Favorite Ron Howard Movie? [Archive] - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

PeggySue

12-06-2002, 12:02 AM

Great question, Shortcake! (Love your name, by the way!) I should warn you my answer is long-winded, but I did mention that I have liked Ron for a long time. And I guess I am making up my own rules too, I can't just pick one movie in any area.

I have seen almost all of Ron's acting roles, and all of his directing efforts for theater, but only 2 of his TV directing stints. I would have to divide his acting roles between his childhood roles and those when he was older.

As a child actor, he was just wonderful in Courtship of Eddie's Father. He was in almost the entire movie, and he truly stole the scene every time he was on camera. He was incredibly appealing and just lit up the screen. It is interesting and IMHO far better to see the wide-creen version, as the movie was filmed with long takes with few cutaways to 2 characters speaking. You really get to see how good Ron's acting was in the widescreen version. This isn't so obvious in the pan and scan (full screen) version, and the movie is a bit butchered when seen this way, with cuts between the 2 actors in various scenes. You kind of have to see both to appreciate the difference. The widescreen version often runs on TCM, and I have seen the full screen version on Cinemax. Ron obviously remembered all his lines and delivered them so naturally and with understated emotion, even when so young. He was nominated for an award, the Laurel award, for the top new male personality, and it is interesting that all the other nominees(10 total) were adults, including Peter O'Toole. I thought Ron's acting was very natural, and he didn't just stand and recite lines, but would be doing other things in a scene, which he obviously had to remember to do also. He was also great in Music Man, again very natural and only 6 years old when filming, but this would be my very close second choice, if forced to pick. This was the first role I ever saw Ron in, when I was a kid, and after that I began watching Andy Giffith. He was also very good in Village of the Giants, a truly awful B movie that is just plain hilarious to watch for the ridiculousness of it all. Beau Bridges is in it also. Ron plays a character named Genius.:lol:

From his older acting days, I would call it a tie between The Migrants and Bitter Harvest. (I have both movies and in fact they are both available now on ebay...actually there are 3 listings for Bitter Harvest and I just bid on one of them, as my copy was from taping from TV). Both were TV movies and both were nominated for multiple Emmy Awards (not Ron though). The Migrants is a just a beautiful movie with Cloris Leachmann and Sissy Spacek also staring, and the acting by all is really, really good. Cloris and Ron are the 2 leads, and Sissy and Ron play siblings, the children of Cloris. Truly a haunting movie. AND!!! guess who plays Ron's girlfriend?? Cindy Williams!!! Again. She is great also. Did you know Cindy is 7 years older than Ron? I always liked Ron and Cindy together, I thought they had great chemistry

Bitter Harvest was one of Ron's last acting roles, and he was again the lead character. Seeing this made me regret that Ron no longer acts, he was just great and played a range of emotion incredibly well. He plays a dairy farmer and in one scene he delivers a newborn calf and it didn't seem faked. Another very haunting movie. Art Carney of Jackie Gleason fame was a co-star.

As for movies Ron has directed, it is hard to choose, because all of them are so different. I would again call it a tie between A Beautiful Mind (and you haven't seen it, Shortcake???) and Apollo 13. I have seem both numerous times, and I thought the acting in both was near perfection. Russell Crowe (another favorite of mine, so different from Ron) completely disappeared into his role as John Nash, one of the greatest performances (IMHO) ever filmed. Loved how the stories flowed and held my interest throughout (and of course I lived through the events of Apollo 13 and yet it was still suspenseful). I think Ron does his best work with dramas, he is a very sensitive director and the performances are always very nuanced by his actors. For comedy, I just loved Parenthood, sentimental, but with so much depth in each character and such awareness of human frailty.

Trivia....Does anyone else know that Jason Robards, whom Ron directed in both Parenthhood and The Paper, made his screen debut in The Journey, which was the film in which Ron also made his screen debut at age 4? Ron can be connected with almost everyone in Hollywood, he's been around so long.

Sooo...Have any of you seen these movies (especially these old ones), and if so what do you think?

(Is it too obvious I like Ron?):rolleyes: