Dad escorted me into the lobby to cool off. Bob Totten ran out, too, consoling me and telling me that the crediting was unfair and a surprise even to him. I now understand that this was simply a matter of studio politics and power plays. The other actors’ agents outjockeyed my agent. Fifty-odd years later, it doesn’t matter one whit. I rate that movie as one of my best as a kid.
RON
I was totally on board with The Wild Country when we were making it, and Bob Totten’s mentoring was a formative experience in terms of my filmmaking aspirations. Totten asked me what I was doing to further my dreams. I told him that I was making Super 8 movies in my backyard but that I hoped to make my first feature while still in my teens. He smiled wryly. “R. W.,” he said, using the lofty nom d’auteur I was keen to use, “you need to ask yourself every day what you’ve done about being a filmmaker. Did you write something? Did you study a movie you like? Did you shoot or edit or do one goddamn thing to make yourself a film? Get the hell out of your backyard and get to it!” I gave Bob a sharp nod and pledged to him that I would heed his words.
But by the time of The Wild Country’s release late in 1970, I was a mere three months from turning seventeen—and frankly, I was embarrassed to be in a corny Disney movie. It felt like an extension of my Opie image, which I had finally managed to shake off at Burroughs High School.
The film stiffed at the box office. I was relieved. That meant that it was only around in theaters and drive-ins for about two weeks before it disappeared. That’s a harsh thing for me to acknowledge, that I was rooting against my own movie. But such was the push-pull of adolescence, in which my gratitude for all that Opie had given me existed in tension with my desire to be a man.
Because I was a man, damn it. After all, I now had a car and a girlfriend.
I SHOULD EXPLAIN the car first. When I turned sixteen and passed my driver’s test, Mom and Dad granted me permission to dip into my not inconsiderable savings to buy my own wheels. I had my eye on a muscle car, a Plymouth Barracuda—the very caricature of a teenage boy’s he-manly ride. I even test-drove one. But unsurprisingly, my parents nixed that idea. So I settled for my Plan B: a Volkswagen Beetle, a brand-new 1970 model, with a white exterior and red vinyl upholstery. My pride and joy. It remains in my garage to this day.
Having a car was a big step forward for me. I had been the boy in the bubble wrap, the kid who wasn’t even allowed to ride his bike in the streets. Now, Mom and Dad trusted me to drive to and from acting jobs by myself. They still placed a hell of a lot of restrictions on me, but the simple act of having that independence and some drive time alone with my thoughts did wonders for my sense of self.
Which brings us, indirectly, to the girlfriend. Going into my junior year of high school in the fall of 1970, I knew that I was going to be away for part of the first semester. I had landed a promising job on a new ABC comedy-drama called The Smith Family. Its starred the legendary Henry Fonda, whose film career was in something of a lull at that moment. Fonda played a police detective named Chad Smith. I was cast as the middle of his three children, Bob.
Since you’ve probably never heard of The Smith Family, you already know that it didn’t work out—we lasted for only a season and a half. But during the first week of school, I scrambled to get my assignments from my various teachers, because I knew that I would be out of school and on a soundstage for the better part of the next two months. On the Friday of that week, as I prepared to leave, I ran into some girls in Mrs. McBride’s English class. As we chatted, my eyes locked on a girl who was off to the side, not part of the conversation. I recognized her—the redhead who sat in the front row. She was also on the drill team that performed flag routines at halftime during our basketball games. My first thought was Wow, she looks a little like Sandy Totten. My next was God, she’s pretty.
And she was looking right at me. She raised her hand and curled a finger in a “Come hither” gesture. I left the girls I was talking to because the girl who most intrigued me had just shocked the hell out of me. I walked over to her. There was an awkward pause. Then she spoke.