Dennis Rush, who performed Lon Chaney Jr. as a teenager reverse James Cagney in Man of a Thousand Faces and considered one of Opie’s buddies alongside Ron Howard on The Andy Griffith Present, has died. He was 74.
Rush, who was recognized with leukemia final month, lived within the San Diego space and died Saturday on the best way to the hospital, actor-musician Keith Thibodeaux informed The Hollywood Reporter. (Thibodeaux performed Johnny Paul Jason, one other of Opie’s associates, on The Andy Griffith Present, although he’s greatest often known as Little Ricky from I Love Lucy.)
Rush additionally confirmed up from 1960-62 on seven episodes of Wagon Prepare — John Ford directed him in a single — and from 1962-63 on three installments of Laramie. Each have been Westerns from Revue Studios and NBC.
The freckle-faced Rush made his onscreen performing debut as Creighton Chaney, age 4, in Common-Worldwide’s Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), starring Cagney as silent movie star Lon Chaney (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera).
As Creighton grows up, Rush is succeeded by Rickie Sorensen, Robert Lyden and at last Roger Smith, who on the finish will embark on his personal profession as an actor (and a starring flip in The Wolf Man!) utilizing the stage identify Lon Chaney Jr.
The teenager appeared as Howie Prewitt on CBS’ The Andy Griffith Present over three seasons from 1963-65. “I got to be in eight episodes over about a 2 1/2-year period,” he mentioned in 2022. “It was just the best of the best.”
On the 1964 episode “Barney’s Physical,” Rush ad-libbed a line throughout rehearsal about Don Knotts’ character “hanging himself in the closet” — he had blanked on what was within the script — and it made it onto the present.
Dennis Eugene Rush was born in Philadelphia on June 10, 1951. When he was 1, his father, Jack, introduced the household to Los Angeles and received a job as a movie archivist at Common.
“If you were good, you got to go to the studio and have lunch with dad, it was kind of a big deal,” he recalled final yr on the Mayberry-I Love Lucy Competition in Granville, Tennessee.
Whereas they have been sitting on the lunch counter, “a man taps my dad on the shoulder and says, ‘I’m looking for a little boy to play my son, I’m making a movie called Man of a Thousand Faces’ … That gentleman was James Cagney.’”
When his father defined that Dennis wasn’t an actor and needed to go to highschool, Cagney replied, “Trust me.” Rush’s display check concerned using a tricycle round a Christmas tree, and he would spend six months on the film.
Dorothy Malone portrayed his mother and Jim Backus his uncle, and Rush managed to get emotional in a scene through which Creighton is informed by his dad that he’s going to be positioned in an orphanage.
Cagney mentioned, “‘You know, this has all been make-believe,” Rush remembered in a 1989 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “But you know how much fun Christmas can be and being with your folks and all that? Well, this little boy is never going to see his mom or his dad again. No more Christmases. No more good food.’
“He kept that up for a walk around the soundstage and had me in tears. We went right in and did the scene in five minutes. Whenever I had to cry from then on, I remembered that.”
He mentioned he and Cagney exchanged Christmas playing cards yearly earlier than the Oscar winner died in March 1986.
Rush additionally labored on the movies No Title on the Bullet (1959) and Observe Me, Boys! (1966) and on episodes of The Millionaire, Checkmate, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Perry Mason, The Lucy Present, Gunsmoke, My Favourite Martian, My Dwelling Doll and The Magical World of Disney.
“Every month or so you would do a number of things and then six months would go by and you wouldn’t do anything,” he mentioned. “Then you’d get a call and go on an interview and you might be with 20 kids or you might be with 200 kids [vying for the same job].”
After he outgrew his baby roles, Rush joined the U.S. Marines, and when he completed his stint, he realized that his dad and mom had spent all the cash he earned as an actor (he mentioned he made as a lot as $500 every week).
He graduated from Notre Dame Excessive College after which San Diego State in 1977, had a profession within the resort and restaurant enterprise and was a frequent and fashionable visitor on the Mayberry Lucy fest (he was there final month) and on the Mayberry Days conference held every year in Mount Ethereal, North Carolina.
Says a post on the Mayberry Days web site: “Dennis was an absolute joy to be around and one of the sweetest men you could ever meet. It was always a pleasure to welcome him to Mayberry Days, where he shared smiles, stories, hugs and kindness with fans from all over the world.”
Survivors embody his siblings, Sally, Monica, Patrick and Megan. One other brother, Jack, died in February.
