HOLLYWOOD HOOPTEDOODLE
My cousin Scott McCartor has carved himself out a significant career in the entertainment industry. Over the past six decades, he's worked behind the camera in both animation and live action, movies and television shows, for big studios and independents, doing a variety of filmmaking tasks that have included, on occasion, producing and directing.
Before all of that, however, he was a kid actor. And not only that – he was the featured young villain in one of the most famous episodes of The Andy Griffith Show that ever flickered across a TV screen. Sixty years ago, give or take a few months, Scott was first seen throughout America as the bully in “One-Punch Opie,” the show that introduced the immortal Barney Fife advice re: juvenile delinquency: “First sign of youngsters going wrong, you've got to nip it in the bud! Nip it!”
The youngster gone wrong in this case was a bellicose kid named Steve Quincy, who'd just moved into Mayberry with his folks. In what might be seen as a metaphorical clash of the bucolic small-town life with pernicious big-city influences – something that happened fairly often on the show – young Quincy starts needling Opie, leading to a final confrontation foreshadowed by the episode's title.
“I was on a roll in those years for some reason,” Scott told me recently in one of our regular phone conversations. “Almost everything I went out for I got. I did two Danny Thomas Shows, `Linda's Crush' and `Linda the Tomboy,' and I think that led to me getting The Andy Griffith Show. Danny Thomas and Sheldon Leonard were the producers of Andy Griffith. That was their big megahit.”
He admits that these days, his time on the set is “sort of a dreamlike thing, with little flashes of scenes and whatnot.” However, a few memories remain forever vivid in his mind.
“I remember that we were doing a table read,” he said, “and I was sitting next to Don Knotts. A table read is what you do before the shoot; everybody just sits around a table and reads the script [aloud]. We were outside, as I recall, and Don Knotts was sitting there in a short-sleeved shirt, doing that `Nip it! Nip it in the bud!' and my mom – she wasn't in the table read, but she was there, sitting in a chair – was cracking up. I was too. I remember thinking, `This guy is funny!'
“I also remember Andy Griffith in his khakis, and boots like my dad wore – kind of half up the calf, you know – getting a haircut. He was cracking jokes, and it was real casual. Everybody was so amiable; it was a light-hearted atmosphere. There was a family feel, a happy-family feel, off-camera, which was cool.”
As for his own work in the show, there's one scene in particular that will always stand out.
“It was when I broke the streetlight. I was facing camera, and I can't remember whether it was up on a crane, or if it was up on like a utility bus, a grip bus or something. But I remember the chairs were not that many feet away from me. The script supervisor was there, and of course the director [Bob Sweeney] was up, walking around.
“My task was to break this streetlight with an apple. And I'm thinking to myself, `Oh, man, I don't have a baseball arm. I don't know if I'm even going to be able to hit the light.' Little Scott McCartor there, wracking his brain: `You've got to make this work.'
“So – `Action!' And off the apple goes, and to my delight it hits the light – and ricochets off. It doesn't break it.
“And I'm thinking, `Oh, man. I hit the light, and there it goes. I probably won't ever hit it again.'
According to Scott, the director then said, “I don't think it's going to work with an apple. The glass is too thick. Let's give him a rock.”
“The glass globe was sitting on top of a kind of fluted lip,” Scott recalled, “and I fling this frickin' rock, and I must've zinged it pretty good, because the rock hit that lip, ricocheted off, and almost hit the script girl. She had to dodge it.
“I thought, `Oh, man – the pressure's really on now.' And sure enough, the next go-round I busted that lamp. I was probably more surprised than anybody that I'd actually pulled it off.
“It just goes to show you that even as a little kid you can pull from some sort of, you know, metaphysical reserve,” he added with a laugh, “and throw a doggone projectile to success. That was a weight off my shoulders for sure. I know why I remember it: it was semi-traumatic.
“Then, of course, when I watched the show, I thought, `Man, you can't even tell I threw anything.' That was my opinion. They could've just rigged something and busted it, or someone else could've hit it. But it was the real McCoy, man. It was me and a rock.”
Because of his work on The Danny Thomas Show and The Andy Griffith Show, producers Thomas and Leonard cast Scott in the pilot for a new sitcom to be called My Fifteen Blocks. In it, Jan Murray played a policeman, and Scott his son.
