So long Sheriff.
I just heard about that myself. We must be watching the same channel.
"No Time For Seargants" is one of the greatest classics of time.
For many years I enjoyed his acting.
Recently he has done some things that color those memories in a way that is not conducive to pleasant recall. I hope he was just mislead.
RIP Andy.
Andy Griffith, star of the 1960–68 sit-com, “The Andy Griffith Show”, and the 1986–95 legal drama, “Matlock”, died this morning at the age of 86.
Griffith was born in Mount Airy, North Carolina, which is believed to be the prototype for Mayberry, the fictional town where “The Andy Griffith Show” took place. Griffith originally studied to be a preacher, but became involved in school plays.
He was cast in “No Time for Sergeants”, first as a TV play and then on Broadway. He also appeared in “Destry Rides Again” on Broadway. He went to Hollywood to film “A Face in the Crowd”, a dramatic role (a character similar to Arthur Godfrey) that earned him much respect, and then went on to star in a film version of “No Time for Sergeants”, where he met another actor, Don Knotts.
In 1960, he was featured in an episode of Danny Thomas’ show “Make Room for Daddy” as country sheriff/justice/newspaper reporter Andy Taylor. The character became the star of “The Andy Griffith Show”, also featuring Frances Bavier as Aunt Bea, Knotts as Deputy Barney Fife and Ron Howard as Andy’s son Opie.
The show ran for seven years, and spun off “Gomer Pyle, USMC” (basically a rehash of “No Time for Sergeants”) and “Mayberry RFD”, after Griffith decided not to return.
After a series of network TV movies and several unsuccessful TV series, in 1986 Griffith returned as “Matlock”, a Southern lawyer who won all of his cases. The show ran for 10 years. Griffith also recorded a number of record albums which were moderate sellers.
Griffith also did some political work (as the post above refers to), appearing in a commercial with Ron Howard endorsing the Obama-Biden ticket and encouraging people to register to vote, as well as a commercial supporting the new health care law. He has also endorsed some Democratic Party candidates in North Carolina.
Surprisingly, Griffith never won an Emmy Award, despite being the long-time star of two of the most popular family TV shows ever, although he did win a Grammy for a gospel-themed record he made in 1997.
Andrew (or Andy, as some of the reference sources insist) Samuel Griffith was born the son of a furniture factory worker, Carl Lee Griffith, and his wife, Geneva Nann Nunn Griffith, on June 1, 1926, the same day as Marilyn Monroe. He grew up with other hardscrabble mill kids on the wrong side of the tracks at 711 Haymore St. in Mount Airy.
While he enjoyed the usual small-town summer delights of rock-kicking, cloud-counting and such, there were enough hard times and spirit-crushing prejudice in that blue-collar Surry County town that once he left, his return visits were few.
He once told show-business biographer Lee Pfeiffer, author of “The Official Andy Griffith Show Scrapbook, “I cannot deny that the person I am was born and raised in Mount Airy, and I was influenced in many ways by that town. I will tell you that it was not all positive. I was actually called ‘white trash’ at one point. That was said by a young girl I was stuck on and she probably wasn’t thinking. And we did come from the wrong side of the tracks. But when she said ‘Get away from me, white trash,’ I did.
> I just heard about that myself. We must be watching the same channel.
>
> "No Time For Seargants" is one of the greatest classics of time.
The Sullivan show was not Griffith’s only disappointment. The hayseed act that wowed ’em back at the Rotary Clubs didn’t exactly catch fire in the nightclubs of New York, New Jersey and Long Island. The couple headed back home to regroup. That’s when Griffith saw a notice that “No Time for Sergeants,” a popular book by author Mac Hyman, was being turned into a television show for the United States Steel Hour. He just knew he was right for the part and headed back to Manhattan to try out.
“No Time for Sergeants,” starring Andy Griffith as the innocently goofy Will Stockdale, aired in March 1955. It was on Broadway by October of that year. It featured an unknown actor named Don Knotts as a character named Manual Dexterity.
The show ran on Broadway for 796 performances and earned Griffith a Tony nomination as Best Featured Actor. Most of the Broadway cast followed the show to Hollywood, where it was reborn as a movie in 1958.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/03/3688509/andy-griffith-he-was-just-our.html#storylink=cpy
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