One of the legends of television, Andy Griffith passed away today at the age of 86. He died at his home on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, where he lived peacefully out of the spotlight. Griffith will always be remembered as the sheriff of Mayberry in The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968), where Griffith also helped in developing the scripts for the series. Many of us grew up watching that show and Griffith’s role in the legal drama, Matlock (1986-1995), which actually ran longer than The Andy Griffith Show.
Griffith’s first big break came when his 1953 funny monologue, “What it Was, Was Football,” became a best-selling record. The story recounts a hillbilly’s attempt to try to figure out the sport.
On television, he appeared in the teleplay No Time for Sergeants in 1955 playing a country boy in the Air Force. The show would later inspire the Andy Griffith Show spin-off, U.S.M.C. Gomer Pyle, and it led to Griffith starring in the 1958 film version of No Time for Sergeants. The movie teamed Griffith with Don Knotts, who went on to co-star as Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show. The TV show pairing with the funny Knotts freed Griffith’s Andy Taylor from having to be the clown and allowed his character to develop as the small town’s heart. Knotts also became Griffith’s life-long best friend until Knotts died in 2006.
My favorite Griffith movie role is his starring performance in A Face in the Crowd (1957). The film, directed by Elia Kazan, starred Griffith as a power-hungry country boy, capturing something darker than we would usually see in Griffith’s characters. The film had mixed reviews initially, but today, most critics appreciate the film’s deep journey into revealing something scary underlying American popular culture. A Face in the Crowd now has an excellent 91% Critics Rating and a 93% Audience Rating on the Rotten Tomatoes website.
In later years, Griffith did not appear often on television. But in 2008 he appeared in Brad Paisley’s video for “Waiting on a Woman” and on a remix of the song on Paisley’s mostly instrumental album Play (2008). It was great to see Griffith in action again, once again dispensing some country wisdom to a new generation. Paisley became friends with Griffith, and told the older man that his TV role as Andy Taylor had taught him many lessons about raising his own son.
I still watch The Andy Griffith Show when I catch it on television, and I wrote about my trip last year to see Andy Griffith’s birthplace of Mount Airy, which claims to be the basis for the fictional Mayberry. So, for many of us, the story of Andy Griffith has to begin and end with The Andy Griffith Show because we so loved the character and the town he created. And we loved how the country boy in a simple town taught us something about being a man in a complicated world. And so I will end with one of my favorite short clips where Andy used birds to teach about responsibility to his son Opie (Ron Howard).
My, don’t the clouds in heaven seem nice and full today? RIP Andy Griffith (and Andy Taylor).
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