being a household name.
I fared no better in the film world. I didn’t come close to landing a part in any of the prestigious movies that I auditioned for, which included Bless the Beasts and the Children, A Separate Peace, and The Last Picture Show.
I didn’t mind that I no longer had a regular gig, because I was, after all, a teenager in high school. I was absorbed in sports and the pursuit of girls, and I enjoyed the novelty of being able to spend an entire school year in school, with my classmates. But it stung to realize that the TV and motion-picture industry, which I had grown up viewing as a reliable source of validation, affirmation, and employment, did not believe that it owed me anything. It was not invested in my material comfort or emotional well-being. Right after Andy Griffith, I had the audacity to turn down one-off parts in Bonanza and The Mod Squad because I had made a commitment to the school basketball program that I had to keep if I wanted to play. I somewhat smugly assumed that the industry would always be eager to take me back. It wasn’t.
To some degree, the industry is set up to fail and destabilize child actors. They’re in demand when they’re prepubescent and cute, but less so as they enter adolescence. Just as these kids are entering the most vulnerable years of their childhoods—self-aware, awkward, and hormonal—their livelihood and sense of identity are pulled out from under them. This, naturally, only compounds the feelings of frustration and inadequacy that all kids experience as they go through puberty.