Dennis Rush, who played Lon Chaney Jr. as a young man opposite James Cagney in A man with a thousand faces And one of Opie’s friends alongside Ron Howard The Andy Griffith ShowHe died. He was 74 years old.
Rush, who was diagnosed with leukemia last month, lived in the San Diego area and died Saturday on his way to the hospital, actor and musician Keith Thibodeau said. Hollywood Reporter. (Thibodeau played Johnny Paul Jason, another friend of Opie’s The Andy Griffith Showalthough he is known as Little Ricky from I love Lucy.)
Rush also appeared from 1960 to 1962 in seven episodes of the series Wagon train – Directed by John Ford in one film – and from 1962 to 1963 in three installments Laramie. Both were westerns from Revue Studios and NBC.
The freckle-faced Rush made his screen debut as 4-year-old Creighton Chaney in the Universal-International film. A man with a thousand faces (1957), starring Cagney as silent film star Lon Chaney (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera).
As Cretton grows older, Rush is succeeded by Ricky Sorensen, Robert Layden, and eventually Roger Smith, who will eventually begin his career as an actor (and star in The wolf man!) Using the stage name Lon Chaney Jr.
The young man appeared as Howie Prewitt on CBS. The Andy Griffith Show over three seasons from 1963 to 1965. “I got to be in eight episodes over about two and a half years,” he said in 2022. “It was the best ever.”
In the 1964 episode “Barney’s Physical”, Rush delivered a line during rehearsal for the Don Knotts character to “hang himself in the closet” — he misunderstood what was in the script — and it appeared in the show.
Dennis Eugene Rush was born in Philadelphia on June 10, 1951. When he was one year old, his father, Jack, brought the family to Los Angeles and got a job as a film archivist at Universal.
“If you were good, you got to go to the studio and have lunch with your dad, that was kind of a big deal,” he recalled last year at the Mayberry-I Love Lucy festival in Granville, Tennessee.
While they were sitting at the lunch table, “a man tapped my father on the shoulder and said, ‘I’m looking for a little boy to play with, and I’m making a movie called'” A man with a thousand faces“…That man was James Cagney.”
When his father explained that Dennis was not an actor and had to go to school, Cagney replied, “Trust me.” Rush’s screen test involved riding a tricycle around a Christmas tree, and he spent six months on the film.
Dorothy Malone played his mother and Jim Backus his uncle, and Rush manages to be emotional in a scene in which his father tells Cretton that he will be placed in an orphanage.
“You know, it was all just an illusion,” Cagney said, Rush recalled in a 1989 interview. Los Angeles Times. “But you know how fun Christmas can be and being with your folks and all that? Well, this little boy will never see his mother or father again. No more Christmases. No more good food.”
“He saved that for a walk around the soundstage and it made me cry. We went right in and did the scene in five minutes. Whenever I had to cry from then on, I remembered that.”
He said he and Cagney exchanged Christmas cards every year before the Oscar winner’s death in March 1986.
Rush has also worked in films There is no name on the bullet (1959) and Follow me, boys! (1966) and in episodes Millionaire, He died, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Perry Mason, Lucy Show, Gun smoke, My favorite Martian, My living 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 without doing anything,” he said. “Then you get a call and you go for 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 roles as a child, Rush joined the US Marines, and when he completed his commission, he learned that his parents had spent all the money he earned as an actor (he said he was making as much as $500 a week).
He graduated from Notre Dame High School and then San Diego State in 1977, had a career in the hotel and restaurant business and was a frequent and popular guest at the Mayberry Lucy Festival (he was there last month) and at the Mayberry Days Convention held each year in Mount Airy, North Carolina.
A post on the Mayberry Days website reads: “Dennis was a pleasure to have and one of the sweetest guys you will 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 include his siblings, Sally, Monica, Patrick and Megan. Another brother, Jack, died in February.
