Dennis Rush, ‘Man of a Thousand Faces,’ ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ child actor, dies at 74

Dennis Rush, a child actor who played the character of a young Lon Chaney Jr. in “Man of a Thousand Faces” and was one of Opie’s friends in “The Andy Griffith Show,” died on May 9. He was 74.

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Rush, who was diagnosed with leukemia in April, lived in the San Diego area and died while being transported to an area hospital, actor-musician Keith Thibodeaux told “The Hollywood Reporter.”

Thibodeaux, who played another one of Opie’s friends in the fictional town of Mayberry, also had the role of Little Ricky in “I Love Lucy.” He announced Rush’s death in a Facebook post on May 14, noting that “Mayberry has lost a great citizen and a great friend.”

“What a shock .. He was with us as one of Opie‘s buddies,” Thibodeaux wrote. “I will miss him at the Andy Griffith festivals as we had so many stories to tell.

“I’m just glad that I was able to pray with him last month at one of the festivals when he found out that he was diagnosed with leukemia.”

Rush made his acting debut as 4-year-old Creighton Chaney (Lon Chaney Jr.’s birth name) in the 1957 film, “Man of a Thousand Faces,” according to Deadline.

Rush had roles in two Westerns -- he appeared in seven episodes of “Wagon Train” from 1960 to 1962, and then was in three episodes of “Laramie,“ according to The Hollywood Reporter.

From 1963 to 1965, Rush appeared in eight episodes of “The Andy Griffith Show” as Howie Prewitt, a friend of Opie Taylor (Ron Howard) according to IMDb.com.

“I got to be in eight episodes over about a 2 1/2-year period,” Rush said in 2022. “It was just the best of the best.”

Dennis Eugene Rush was born in Philadelphia on June 10, 1951, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “When he was 1, his father brought the family to Los Angeles and got a job as a film archivist at Universal Studios.

“If you were good, you got to go to the studio and have lunch with dad, it was kind of a big deal,” Rush remembered last year at the Mayberry-I Love Lucy Festival in Granville, Tennessee.

While they were sitting at 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.’”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Rush also worked on the films “No Name on the Bullet” (1959) and “Follow Me, Boys!” (1966) and on episodes of “The Millionaire,” “Checkmate,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Perry Mason,” “The Lucy Show,” “Gunsmoke,” “My Favorite Martian,” “My Living Doll” and “The Magical World of Disney.”

Rush later joined U.S. Marines, discovering after his stint ended that his parents spent all of the money he earned as a child actor, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

After graduating from San Diego State in 1977, Rush had a career in the hotel and restaurant business, the entertainment news website reported.

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