Book Review ‘The Boys’: Ron & Clint Howard Memoir

In the early Seventies, when Ron Howard was desperate to break into directing movies but couldn’t figure out a way to secure financing, a new kind of motion picture was starting to prove immensely profitable in theaters. The idea struck 18-year-old Ron that he could rake in a lot of money quickly, and use the cash to spring into independent filmmaking, if only he directed and starred in a porn movie. He had a killer title lined up: Opie Gets Laid.

Howard thought better of the idea (which he never shared with his girlfriend or his parents), and things shortly began to look up for him anyway. He and his five-years-younger brother, Clint, also a successful actor — his childhood hit was the animal drama Gentle Ben, which inevitably stirred other kids to call out “Where’s your bear?” whenever they recognized him in public — overflow with gratitude for their family, their careers, and their lives in the wonderfully satisfying joint memoir The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family. Clint (who unlike his brother experienced a nightmare period of drug and alcohol addiction but later got clean and sober) writes in the concluding paragraphs, “I want to sign off by saying, ‘Sorry, Mr. Gehrig, I am the luckiest man to walk the face of the earth.”

About the Author

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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In the early Seventies, when Ron Howard was desperate to break into directing movies but couldn’t figure out a way to secure financing, a new kind of motion picture was starting to prove immensely profitable in theaters. The idea struck 18-year-old Ron that he could rake in a lot of money quickly, and use the cash to spring into independent filmmaking, if only he directed and starred in a porn movie. He had a killer title lined up: Opie Gets Laid.

Howard thought better of the idea (which he never shared with his girlfriend or his parents), and things shortly began to look up for him anyway. He and his five-years-younger brother, Clint, also a successful actor — his childhood hit was the animal drama Gentle Ben, which inevitably stirred other kids to call out “Where’s your bear?” whenever they recognized him in public — overflow with gratitude for their family, their careers, and their lives in the wonderfully satisfying joint memoir The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family. Clint (who unlike his brother experienced a nightmare period of drug and alcohol addiction but later got clean and sober) writes in the concluding paragraphs, “I want to sign off by saying, ‘Sorry, Mr. Gehrig, I am the luckiest man to walk the face of the earth.”