Today, Ron Howard is best known as an Academy Award-winning director who made such hit movies as A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13. Howard has found so much success behind the camera that it’s easy to forget that he got his start as a child star on “The Andy Griffith Show” when he was just 6 years-old.
One person who has never forgotten this, however, is Howard himself. After the show’s star Andy Griffith passed away in 2012, Howard took to social media to say that he would be “forever grateful” to him.
“Andy Griffith,” he wrote on Twitter. “His pursuit of excellence and the joy he took in creating served generations & shaped my life I’m forever grateful RIP Andy.”
Andy Griffith
His pursuit of excellence and the joy he took in creating served generations & shaped my life
I'm forever grateful
RIP Andy— Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) July 3, 2012
Howard later elaborated on this further in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“He treated me really well, but he made it a learning experience, not in a stern, taskmaster kind of a way, but I was really allowed a real insight into creativity and how things work and why some scenes were funny and others weren’t,” he said of Griffith. “That insight has served me really well over the years. Andy was really kind to me, always playful and fun, but, by the same token, he wanted to get the work done.”
In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Howard recalled the many things he learned from Griffith from working with him for years as a child on set.
“He taught me a great deal through the examples he set and the approach to our work on the set,” Howard said of Griffith. “I learned about comedic timing, paying off characters in the third act of a story line, and the equal values of both focused rehearsal and, at particular moments, of total chaotic spontaneity.”
“He proved hour by hour, episode by episode that creativity and neurotic angst were in fact not inexorably linked,” he added. “He led by example and we demonstrated that a cast and company could play practical jokes on one another, laugh ‘til they cried and still get 12 pages of the script shot every day while producing a No. 1-rated show.
“And, as I look back today, knowing that Andy’s vision yielded a show that still airs daily all over the country and holds an absolutely unique place in the annals of its medium, I’m reminded of another lesson taught by example,” Howard concluded. “Do all that, and don’t forget to have as many laughs as you can along the way.”
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