Ron Howard’s Skyward: A Personal Prologue

Skyward, directed by Ron Howard, one of his earliest efforts in directing, came out with much fanfare. It was a 2-hour TV movie, sponsored by GE (we bring good things to life), and it appears to have been run again the following year, I imagine in preparation for the Skyward Christmas pilot, which would hopefully be a new series (it didn’t make it). Ron Howard had directed before, but mainly shorts and also Grand Theft Auto, a huge wacky production which, looked at in light of his whole career, seems like an anomaly. Skyward was his first serious venture, it got a lot of press – it was a big deal at the time – and watching it now you can feel the Ron Howard sensibility running all through it (for good and ill). He found his legs as a director here (again, for good and ill). The first title screen says “Ron Howard’s Skyward”, which shows you the sense of ownership and impending stardom right there. He wasn’t a hired hand. He was making a play, a grab for the brass ring.

It was based on a story by Anson Williams (aka Potsie), and then Nancy Sackett took Potsie’s idea and turned it into a screenplay.

Howard filled out the cast with old friends (after all, boy had been in show business since he was a baby) and old colleagues: Marion Ross played the mother. Lisa Whelchel (Blair from “Facts of Life”) played the main character’s older sister. Clu Gulagher, a TV veteran, played the father. Howard Hesseman, who had already been in the business for years, and very successfully, was only a year or two away from huge mainstream stardom with WKRP in Cincinnatti at the time he played “Coop” (“that’s short for Cooper”) in Skyward. Coop was the mechanic out at the small airport on the edge of town. A young cute actor named Ben Marley (more on him later, much more) played Scott, the football player at the school who ends up dating our paraplegic lead. And, of course, Miss Bette Davis was snagged, miraculously, to play Billie Dupree, the tough-talkin’ hang-out-with-the-guys dame who runs the airport as well as a small diner on the premises, who eventually gives the paraplegic girl flying lessons. Bette Davis, at the time of Skyward, was only two years away from the debilitating stroke she would suffer in 1983 (not to mention a mastectomy), and she looks hearty, fit and in great form here (with a nice subtle face lift, very good work done).

Not a bad cast for a young director starting out. Not to mention the fact that this wasn’t just a three-handkerchief television movie of the week, shot mainly in interiors. There were major complex elements to be worked out: the flying sequences, shooting entirely on location, dealing with a star of the magnitude of La Davis, and then of course finding an actress to play Julie, the lead role, the paraplegic girl who becomes a pilot.

At some point in the preproduction process, it was decided to look for an actual paraplegic to play the part. I don’t know if it was part of some larger campaign of GE’s to make more places handicapped accessible (which I do remember being a big deal at the time … In the movie, you see Gilstrap struggling to open doors left and right, and I think now of all of the automatic doors that are in most public buildings like supermarkets and the like, and I realize how much has changed), but the casting folks threw out a wide net to look for the actress to play Julie.

They saw 50 paraplegic girls for the part. What I wouldn’t do to get those audition tapes.

And Suzy Gilstrap, a young girl of 15, won the role. She had been paralyzed at the age of 11 when a branch from a eucalyptus tree fell on her (details! details! Here is the People article about her from back then which Keith read out to Dan and myself on the first Suzy Gilstrap night) during a school field trip. She seems (according to what I can find about her) to have rolled with that punch and not let it stop her. Part of her recovery (to build up her arms, which she would need way more now that she was wheelchair-bound) involved tennis lessons with Brad Parks, a wheelchair-bound champion. He was the one who heard about the casting call for Skyward, and got her to go.

Skyward was filmed on location in Texas, I believe, during a blistering hot summer. It was not an easy shoot. Bette Davis’ “SNEAKERS were sticking to the TAR, SHIT!” You had one lead who was in her 70s and another lead who was in a wheelchair. But the movie was completed, and shown on television with much brou-haha and advance publicity.

The publicity even filtered down to my level – the level it needed to reach, because obviously I would be their main fan base (well, that and Bette Davis fans, of course) – young wistful romantic girls who hoped that their dreams could come true someday, etc. They played me like a violin, boy.

