Beaks here...
Andy Griffith has passed away at the age of eighty-six. If you had a television in your house growing up, you probably watched your share of THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW. When you got older, you hopefully checked out Elia Kazan's A FACE IN THE CROWD, and were shocked to see the vicious side of Griffith's country boy image. If you've never seen A FACE IN THE CROWD, you need to remedy that immediately.
THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW was an emormous success in the 1960s because the fictional Mayberry, North Carolina bore a striking resemblance to just about every small town in America. Yes, it was a distinctly Southern show, but the colorful cast of characters - including Sherrif Andy, his son Opie (Ronny Howard), Aunt Bea (Frances Bavier), the bumbling deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts), the goofy gas station attendants Gomer and Goober Pyle (Jim Nabors and George Lindsay), Floyd the barber (Howard McNear) and Otis the town drunk (Hal Smith) - were friendly, familiar faces to everyone. And friendliness is the key to the show's enduring popularity: it's a depiction of America at its neighborly best. If it had a failing, it's that Griffith was never able to meaningfully integrate the show, something he regretted in a 2003 interview with The Observer.
“We tried in every way to get that to happen and we were just unable. At that time black people didn’t want to play subservient roles, to do maids and butlers and all that, and we were unable to make it so people would rush into a black doctor’s office. And I’m sorry about it, too."
Griffith ended the show in 1968 in order to pursue a film career, but he returned to television in 1986 as the criminal defense attorney MATLOCK - which ran nine seasons and is probably airing somewhere on cable as we speak. Griffith may not have challenged his audience, but he certainly respected them. He was dependable, and he never failed to make you smile. You can't say that of many people in the history of show business. That's why people will still be whistling THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW theme a hundred years from now.
