RIP Andy Griffith

I guarantee you there are still relatives on my mom's side that don't know the actual title of the show. To them it was "Mayberry," first, last and always. And if you were a young punk in the early-mid 80s asking why we had to watch some old black and white show, you got a death glare equal to suggesting flying a Soviet flag in the front yard. This death is going to draw an emotional reaction on the level of Earnhardt, and from most of the same parts of the country. I would posit that any daily between Natchez to Martinsburg should likely run this A1 tomorrow.

 

Blasphemy, i'm sure, but my favorite Andy Griffith role was in "Waitress." It was the last movie by Adrienne Shelley, has Keri Russell, Cheryl Hines, Nathan Fillion and oodles of others.

http://movieclips.com/NrEx-waitress-movie-dancing-with-joe/

See it if you haven't. It's a great little movie.

RIP, Joe.

 

RIP Andy. The Andy Griffith Show still makes my list of all-time favorites.

I hope they can get The Darlings to perform at the service (or at least The Dillards). Whatever they play, I'm sure it will be one that makes me cry.

 

Favorite episode of the Andy Griffith Show is going to be a big radio topic in the South for the next few days.

 

He was good in "Waitress" (had to show everyone that he still had it), but A Face in the Crowd remains the gold standard, and is easily the best feature he ever had any part in making. Everyone whose arm I've ever twisted to take two hours and watch that thing has thanked me, profusely. It's as good as it gets, and remains one of the two great media movies of the '50s (with Sweet Smell of Sucess, the other . . . )

 

Go see "No Time For Sergeants" Hysterical.
RIP Andy.. See you on ReRuns

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052005/

 

Yes, it is. A great script, for the time.

 

I always loved the blank expressions on the Darlin' boys' faces as they played.

True fact: The Andy Griffith Show pilot was an episode of Danny Thomas' Make Room for Daddy in which Andy busts Danny on a traffic violation and Danny's smart-guy attitude gets him locked up. In the episode, Andy is sheriff, justice of the peace and the editor of the Mayberry newspaper. Frances Bavier appears -- but not as Aunt Bee. Andy also mentions an "Aunt Lucy" in the episode. Frank Cady -- Sam Drucker from Green Acres -- played the town drunk character who later became Otis.

Andy was Gomer Pyle before there was a Gomer Pyle as a country-hick private driving his sergerant crazy in No Time for Sergeants.

 

Budd Schulberg wrote A Face in the Crowd and On the Waterfront. He also covered boxing for SI for a bit.

 

I had literally never seen "A Face In The Crowd" until a year or so ago.

Oh. My. God.

In a way, it makes it a little sad how he ended up being typecast as Andy Taylor. Although Andy Taylor is a great character, the best TV dad ever, it's amazing to think what Griffith would have done had he not become one of TV's great icons. At least in AFITC, the comparisons to young Brando are no stretch.

My dad had a fairly good resemblance for Andy Taylor and was within a year of him in age. When I was a grade schooler, I guess I looked kinda like Ron Howard (I don't at all now). I always thought how cool it would be to have a fishin' hole where we could just go whistlin' and fishin'.

 

Andy Griffith was big in my house growing up. His death has an extra sting because one of our running family jokes was that my late Dad looked like him and they wore the same hair style.

Then, while studying music as University I discovered this:

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I now dedicate my life to singing with the roof of my mouth way way up like the classy singers.

 

RIP to a true legend.