I first heard Andy Griffith on a record called “What it Was Was Football.” It was about a southern boy in a college town helping an evangelist set up his tent. And he got caught up in a crowd that pushed him up into a football stadium.
The ensuing dialogue was about someone who knew nothing about football trying to place it in context with what he understood. It was hilarious! Griffith went on to personal appearances and to writing other comedy dialogues.
It would lead Griffith to the Broadway show, “No Time for Sergeants,” which, of course, became a movie of the same name and almost identical cast of the Broadway show. (Andy would form a friendship with a former cast member, Don Knotts, who would play a very important role in Griffith’s future.)
Griffith was placed in the leading role of the movie “A Face in the Crowd,” about a small town, southern boy who could sing and was a perfect pitch man for certain products. This rube became an overnight sensation. It was a tour de force in acting and, certainly, if there had been any fairness in Hollywood, Griffith would have won an Academy Award. I do not know what happened during the filming of “A Face in the Crowd,” or what may have happened after the movie wrapped. But Andy Griffith would never get another big-time acting role in Hollywood. He didn’t talk about it very much, but something must have gone awry.
The next time we saw Andy Griffith he was a southern rube again, a sheriff in a small Carolina town on the Danny Thomas Show. That one-time segment would lead to “The Andy Griffith Show.” The producers surrounded Griffith (now Andy Taylor), with a cast of lovable, comedic characters. There was Barney Fife (Don Knotts), who became the somewhat hapless deputy sheriff, a cute kid, Opie (Ron Howard), Aunt Bea (Frances Bavier), a lovable town drunk, the town barber who wasn’t quite all there, and a rock-throwing hillbilly. Add a folk-singing group, and this mixture became a huge success.
It was shortly into this mixture that the sheriff’s character changed … his uneducated southern accent was dropped, and he became a straight man for all of the characters in this show. He changed into a man of wisdom, compassion, and fatherhood. In later times, Andy Griffith would say that Andy Taylor was a much better man than he actually was. That’s the way we remember Andy. Even after another successful TV show (“Matlock”), we remember Andy Griffith as the sheriff who didn’t carry a gun and kept us all smiling while handling the problems of this small town of Mayberry.
Andy Griffith was a much more complicated man than we remember. He was a very competent musician and singer. He was a much better actor then he was given credit for and he was, in many ways, a renaissance man for the 20th Century.
We’re sure going to miss Andy Griffith.
Ronn Mott, a longtime radio personality in Terre Haute, writes commentaries for the Tribune-Star. His pieces are published online Tuesday and Thursday on Tribstar.com, and in the print and online editions on Saturday.
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RONN MOTT: Andy Griffith
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