It aired on November 20, 1980.

I saw Skyward when it first came out, and I have no memory of seeing it again after that time, and I know I never saw the fateful Skyward Christmas, so let me locate November 20, 1980 (as much as it will hurt). It was a week before my birthday and I was in 8th grade. The horrors of 7th grade had passed, 8th grade was much better, due to my developing friendship with Meredith and Beth, and the fact that I had classes again with my main pals from grade school, Betsy and J. Our group flourished, and I was more protected than I was in 7th grade when I was isolated with no friends. 8th grade was also better due to the inspirational example of Ralph Macchio in that one episode of Eight is Enough. But things were still rough, socially. I look back on junior high as a howling wilderness. Grade school had been great for me. I was at the top of my class, well-liked – and, actually, way more similar to the person I am now than who I was through my early teen years. I was not prepared for adolescence. I didn’t get it. The rules had changed. I had crushes and everything, but I still was really a little girl, and not ready to grow up. The “mean girls” sensed this in me and made my life a torment, making fun of my clothes, my hair, my glasses, my walk … and yes, there was a lot to make fun of, I was incredibly geeky and not at all up on styles or anything like that … and there was also this type of behavior to consider … but the meanness of those girls had really crushed my spirit, as they meant for it to do.

Into that environment came Skyward. And it was one of those moments, similar to the one I had watching that Eight is Enough episode, where I got my head above the misery I was in, and saw a little bit further down the road. It gave me hope, it told me to hang on, that some boy would eventually see me, would pass over more flashy beauties, and choose ME. That it wasn’t necessary for me to change too much, I could just keep being myself, and eventually it would happen for me. In 7th and 8th grade, that was a revelation. Because everything in my world at that time said, in no uncertain terms, “Nope. Nope. This is not for you.”

In Eight is Enough, the girl in question wore modest long skirts and loafers and her main passion was old movies. She was not a cheerleader or your typical girl. In Skyward, the girl in question was a paraplegic, and that was her main “issue” – she’s very cute, and while her personality kind of suffers from being rather drippy and quiet (Dan called her “morose”), you can guess that most of that is because she is in a wheelchair, she is treated like a baby by her parents, totally dominated, and she also assumes that everyone is embarrassed by her. She has zero experiences with boys, she has not been mainstreamed into the public school system (although she is during the course of the movie), she has spent her whole life in a ghettoized atmosphere of disabled people. She’s grumpy, withdrawn. She senses her parents will never understand what she REALLY wants to do, which is clear from the first shot of her in the film, staring out a window. Her dream is to be a pilot. But her parents won’t let her do ANYTHING, so she knows they would never let her fly!

Much of this resonated for me on a really deep level at the time, when I was (if not withdrawn) kind of embarrassed at the intensity of my own dreams and hobbies, and felt the need to hide how much I loved certain things – because love for me often takes the form of obsession and repetition, which can make people nervous. I yearned to bust out, to do something big … and I would secretly make these crazy plans. Like writing a personal letter to Martin Charnin, creator of Annie the musical, begging him to hold auditions in Providence so that I could attend. But I sensed my parents’ nervousness about this aspect of me, so all of it was done in the dead of night, with much secrecy. Perhaps I was being overdramatic, but I don’t think entirely. So Suzy Gilstrap’s struggle in the movie (sorry, I can’t call her by her character name – she will always be Suzy Gilstrap to me) really spoke to me.

Not to mention the fact that through a series of coincidences, she ends up befriending a boy named Scott, who also has to “sit out gym class” due to breaking his ankle … and they start a shy hesitant romance (with multiple bumps in the road, due to Gilstrap’s passive-aggressive paranoia, and other such adolescent problems) … and I have to admit it was the romance that got to me. The romance swept me away.

It wasn’t quite as intense as what happened to me when I watched that one Eight is Enough episode, but it was intense enough that when I recently saw Skyward again last weekend, I remembered some of their scenes together almost word for word. I remembered his gestures, I remembered how he kicked that trash can when he was frustrated, how he threw his duffel bag in the back of his truck. I knew things were coming before they happened. “Oh. The pep rally must be coming up when he gets really mad and they have a fight and then make up in the gym.”

