By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times –
LOS ANGELES — Andy Griffith, whose folksy portrayal of the wise and good-humored sheriff of Mayberry in the classic 1960s situation comedy “The Andy Griffith Show” made him one of television’s most beloved stars, has died. He was 86.
Griffith, who decades later experienced another round of TV popularity starring as a crafty Atlanta defense attorney on “Matlock,” died Tuesday morning at his home in Manteo, N.C., his friend and former president of the University of North Carolina, William C. Friday, told the Los Angeles Times. The cause was not immediately determined.
(PHOTO: In this March 7, 2004 file photograph, Andy Griffith attends the 2nd Annual TV Land Awards at the Hollywood Palladium. Griffith, whose portrayal of a small-town sheriff made “The Andy Griffith Show” one of American television’s most enduring shows, has died at his North Carolina home, television station WITN reported on Tuesday, July 3, 2012. He was 86.)
A former North Carolina high school music teacher, Griffith launched his career as an entertainer in the early 1950s by writing and performing comic monologues for civic clubs that he delivered in an exaggerated Southern drawl that was once described as “sounding like three yards out on a Carolina swamp.”
As the Harvard-educated lawyer on “Matlock,” which had a nine-year run on NBC and ABC in the 1980s and ‘90s, Griffith maintained his down-home sensibility. As an actor, he learned early on to play to his strengths.
“Any time I try to play anything that doesn’t come natural, I’m just plain bad,” he once told TV Guide.
As Sheriff Andy Taylor, his most famous role, he was just plain good.
Griffith was starring in the Broadway musical “Destry Rides Again” in 1959 when he told his agent that he was ready to try a TV series.
Sheldon Leonard, the producer of “The Danny Thomas Show,” teamed with a writer to develop an idea for a series that would exploit Griffith’s homespun image: having him play the small-town sheriff of a mythical North Carolina town called Mayberry.
Serving as the series’ pilot was a guest spot by Griffith in early 1960 on CBS’ “The Danny Thomas Show” in which Sheriff Taylor picked up nightclub entertainer Danny for speeding through Mayberry on his way to Miami.
“The Andy Griffith Show” made its debut that fall with Ronny Howard as the widowed Taylor’s young son, Opie; and Frances Bavier as his matronly Aunt Bee. The series quickly became one of the decade’s most popular shows and ran for eight seasons.
Comic actor Don Knotts, who had played a supporting role in the Broadway and film versions of “No Time for Sergeants” that Griffith had earlier starred in, had seen his “Danny Thomas Show” episode and called to suggest that Andy Taylor should have a deputy.
The addition of Knotts as the incompetent but full-of-bravado Barney Fife quickly shifted the balance of the show.
“I was supposed to have been the comic, the funny one,” Griffith told the Times in 1993. The series, he said, “might not have lasted even half a season that way, but when Don came on I realized by the second episode Don should be funny and I should play straight to him.”
The unflappable Andy and the all-too-excitable Barney became one of television’s greatest comedy duos.
Considered the driving force behind the series, Griffith was heavily involved with the show’s production and helped shape the scripts and characterizations.
George Lindsay, who joined the series in 1965 as Goober, told the Times in 1993: “He is probably the best script constructionist that ever was.” Griffith, he added, “made you operate at 110 percent because you brought yourself up to his level.”
Ron Howard, who grew up to become one of Hollywood’s top directors, considered Griffith to be “like a wonderful uncle to me.”
Howard told People magazine in 1986 that Griffith “created an atmosphere of hard work and fun that I try to bring to my movies.”
When Griffith and most of the major cast members reunited for “Return to Mayberry” in 1986, it was one of the highest-rated TV movies of the year.
“The backbone of our show was love,” Griffith once said. “There’s something about Mayberry and Mayberry folk that never leaves you.”
“The Andy Griffith Show” was in the Nielson Top 10 all eight seasons, and when its star voluntarily left the show in 1968 it was ranked No. 1.
He starred in only one post-TV series film — “Angel in My Pocket,” a 1969 family comedy that bombed — before attempting to reestablish himself as a TV star. On CBS in 1970, he played the title role in “The Headmaster,” a short-lived dramatic series about a private high school.
He struck out again in 1971 with “The New Andy Griffith Show” on CBS, in which he returned to his sitcom roots playing a married father of two children who becomes mayor of a small Southern town.
Over the decade, Griffith co-starred with Jeff Bridges in the movie comedy “Hearts of the West” and appeared in occasional TV movies and miniseries (“Centennial” and “Roots: The Next Generation”), as well as making a few other series comeback attempts.
But, as he later put it, “I fell out of fashion. The phone didn’t ring much.”
In 1983, two years after receiving an Emmy nomination for his supporting role in the TV movie “Murder in Texas,” Griffith was stricken with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system.
“In a matter of hours, my legs were paralyzed,” he later told People magazine.
After six months of extensive physical therapy, however, he fully recovered and returned to acting — including a role in the 1984 miniseries “Fatal Vision” before launching “Matlock” in 1986.
Griffith, who was inducted into the TV Academy Hall of Fame in 1992, received a 1997 Grammy for his album “I Love to Tell The Story — 25 Timeless Hymns.”
When Griffith received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civil award, at a White House ceremony in 2005, President George W. Bush thanked him for being “such a friendly and beloved presence in our American life.”
