A look at Ron Howard in 50-year arc

It’s one of Hollywood’s grandest success stories: The boy who was Opie Taylor became a top director. He learned the lessons of Mayberry well.

And so the documentary “Ron Howard: 50 Years in Film” carries a nostalgic kick. Now 54, Howard looks back at his long, productive career in the 90-minute program, which debuts at 5 and 8 p.m. Monday on TCM (cable channel 501 in Spokane, 141/195 in Coeur d’Alene).

Filmmaker Richard Schickel’s setup can grow a bit tedious; Howard is the only speaker as clips play.

The half-century dates to Howard’s film debut in “The Journey,” a 1959 drama with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner. Howard recalls the experience as “fantastic playtime.”

Unfortunately, the documentary ignores Howard’s acting in “The Music Man,” “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” and “American Graffiti.” And there’s no mention of his narration on “Arrested Development” (it’s rumored that he might direct a film version of that quirky sitcom).

The section on “Cocoon” has been dropped because of licensing issues, and so we get no Don Ameche. Bummer.

To its detriment, the documentary treats Howard’s directorial efforts equally. The Tom Cruise epic “Far and Away” (which Howard calls his “most misunderstood film”) gets as much attention as “Apollo 13” and “A Beautiful Mind” (airing Monday at 10 p.m. on TCM), which brought Howard the Oscar.

But he certainly deserves the well-timed retrospective, because the new “Frost/Nixon” is one of his finest achievements.

Howard describes the director as “the keeper of the story.” His education began on “The Andy Griffith Show,” which ran from 1960 to 1968 on CBS and continues to charm in rerun eternity.

“Andy took that show very, very seriously,” Howard says. “There was no phoning it in.”

The education continued on “Happy Days,” the ABC sitcom where Howard learned by watching series creator Gary Marshall and Henry “the Fonz” Winkler and by working in front of a studio audience.

Producer Roger Corman put Howard on the directing path with 1977’s “Grand Theft Auto” (showing at 6:30 p.m.)

Howard has shown an affinity for stories about history and families; “Parenthood” grew out of a flight he took with his children.

He loves actors who can deliver powerful performances. That trend dates to “Skyward,” a 1980 TV movie he made with prickly Bette Davis.

It has continued, most famously with Russell Crowe in “A Beautiful Mind” and Frank Langella as Richard Nixon in “Frost/Nixon.”