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Andy griffith prisoner of love6/14/2023 After a few less successful series and a gillion guest appearances, he struck gold a second time with the legal drama Matlock. As sheriff, he is the model of modern effective policing, eschewing technology over personal relationships and abhorring the well-meaning but overzealous violence represented by the crusading-but-bumbling Barney and his single bullet.Īndy Griffith left Mayberry and the show he created in 1968, to start his own production company. He is the police, prosecutor, judge, jury, and jailer, executing each job with Solomonic wisdom. In Mayberry, Andy is the personification of Law and Order. Sheriff Taylor's real job, though, is government. Complaining about a lack of gritty realism in Mayberry would be like complaining that baseball stadiums have too much green space.Ī widower, Andy's domestic life was devoted to raising Opie, eating Aunt Bee's cooking, and going on an occasional date with semi-feminist schoolteacher Helen Crump or flat-out liberated Ellie Mae Walker. Now as when it first aired, Andy is supposed to be a refuge from modern life, not a reflection of it. It's also hard to imagine a character like "town drunk" Otis Campbell on TV today-unless he was in rehab with Dr. Yet, like Woody Allen's version of New York City, this small southern town apparently has no African-American citizens. Mayberry is said to be in North Carolina. Of course, what's portrayed on screen in Andy is absurdly homogenized. Mayberry was treated reverently, as a pastoral ideal, and the town would enter the pop consciousness as a synonym for the quieter pleasures and virtues of small-town American life. The Clampett family on The Beverly Hillbillies, for instance, were laughed at more than they were laughed with, and their hometown of Bugtussel is benighted. On other shows ostensibly about rural folk, being rural was a source of humor. Most importantly, the fictional town of Mayberry and what it represents weren't held up for ridicule. The cinematography and direction were better, too- Andy was shot languidly, in keeping with the hyper-mellow pace of small-town life. The storylines were more plausible, the characters more authentic. Unlike the shows that tried to follow it and virtually every other sitcom on at the time, Andy was never wacky or zany. These were the first sitcoms set in the country, with characters that spoke in Southern accents, and the program couldn't have been more different from, for instance, I Love Lucy with its glamorous showbiz setting and main characters in what we would now call a multicultural marriage.Īndy Griffith's Indelible Legacy: That Whistled Theme SongĪndy, though, was just simply better than the shows that tried to imitate it. So was a wave of shows that followed, including The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction. People in rural America were getting TV for the first time, and Andy was meant to tap that audience. That storyline-of the urbanite who is taught, often unwillingly, to appreciate the joys of country life, would become the overarching narrative for eight years of the series. That role would evolve into the iconic Sheriff Andy Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show, which debuted in 1960. In 1960, Griffith guest-starred on an episode of Make Room for Daddy, playing a country sheriff who catches city slicker Danny Thomas speeding in his fancy car. (A few years later, reprising the role on film, he would meet a short, gangly, bugged-eyed budding comic genius named Don Knotts.) More TV followed. Griffith jumped to TV, debuting in No Time for Sergeants. The routine, released as a single in 1953, became a novelty hit. In it he portrayed a country bumpkin who stumbles upon a college football game and tries to figure out what he's seeing. He first found fame with What it Was, Was Football. That image would define him, despite the occasional foray into playing against type. The actor began on stage as a comic storyteller-jovial, self-effacing, and filled with folksy wisdom. That's because Griffith's public persona was anything but dark. It's a dark, brooding, quietly scary performance. In 1957's A Face in the Crowd, directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg, Griffith-who died today at age 86-plays a backwoods drifter who becomes a TV host and uses the show to gain political power. Anyone who has seen Griffith's film début can attest to that.
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