We just lost Jackie Cooper, the foremost child star of his era. Back in 1931, he became the youngest best actor Oscar nominee of all time, for his leading role in a weepie boy-and-his-dog saga called Skippy. He was all of nine years old. Much admired for his ability to cry on cue, young Jackie was able to tap into the tough circumstances of his own upbringing: a father who went out for cigarettes and never returned; a financially strapped mother who toured in vaudeville, parking him with a grandmother who scrounged for work as an extra. In the Depression era, when he was known as “America’s Boy,” he made big bucks and hobnobbed with celebrities. But he never got over the loss of his childhood. Predictably, he grew into a rocky adult life, marked by booze, bankruptcies, fast cars, faster women. He got through it somehow, and ultimately found his niche on television, both as an actor in light comedies and as an Emmy-winning director.
Cooper’s trajectory makes me think of another celebrated child actor, little Ronny Howard. The adorable redhead began acting at four, and entered American living rooms at five, as Opie Taylor on a sitcom classic, The Andy Griffith Show. (During his summer hiatus, he co-starred in popular movies like The Music Man and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father.) When he and his TV dad, Sheriff Andy Taylor, strolled down to the fishing hole for the last time, Ronny was fourteen years old, and quickly outgrowing his days as a cute kid. Like Jackie Cooper, he was entering the awkward fraternity of over-the-hill child actors. Happily, Ronny Howard had much to fall back on. His parents, actors Rance Howard and Jean Speegle Howard, had raised him to be both a thoroughgoing professional in front of the cameras and a real boy at home. Rance, who regularly accompanied him to the set, made sure that he behaved himself and that he was never given special treatment. Jean, a stalwart PTA mom, oversaw the home front, providing Ronny and younger brother Clint with another kind of Mayberry experience in workaday Burbank, California.
Sadly, Jean Howard, who had overcome a devastating accident as a young woman, succumbed to heart disease at the age of seventy-two. But she lived long enough to see Ronny evolve into the very grown-up Ron Howard: a loyal husband, a devoted father of four, and a major Hollywood director. Paying tribute to Jean’s fight for life, Ron told a reporter in 1999, “A lot of that drive and ambition I have, it turns out, comes from my mother.” She may have taught him ambition, but she also taught him what really counts. When asked which of his many achievements she admired the most, she always said, “My grandchildren.”
Ron’s mother is no longer with him. Fortunately for me, mine is alive and well. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!
