To grow up in a certain time — which was, really a stretch of about 30 or 40 years thanks to syndication — meant a friendly and devoted relationship with Andy Griffith. My generation met him as the kindly sheriff and father from Mayberry.
A little bit later we were all introduced to this other side of Griffith, the brilliant work of the comedian:
And then later we learned of his outstanding early movie work. Suddenly the kind old Mayberry father-figure (He debuted as Andy Taylor a year younger than I am now. So I take it back; he wasn’t old, it was a trick of the black-and-white film.) was young. He was 32 when the hysterical No Time for Sergeants play debuted as a movie:
Did you catch Corporal Klinger in there? Jamie Farr played the un-credited co-pilot in the movie.
Years later we’d see A Face in the Crowd, and it would turn everything upside down. Andy Griffith as a bitter, cynical, hard Lonesome Rhodes? It changed everything. It was hard to process this man playing a role like that when you had the ability to see Andy Taylor (and Matlock, and some of us just assumed we could make Matlock an extension of the Taylor character, sort of an apology for RFD in a new setting) on your television almost every day for your entire life.
He’d say later he’d had exactly one acting class before that film which, by the way, holds up remarkably well, 55 years later.
After a while he could only work those heavy roles, but it was the character from Mayberry that endured, persisted and informed us as an audience. For all of his range, as an actor and generationally, what happened in that fictional little North Carolina town is what everyone thought of this morning when they heard the news.
Several years ago AV Club did a list of wonderfully irrelevant Andy Griffith show conversations. This scene description was fitting for the series:
It rarely makes the list of the greatest Andy Griffith Show episodes, but the first seven minutes of “Class Reunion” should be issued to anyone who wants to learn how to write Southern characters, and how to act them. Beginning with Knotts and Griffith moving a heavy trunk and worrying that one of their pants might’ve ripped, the conversation evolves into a discussion of those “make money in your spare time” ads, and then a conversation about what’s in Knotts’ trunk, starting with a rock that Knotts used to strike a match on to light his father’s pipe.
Here’s that scene, and it is pitch perfect still:
And of course the smartest thing Griffith ever did on that show was to play it straight. Don Knotts was destined to be the comedic relief, but that wasn’t the original plan. Andy Taylor held the town together, but Barney Fife brought the show down through the generations:
Here’s Griffith just after Knotts died in 2006:
Here they are together in 1996, both near 70 years old and 36 years after the show took the air. Griffith says Mayberry, shot from 1960 through 1968, was really about the 1930s. They’re talking about the characters, which is just about the most charming conversation you could imagine two old men having:
Did you know the great theme had lyrics?
Well, now, take down your fishin’ pole and meet me at the fishin’ hole,
We may not get a bite all day, but don’t you rush away.
Makes you want to run right out for an Andy Griffith marathon.