“He was a beat cop in New York, and we had our little family things going on there,” Scott explained. “It was the only pilot that the two of them, Sheldon Leonard and Danny Thomas, didn't sell.”
Before moving behind the scenes, Scott did several more TV shows and a few films as well. I always love hearing about his experiences on the set of the 1976 horror film Rattlers – which I wrote up for one of the “Forgotten Horrors” columns Michael H. Price and I did for Fangoria magazine back in the day. He also played Debbie Reynolds' youngest brother in the big-budget Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) and appeared in the 1963 Disney picture Summer Magic (Even though IMDb doesn't list him as a cast member, he's there. I've seen it.) Although we've not been able to locate the 8mm movie taken on the Summer Magic set by my Aunt Marion, Scott's mother, I remember how impressed I was with the between-scenes footage of Scott teaching teen movie queen Hayley Mills how to do the Soupy Shuffle, a goofy dance invented by the TV star Soupy Sales.
“I thought it was interesting that I played the bully in Summer Magic,” he told me. “I played a few bullies, didn't I? And in real life it was exactly the opposite. I was Opie.” He laughed again. “I was always getting picked on at school, so I had to make friends with the tough guys for protection.”
BOOK NEWS (SPANISH EDITION)
I'm pleased to be able to spread the word about a brand-new Spanish edition of Wes Craven: The Man and His Nightmares, the biography I wrote that John Wiley and Sons first published (in English) back in 2011.
Brought out by Applehead Team Creaciones just a few months ago, the Spanish version is called Wes Craven: El Hombre Y Sus Pesadillas, and it's a handsome package, with a lot of extra illustrative material not included in the original volume. (Some of the shots of a young Craven are priceless.) I've done a bit of corresponding with its translator, Jose Mellinas, who's currently working on a Nightmare on Elm Street book, and he seems to me to be a very good guy with a sincere love of the genre. He and I were both interviewed (mine was via email) for the newspaper El Pais; Jose sent me a link for an English translation of the piece, written by Jaime Lorite for the 21 June edition, and, as we used to say in the journalism business, it's good copy.
Of course, I hope the book does very well in Spain. I remain a huge Wes Craven fan, even though he never was able to make a movie from Old Fears, the novel Ron Wolfe and I wrote back in the early '80s that Craven optioned in '85.
And please forgive me at this point for once again flogging the 40th anniversary edition of Old Fears, published by Babylon Books and featuring a pair of all-new Old Fears stories from Ron and me, even as it's in development as a project from Sony Pictures Television.
Which leads us into this thrilling news . . . .
BIG CONTEST! FABULOUS PRIZES!
Not wanting to take credit where credit isn't due, let me say up front that this was Ron's idea. I thought it was a fine one, though, and when I floated it past my media team at our last meeting, Lourdes, Joey, and Steven all agreed.
So here it is:
Tell us the No. 1 thing that scared you when you were a kid — your biggest old fear. Something lurking under the bed? Creeping through the window? Hiding in the basement? Scarier? So scary, it would scare even a terrifying team of hard-to-scare horror writers? Great! Tell us your deepest childhood fear, get it to us before July 31, and you just might scare up your own copy of Old Fears' 40th anniversary edition, along with a custom-designed flash-fiction piece Ron and I will write about your particular fear, using your name in the story – unless, of course, you tell us otherwise. We'll also send you an autographed copy of that story on paper (or, as I believe Garrison Keillor first called it, “treeware”).
Plans call for us to pick six fears and then release the half-dozen stories on Booksweeps at the rate of one a week, starting sometime in August. Everyone chosen will get the two big prizes, along with our thanks and acknowledgement of the special place our winners have in the Old Fears universe.
You can submit your favorite fear by replying to this newsletter, contacting us through my website, or messaging one of our social-media sites. My Facebook page will also have a pinned post where you can leave comments. (Note: Lourdes told me to write that. If you know what a “pinned post” is, you're far more tech-savvy than I am. Then again, that's a short put. Lourdes assures me it will be there for you, though, and she's very trustworthy.)
So dig back into that subconscious and send us something that used to give you the quivering pips, as my old college roommate used to say. We'll do the rest.
That's it for July. See you next month, and, as always, many thanks.
JW