I don’t know why such things are stored so vividly in my mind. I guess you could say my brain, my emotions, are very suggestible. If something moves me, it stays there forever. I was amazed at how much I remembered. Of course I remembered the plot and all that, and I was wrong on some things (Lisa Whelchel plays the SISTER, not another girl at the school) … but on certain things I remembered gestures, pauses, how a line was said, how he slammed his locker. It was truly odd.

I love it, though. I have a strange photographic memory with things I love – and if I ever go blind (KNOCK WOOD), I could re-run entire movies that I love in my head. My brain is a movie projector.

It was 1980 when I was last saw Skyward. I just saw it again in 2009 for the first time since. Entire scenes of dialogue had been preserved in my mind like flies in amber. I couldn’t believe it. There’s one moment where Marion Ross, as the hovering worried mother, washes Suzy Gilstrap’s hair, and it’s a tender mother-daughter scene, with laughter and such, and at one point Gilstrap says, “Mom, you’re pulling my hair!” And out of nowhere I knew Marion Ross’ next line, said through laughter, “Am I pulling it??” Extraordinary to me.

So while there is much CHEESE to be had in Skyward (the theme music, for example, which is not quite as insistent as the theme in Ice Castles, but pretty damn close) … I have a great and eternal affection for it, because it helped me at the time. It told me to not be embarrassed about who I am, to just keep trying to be the best Sheila I could be, and things would fall into place. It would not be easy – nothing worthwhile ever is – but part of growing up is learning to say, “Look. This is who I am. This is who I NEED to be” and Skyward was a big part of that message getting to me.

And also, Ben Marley was so cute and so appealing that I dreamt about him for weeks.

But like I said, more on him later.

Keith, Dan and I watched the entire thing AGOG (there were times when I would turn and watch THEM as opposed to the movie, because their expressions were almost as entertaining as what was going on on the screen) … and we found much, as a group, to criticize. The scenes between Gilstrap and Hesseman go on way too long. Howard holds Bette back, introducing her (except for the very beginning) about halfway through the movie, and we wanted more of her. There were some lines (“he’s an old dog but he’s feisty” “Sleep tight – don’t let the bedbugs bite”) that had zero originality, and Gilstrap struggles with some of her more emotional scenes (“YOU LIED” she screams at Howard Hesseman at one point, and Keith, Dan and I burst into laughter at how she said it) … but for me, it still worked on the level it worked when I saw it as a teenager. Dan and I talked about that afterwards. They, of course, were seeing it for the first time, and so the adolescent-connection with it that I felt was not there for them. But we all have those movies – or television shows – or moments … when something grabs you by the throat, just when you need to be grabbed … and gives you a message of something eternal, something hopeful. Alex writes about those moments all the time, sitting in front of the television as a young boy in Illinois, aware that she was different, that something was different … and then seeing someone on the television who seemed to be saying directly to her: “Yes. You are different. That’s okay.” These moments, if not life-saving, are certainly moments that can save your spirit. It gives a LONG view, as opposed to a short. By that I mean, I was 12 years old when I saw Skyward. I was in the muck of junior high. I was pudgy, I had braces, glasses, and my clothes were terrible. I didn’t understand about bras, nor did I want to understand. I wanted to fit in, but I got the message loud and clear that I did not. My life would not change right then, not possible … but the long view given to me by Skyward was that who I was was already good enough … adolescence sucks for everyone … just hang on, Sheila, hang on … your time will come.

I will always love Skyward for that.

For now, here are some screen shots of our leads, and a more in-depth review of the movie to follow.

BETTE DAVIS as BILLIE DUPREE

MARION ROSS as MRS. WARD

CLU GULAGHER as MR. WARD

LISA WHELCHEL as LISA WARD

HOWARD HESSEMAN as COOP

BEN MARLEY as SCOTT

SUZY GILSTRAP as JULIE