![]() Their children and grandchildren know the tune from the ever-present reruns. More than half a century later, most Americans who watched the original show can whistle its theme song on command. And after that we added the other comedic characters, and it changed the nature of the show, and I gave us a chance to last as long as we did.”īy the end of its run in 1968, “Andy Griffith” was No. Griffith told the Star, “that Barney should be the comic and Andy should be the straight man. Griffith’s decision to emphasize Knotts and his comedic genius. “It was about a fella who was a sheriff of the town and justice of the peace and editor of the paper and he told funny stories and he had an aunt and a boy,” Mr. Griffith as the comedic star of the program. ![]() The sitcom’s co-stars included Ron Howard as Andy’s son, Opie Don Knotts as his easily frazzled deputy, Barney Fife and Jim Nabors as gas station attendant Gomer Pyle.Īs originally envisioned by producer Sheldon Leonard, “The Andy Griffith Show” featured Mr. His Andy Taylor of Mayberry, a steady-handed widowed sheriff, was born in an episode of “The Danny Thomas Show” in 1960 and that same year was spun off into “The Andy Griffith Show” on CBS. Griffith soon became a homespun staple on television. “You play an egomaniac and paranoid all day, and it’s hard to turn it off at bedtime. “I’ll tell you the truth,” he once told the New York Times. He said that digging so deeply into the character, working in the Method acting style favored by Kazan, affected his marriage. He took to smashing things, to feel Lonesome’s anger. To play the part, he harnessed all the heartbreak and sting from having been called “white trash” while he was growing up in rural North Carolina. He added that Kazan used that side “to find the emotions of evil, the various thousands of moods that this man had.”īut the role took a toll on Mr. At that moment, he and Budd could both see that I had a little wild side - that is, I can create a wild side.” Griffith told the Los Angeles Times, “hired me the next day. . . He convinced Kazan by doing an impersonation of evangelist Oral Roberts conducting a “healing” of the director. Griffith said he was determined to prove he could play Lonesome Rhodes. Griffith said that Kazan and Schulberg - the team behind such powerful films as “On the Waterfront” (1954) with Marlon Brando - were initially skeptical about casting him in “A Face in the Crowd.” He said they figured that he was not suited to the part because he was so good at playing likable hillbillies and seemed perhaps a bit too nice offstage as well. The film has been venerated as a prescient look at the future of television and politics. Griffith played Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, a Southern vagrant-turned-television demagogue who is ultimately undone by his megalomania. ![]() Griffith also starred in the 1958 film version of the Broadway play, but he showed dazzling potential as a dramatic performer in the 1957 movie “ A Face in the Crowd,” directed by Elia Kazan and with a script by Budd Schulberg. ![]() He broke into the entertainment industry in the early 1950s with a country bumpkin monologue called “What It Was Was Football” and then starred on Broadway as a hapless Southern draftee in the hit comic play “No Time for Sergeants” (1955). Thanks to syndication, “The Andy Griffith Show” has been in continual circulation since its original run and dominated Mr. Mayberry was a place where Sheriff Andy Taylor wore a badge but normally holstered no gun, where the local drunk turned himself in after drinking too much, and where a pickle-making contest qualified for a ruckus. Griffith was one of the most recognizable figures on television for more than five decades.ĭuring cultural turmoil, political assassinations and war in real America, he kept a comforting sort of order in Mayberry, although order was not hard to keep. With his lanky build, boyish smile and winsome drawl, Mr. His death was confirmed by his friend William Friday, a former president of the University of North Carolina. Andy Griffith, who illuminated the charming dignity of small-town Southern life with his performance as a kindly sheriff in the popular and enduring 1960s sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show” and who decades later remained a TV favorite as the canny courtroom lawyer in “Matlock,” died July 3 at his home in Manteo, N.C.
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