The beloved series may not have come together the way it did if it weren’t for a note from Howard’s father to the show’s star Andy Griffith.
The fictional sleepy town from The Andy Griffith Show (based on the very real Mount Airy, N.C., where visitors can actually eat at Snappy Lunch and order a pork chop sandwich) lives forever in the minds of anyone who watched the series during its original run from 1960 to 1968 or in reruns ever since. But it may not have come together the way it did if it weren’t for a suggestion from Rance Howard — Ron Howard’s father — to the show’s star Andy Griffith.
Ron Howard, the Oscar-winning director whose credits include Splash, Cocoon, The Paper, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13 (about to get a 30th anniversary IMAX rerelease), Solo: A Star Wars Story, the JD Vance biopic Hillbilly Elegy, and a recent return to acting on The Studio, sat down with Vulture’s esteemed writer Bilge “Good Movie” Ebiri for a look back on a lengthy career that began when he was a kid.
Young Ronnie Howard played Opie Taylor, Griffith’s young son, and what Howard didn’t know until years later was how influential his father, also an actor, was on the way the character was developed.
“When we were doing a Return to Mayberry TV movie or reunion special or something, Andy told me that my dad had come to him very early on in the show and said, ‘You’re writing Opie the way most sitcom kids are written. They’re wiseasses and smarter than the dad.’ And he said, ‘Ronnie can do that, but what if Opie actually respected his dad?'”
Howard continued, “Now, I don’t know if Dad was just worried about me getting into bad habits, or I think he was, in his own very simple way, actually teaching me Actors Studio stuff. It was the simplest version of Method acting, finding the truth in moments. I think maybe he felt like there was a lot of artifice in these punch-line-driven deliveries that would be required.”
Ebiri suggested that Griffith’s emergence as a surrogate father for millions of 20th-century television viewers may not have come to pass without this tweak. Howard said, “I think a lot doesn’t happen if he doesn’t make that suggestion.”
He added that he “tried not to screw things up” and “what Andy wanted was a truthfulness. But it still required perfect timing and exactly the right tone.” He also said that “Andy was always annoyed that the media didn’t really embrace the show. In season five, I remember him saying, ‘How long do we have to be in the top ten for them to understand why this show works?’ And then he started reading the Variety review out loud, and it wasn’t very flattering.”
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Here, for a slice of nostalgia corn pone, is a look at the best of Ron Howard’s Opie on The Andy Griffith Show.
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