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Ron Howard learned how to be a fifties teen on Happy Days from his co-star's father
"He is kind of floundering on his own with such new experiences," Howard said of his character, Richie Cunningham.
Every smart young person learns at the feet of their elders, wherever they come from.
When Ron Howard began starring in Happy Days, it wasn't his first acting rodeo. Howard was best known as Opie Taylor of The Andy Griffith Show. However, on Happy Days, Howard was expected to act like a teen living it up in the 1950s.
While Howard was born in 1954, much of his adolescent memories were from the sixties. Because of this, Howard made it his mission to educate himself for the role, discussing the period with people— like co-star Erin Moran's father— who had lived through it. Howard also learned from Patti Bereyso and Bob Walden, the show's technical advisors.
"Since I had little preparation for a series set in that era, I have tried to obtain a background by looking through old publications and discussing that period with people who were teenagers at the time," said the actor during an interview with The Daily Breeze.
Ultimately, these nostalgic recounts brightened Howard's opinion of the decade. "I think kids had more fun then than they did when I was growing up in the sixties," said Howard.
Despite the decade in which the series takes place, Howard found that the new experiences Richie Cunningham was dealing with were universal to teenagers everywhere.
"Richie is experiencing things outside the home for the first time," said Howard. "There are episodes about his first car, his first attempt to run his father's hardware store, his first bachelor party, and his first gig with a combo playing for a fraternity house. Although he is close to his family, he is kind of floundering on his own with such new experiences."
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2 Comments
What the actor must do is UN-learn what he or she knows about the world that came after the period being depicted, all the technology and events that someone living back then would never, could never know about. The actor's wardrobe and the sets on which the drama is performed are immensely beneficial to their process for placing them in a world that they otherwise would not know about. It MUST become entirely familiar to them.