{"id":2421696,"date":"2026-05-18T12:22:47","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T12:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2421696"},"modified":"2026-05-18T12:22:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T12:22:47","slug":"the-andy-griffith-show-child-actor-dies-dennis-rush-was-74","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/the-andy-griffith-show-child-actor-dies-dennis-rush-was-74\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Andy Griffith Show’ Child Actor Dies: Dennis Rush Was 74"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Dennis Rush, a former child actor best known for his roles in The Andy Griffith Show<\/em> and Man of a Thousand Faces<\/em>, has died. He was 74.<\/p>\n

According to The Hollywood Reporter<\/a><\/em>, Rush was diagnosed with leukemia last month while living near San Diego, California, and died en route to a hospital on May 9.<\/p>\n

Born in Philadelphia on June 10, 1951, Rush moved with his family at age 1 to Los Angeles for his father\u2019s job as a film archivist. He told the Los Angeles Times<\/a><\/em> in 1989 that James Cagney approached him and his father while they ate lunch at Universal-International Pictures\u2019 commissary saying he was looking for a young actor for his movie Man of a Thousand Faces<\/em>, a 1957 biopic of Lon Chaney.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had been casting for the part of a 5-year-old to play his son without any luck,\u201d Rush said. \u201cSo he turns to my dad, says he\u2019s looking for a kid to play his son and says, \u2018Your son is the spitting image of me at that age.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Dennis Rush (sitting) in The Andy Griffith Show. Photo Credit: CBS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cagney played Chaney, a silent film star known for The Hunchback of Notre Dame<\/em> and The Phantom of the Opera<\/em>, and Rush played the 4-year-old version of Chaney\u2019s son, Creighton Chaney. He said he and Cagney exchanged Christmas cards every year before the Oscar winner died in March 1986.<\/p>\n

TV fans will remember Rush from The Andy Griffith Show<\/em> as Howie Pruitt, a friend of Opie Taylor (Ron Howard). He recurred as Howie from 1963 to 1965. \u201cI got to be in eight episodes over about a two-and-a-half-year period,\u201d he said in 2022, according to THR<\/em>. \u201cIt was just the best of the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took a normal show about five days to film. It took Andy Griffith three,\u201d Rush told the Times. \u201cOn lunch breaks, we\u2019d just run to the lunch truck and run back. Ronny Howard had a short basketball hoop set up for him, so we got pretty close to dunking. Andy and some of the others were pretty good guitar players, so it was a regular hootenanny right through lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also appeared in multiple episodes of General Electric Theater<\/em>, Alfred Hitchcock Presents<\/em>, Wagon Train<\/em> and Laramie<\/em>. He also worked on episodes of The Millionaire<\/em>, Checkmate<\/em>, Perry Mason<\/em>, The Lucy Show<\/em>, Gunsmoke<\/em>, My Favorite Martian<\/em>, My Living Doll <\/em>and The Magical World of Disney<\/em>.<\/p>\n

He was drafted into the Marines during the Vietnam War, serving in Hawaii. When he returned home, he discovered his family had spent his Hollywood earnings, so he attended the University of San Diego to become a teacher. However, he found better pay as a ma\u00eetre d\u2019 and a bartender.<\/p>\n

Rush is survived by siblings Sally, Monica, Patrick and Megan. He was predeceased by brother Jack, who died in February.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source popculture.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dennis Rush, a former child actor best known for his roles in The Andy Griffith Show and Man of a Thousand Faces, has died. He was 74. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Rush was diagnosed with leukemia last month while living near San Diego, California, and died en route to a hospital on May 9. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2421697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2421696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/The-Andy-Griffith-Show-Child-Actor-Dies-Dennis-Rush-Was.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2421696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2421698,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421696\/revisions\/2421698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2421697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2421696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2421696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2421696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}