Remembering Rance Howard, or Father Really Does Know Best

Rance played Bruce Dern's brother in one of his last films

For me Thanksgiving weekend ended on a sad note, with the news that Rance Howard had passed away at the age of 89. Rance was not a household name, like his famous son, Ron. But anyone acquainted with the Howards is well aware that Ron’s steadiness and common sense are part of the family legacy. Jean Howard once said of the grown-up Ron, “He’s the most determined person I ever met in my life. I think he gets this from his dad.”  

Rance Howard started out in an unlikely place for an actor, and with an unlikely name. He was a Oklahoma farm boy, born Harold Engle Beckenholdt, who discovered the magic of cinema when merchants screened free movies to lure the country folk to town on Saturday nights. He first met his future wife, Jean Speegle, when they acted together in productions at the University of Oklahoma. Later they toured in a bus-and-truck theatre troupe, starring in child-friendly productions of Cinderella and Snow White. Sometimes the troupe was short on dwarves, so the tall, lanky Rance would get on his knees to fill in. 

Later, after son Ronny entered their lives, Rance and Jean moved to New York City to further their careers. At one audition, Rance discovered that a small boy was needed for a featured role. Because he and his four-year-old son enjoyed performing comic scenes from Broadway hits, it seemed appropriate to bring Ronny in to meet director Anatole Litvak. That’s how Ronny Howard got his first screen credit: the movie was The Journey, starring Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr. 

When the family moved to California, Rance nabbed small parts in a number of films and TV dramas, but it was Ronny who was the breakout star. The nation fell in love with the cute redhead who played Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show. Rance was a familiar presence on the set, playing a few roles and even writing an episode called “The Ball Game” that became his son’s very favorite. Even more important, he was there to supervise Ronny, ensuring that his son was always a consummate professional and never a spoiled brat. When I was researching Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon . . . and Beyond, I spoke to a number of Hollywood performers—Shirley Jones for one—who remembered Rance gently coaching from the sidelines, helping Ronny handle emotional scenes but never usurping the director’s prerogative.

When Ronny Howard the actor evolved into Ron Howard the director, the family unit remained close. Ron’s first directing gig came out of a deal he’d made with B-movie legend Roger Corman. Ron, then at the height of his acting fame on Happy Days, was being sought to play the lead in a teen car-crash comedy called Eat My Dust. Eager to move into directing, he accepted the role with the understanding that if the film did well he’d have the chance to write and direct a movie on a subject of Corman’s choosing. It turned out Roger wanted more of the same. And so Ron and his father were soon hammering out Grand Theft Auto, about a young couple who steal a Rolls Royce and head out to Las Vegas to get married, with a good many people in hot pursuit. 

I was fascinated to learn, when I questioned Corman story editor Frances Doel, how well the two Howards functioned as a team. It’s not many a 23-year-old, on the brink of a career breakthrough, who can work comfortably with his dad. But Rance Howard was clearly a very special man.

Rance and Ron Howard: Oklahoma’s Resilient Native Sons

Oscar Hammerstein had it right: Oklahoma’s a place where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain. We’ve all seen the photos coming out of Moore, Oklahoma. It was flattened last week by a EF5 tornado, which sent winds of 210 mph barreling across a stretch of prairie three miles wide and seventeen miles long. Twenty-four people died, including ten children.

But we’ve also been hearing about the resilient folk who make Oklahoma their home. They’re hard-working and plain-spoken. They may not be as picturesque as the farmers and the cowhands in Rogers and Hammerstein’s musical, but their can-do spirit helps them survive disasters without hysteria. Which makes it fitting indeed that Ron Howard is Oklahoma-born.

Ron Howard seems to have led a charmed life. He made his professional acting debut at age five. When he was six, The Andy Griffith Show made him a star. He passed through his awkward teen years without much harm done, and at twenty he starred in his second hit TV series, Happy Days. When he was twenty-three he fulfilled a lifelong dream by directing his first film, Grand Theft Auto. Quickly leaving B-movies behind, he helmed such Hollywood hits as Splash, Cocoon¸ and Parenthood. Apollo 13 brought him critical respect, and A Beautiful Mind brought him two Oscars. Today, as both director and producer, he has a full slate. Most recently, he’s continued his involvement with Arrested Development, for which he serves as executive producer, while also reprising his deadpan narrator’s role and playing himself on-camera. Great careers don’t just happen. Sure, there’s luck involved, but also hard work, as well as an ability to shrug off disappointments and keep moving forward.  

Everyone who has worked with Ron Howard speaks of his common sense and his ability to remain down-to-earth while wielding serious show biz clout. And everyone credits his parents, Rance and Jean, for molding him into the man he has become. The effervescent Jean Speegle was a star in Duncan, Oklahoma, population 22,000. She served as editor-in-chief of her high school yearbook and was elected student council president. After graduating, she was accepted into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. On February 10, 1947, Jean left a dance class and stepped into the path of a speeding truck. The result: a brain concussion, a broken arm and shoulder, and a pelvis shattered in three places. She lay unconscious for ten days in a New York hospital. At last she was put on a train for Oklahoma, where doctors warned her worried family she might never walk again. But Jean, always a fighter, beat the odds.

Studying drama at the University of Oklahoma, she met a country boy who had walked off the family farm with the dream of becoming an actor. Their courtship took place during a bus-and-truck tour with a children’s theatre troupe. (Rance would get down on his knees and add a fake beard to play one of Snow White’s dwarves.) Not long after the birth of Ronald William Howard, they moved to New York and then Southern California, in pursuit of acting careers. Their young son would far outstrip them both in terms of Hollywood fame and fortune. But they lived on Rance’s earnings as a character actor and worked hard to keep their small star a regular boy. Heart disease claimed Jean far too soon, but Rance continues to take on small but meaty roles at age eighty-five. He’s a survivor, and a credit to his Oklahoma roots, those roots that hold fast even when life seems to be blowing in the wind.