The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family (2021)

by Ron Howard and Clint Howard

Brothers Ron and Clint Howard recount growing up as child actors in Hollywood, navigating fame, family, and the pressures of show business while following very different paths into adulthood. 

Ron Howard (l) and Clint Howard (r)

The section on the filming of American Graffiti is riveting, and I was especially interested in Ron coming of age as a performer while also worrying about being drafted for Vietnam. Both brothers benefited from remarkable mentors, beginning with their father, Rance, and including people like Andy Griffith and Don Knotts. Ron’s story is one of unusual stability and steadily increasing success, while Clint follows the more familiar child-star trajectory of fading adolescent fame and serious addiction, although he eventually recovers. In different ways, both brothers eventually confront the same question: You’re not that cute kid anymore, so what are you going to do now? Rance and Jean Howard succeeded in creating a stable family structure that remained available when things went wrong. Ron has the more famous career, but Clint’s mischievous personality, self-deprecating humor, and willingness to discuss his failures give his chapters a more unpredictable energy. He has the less celebrated career but the more dramatic personal story, which made me wish there was more about his long career in low-budget movies. I would also have liked to read more about Ron’s early days as a director working with Roger Corman. At times, this memoir disproportionately feels like Ron Howard’s book. Still, telling their stories together avoids restricting it to either a Hollywood success story or another child-star tell-all. What stayed with me most was its moving portrait of a family that stuck together even when the lives of its two famous sons went in radically different directions.