Initially, he and the writers thought the problem was with the various actresses they tried (including, in season one, with Father Knows Best‘s Elinor Donahue as the druggist Ellie), but realized they simply didn’t know how to write romance, and Andy didn’t know how to play it. Eventually, though, a relationship with schoolteacher Helen Crump (Aneta Corsaut) developed, but in many ways, while it was cute and wholesome, it was also superficial. Basically, it was incredibly difficult to set Andy Taylor up with a romantic partner. Writing romance on the show was a problem.Īndy Griffith’s discomfort with being demonstrable with women in real life became an issue on the series. They were both completely consumed with it.” My dad would say, ‘Hey, Andy, could you get me that a little bit quieter?’ and Andy would give him a note back and say, ‘How about trying this or that?’ They constantly talked about their characters and their performances. To be fair, though, she adds, “A lot of times people say to me, ‘Oh, your dad really made the show.’ They don’t realize what Andy was to the show. I don’t think he wanted to continue on, especially not without Barney, because they couldn’t replace him. That’s probably the reason why at first Andy himself said he only wanted to do the show for five seasons, but they offered him a fortune to keep on with the show. If you keep on going, hitting yourself over the heard, you’re going to start repeating stuff and then it loses its quality and its perfection. There’s only so many stories you can tell. After five years of Andy’s show, I don’t care what it is, writers start to run out of ideas.
Then, all of a sudden, you get offered a five-picture deal to be a star in your own right and make all the decisions.
#ANDY GRIFFITH CHARACTERS PLUS#
Imagine the intensity, plus the level of perfection that was being strived for. Then think of the character, and also the energy that it took to play him. In regards to Don leaving the show, his daughter, Karen, told us, “Put yourself in his place. Don would win five Emmy Awards in the category of Best Supporting Actor as Barney. On the show, it was explained that Barney had joined the Raleigh, North Carolina police force, while in real life the actor actually began making movies (he did return for a total of five episodes). Then, Andy decided to continue the show, but Don elected to leave anyway. That sounded good to Don Knotts, who, as the fifth year was coming around, had gotten an offer for a film deal from Universal. When the show started, Andy Griffith was adamant that it would run for five years and that would be it he would be moving on. Running for eight years from 1960-68 (and then pretty much continuing for another three with a different lead character in the spin-off Mayberry, RFD), the show introduced us to the world of Sheriff, and widower, Andy Taylor ( Andy Griffith) his son Opie ( Ron Howard), their caretaker Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier), Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife ( Don Knotts), and a wide variety of townspeople who became fully formed characters of their own, including Jim Nabors’ Gomer Pyle (eventually spun off into his own successful series).ĭon Knotts left Mayberry five years in for a reason. And that came in the form of The Andy Griffith Show. Yet standing out above them all - and decidedly low concept - was an homage to the good old days, and the innocence of small-town life. During this time, there was the wacky adventures of seven stranded castaways ( Gilligan’s Island), an alien among us ( My Favorite Martian), monsters living down the block ( The Munsters, The Addams Family), witches in suburbia ( Bewitched) and magical genies in Florida ( I Dream of Jeannie). Television in the 1960s was filled with a lot of high concepts, but nothing was quite like The Andy Griffith Show.
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