Ron Howard has been part of our collective consciousness for as long as I can remember. Or at least he looms large in mine. Born in 1954, he was on many of the TV series I grew up watching and had his own starring role on “The Andy Griffith Show” by 1960. And his father had the idea that little “Ronny Howard” should play a good kid, not the wise-guy type popular in those “Dennis the Menace” years. He’d be nice. It stuck. He’s been known as “nice” ever since.
That made him much too easy to dismiss. However prominent he was — as a principal star of “American Graffiti” in 1973, top-billed “Happy Days” actor the next year and then as a director debuting with “Night Shift” in 1977 — we could take him lightly. By then I was reviewing films, and I overlooked him to a fault. I didn’t even give him credit for holding his own at 22 against John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Richard Boone, Scatman Crothers and Lauren Bacall in Don Siegel’s “The Shootist,” Wayne’s valedictory role. But he grew into someone to reckon with. He currently has 714 credits on IMDb, and I’ll bet they missed a few.
By the time of “Apollo 13” — 10 years after “Cocoon” — I had seen the light. He had become, like Jonathan Demme, a filmmaker whose next move was always surprising. I never bargained on getting to know either of them, but we all wound up on the board of the same movie theater and media arts center in the 2000s. With reviewing long behind me, I now talk with Ron there whenever a new film of his comes along.
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What a series of revelations it’s been.
His “niceness” evolved into a solid work ethic and a constantly inventive approach to whatever he does. His work is never showy but it’s always purposeful. His “Eight Days a Week” is the Beatles documentary that depicts their first visit to the U.S. from their point of view, not the fans’. His “Hillbilly Elegy” ran into flak for J. D. Vance-related reasons, but he intended it as a testament to people struggling to rise above their family situations — with a performance by Glenn Close that should have been prizewinning. His “Thirteen Lives” wastes not one second on fanfare or digressions, yet it’s an exquisitely structured nail-biter. And I don’t have to call it the best American film of 2022 —Paul Thomas Anderson did.
So now I look back at the long process that got us here. The theater recently had a gala for which Ron recorded a short clip, and he joked about all those reviews I wish he’d forgotten. He signed off by saying that maybe I’d been right, but that was too nice of him. I’ve gone back to his early features. They’re polished. They push boundaries. They show immense growth and taste. Their choices are expert. Most of all, they’re remembered. Ron Howard was right all along.
Ron Howard is receiving Variety’s Profile in Excellence Award May 16 at the Cannes Film Festival, where his documentary “Idea Man” will screen.
Janet Maslin was the longtime critic for the New York Times and is board president of the Jacob Burns Film Center.
