I look at the Family Circus pretty much every day in 2022, and one thing I notice relative to seeing it from time to time in 1975 ...
... is that the parents don't rage at their children nearly as often now as they did then.
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
March 16, 1975
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It's a dark Adam-12 episode, "Suicide," on Channel 6 tonight, March 18, 1975:
ReplyDeleteA man in a green Pinto calls his wife and tells her he plans to commit suicide at 2:00 pm. Malloy and Reed locate the car and the officers stop him before he can carry out his attempt. Other calls include an abandoned newborn baby found in a trash can; she is tracked down to a hospital where it's discovered she's a drug addict, and an elderly woman alerts the officers to a car stripping operation; the men are arrested when they return to finish the job.
I, of course, instead will be watching Happy Days on Channel 3 at 7 p.m. Tonight's episode turns out to be a real squirmer, though. It goes to Richie's head when he has some success as a local disc jockey, "Richie the C," and all of his friends at Al's turn on him amid a remote broadcast. I totally remember being bothered and uncomfortable throughout this episode.
ReplyDeleteIsn't this basically the same story that happened to Peter Brady after he saved that girl at the toy store? Why were adults in the 1970's so worried that we would get a big head?
DeleteYou are totally on to something here. Worrying about getting a big head was one of the most valued parenting skills in the 1970s and '80s. My wife and I talk about this a lot, actually. It's still prevalent here (though no longer so dominant).
DeleteMy wife and I met some of my old WKU friends at the Jerry’s Restaurant in Paris, Kentucky, last fall after a marching-band festival. It was glorious, and the food was excellent. One of the friends brought to me a signed, hard-cover edition of The Boys, a memoir written by Ron Howard and Clint Howard. Oh, I loved it so!
ReplyDeleteHere are three things that I learned from the book:
ReplyDelete1. Before they married, the Howards' parents were in Ohio with a children’s-theatre troupe. At dinner one night, they learned from a server that, unlike Ohio, Kentucky required no three-day waiting period before marriage. At their next show stop, in Winchester, Kentucky, Jean Speegle and Rance Howard were married in the lobby of the Brown Proctor Hotel in Winchester on Oct. 5, 1948.
ReplyDelete2A. During The Andy Griffith Show’s third season, there’s an episode, “Andy Discovers America,” in which Opie and his friends test the patience of a new teacher, Helen Crump. In the book, Ron Howard tells the story of how he was unfocused during the making of this episode, acting out for the unusually high number of fellow child actors on stage.
ReplyDeleteThe episode’s director, Bob Sweeney, “said words that are still imprinted on my brain: ‘Ronny, I know it’s fun for you to have all these other kids around, and that you want to make them laugh. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about. Ronny, you’re a good young actor. But you still have a lot to learn. In fact, you aren’t even the best young actor in this scene today.' …
"Bob had more to say. He noticed that I had been slipping into some sloppy acting habits, falling into the classic series-regular trap of phoning it in …"
That's all from Page 94, and then this is on Page 95:
"I still feel a twinge of queasiness just thinking about this gentle but firm dressing-down. Bob was right: I was falling into bad habits, such as reciting my lines in a lazy singsong way instead of linking them to the real ideas that the words in the script conveyed. One reason that so many child actors fail to evolve into adult professionals is that, under pressure, they default to a perky autopilot, an artificial cuteness that some directors are willing to settle for. Left alone, these kids never grow as actors, and they reach their young adulthood unable to react, improvise, make spontaneous discoveries, or develop multiple approaches to their scene work. And then one day they’re no longer little and no longer adorable, and they have never really learned how to act. The business is done with them.”
I just watched this episode with my parents. It's one of my dad's favorites.
DeleteRon Howard is very good in it, but the other kids are really good, too.
Delete2B. Howard pushed himself to improve, studying other child actors’ performances. At the outset of the fourth season, in 1963, they went to work on the famous “Opie the Birdman” episode. This time, his focus and performance were shar. For the scene in which Opie realizes he has killed a mother bird, Howard had to layer portrayals of guilt, fear and, finally, grief. He wrote on Page 97 about drawing on the experience of the death of his and his brother’s dog, Gulliver, earlier that year:
ReplyDelete“When Dick Crenna (the episode’s director) yelled ‘Cut!’ I was still in my Method-y sad zone, but the mood around me was one of euphoria. Everyone had just watched me ascend to a new level. From every angle, big adult hands extended toward me to shake mine, or tousle my hair, or pat me on the back in congratulation.
“Foremost among my congratulators was Andy. I told him what I had been thinking about as I was doing the scene--and broke into tears all over again. He gave me an emphatic hug and then gently reminded me that it was time to rehearse the next scene. We were on a schedule, after all.”
The best part of "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is the part where Leonardo DiCaprio's character is on a TV Western and he gives advice to a child actor.
Delete3. In January 1980, Clint and Ron Howard together attended Super Bowl XIV matching the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Los Angeles Rams at the Rose Bowl.
ReplyDeleteI don't think parents yell at their kids as much as they did in 1975. I don't think anyone yells at kids as much as they did in 1975. On the other hand, I think the expectations for kids are much higher, and the pressure they face is much greater, than anything I faced in 1975.
ReplyDelete