Andy Griffith born 1 June 1926

Andy Samuel Griffith (June 1, 1926 – July 3, 2012) was an American actor, comedian, television producer, southern gospel singer, and writer whose career spanned seven decades in music and television.

Andy Griffith was born in Mount Airy, North Carolina, the only child of Carl Lee Griffith and the former Geneva Nann Nunn. His father was a foreman at a furniture factory. After seeing the trombonist Jack Teagarden in the 1941 film “Birth of the Blues,” he bought a trombone from Sears, Roebuck & Company, then wheedled lessons out of a local pastor, who later recommended him to the University of North Carolina, where he won a music degree and married Barbara Edwards.

He moved on to singing, and for a while hoped to be an opera singer. He tried teaching music and phonetics in a high school but left after three frustrating years. In spare moments Griffith and his wife put together an act in which he posed as a country preacher and told jokes (one was about putting frogs in the baptismal water) while she danced. They played local civic clubs. Griffith became a regular on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) and The Steve Allen Plymouth Show (1951).

In 1953, performing for an insurance convention, Mr. Griffith, in his bumpkin preacher persona, told a comic first-person tale about attending a college football game and trying to figure out what was going on. Some 500 discs of the monologue were pressed under the title “What It Was, Was Football,” and it became a hit on local radio. Mr. Linke, then with Capitol Records, scurried to North Carolina to acquire the rights and sign Mr. Griffith.

                             

His big break came on Broadway, in 1955, when he was cast in “No Time for Sergeants” as a mountain yokel drafted into the Air Force, which was a role he had played on television, on “The United States Steel Hour.” The play was a hit, running for almost two years, and he reprised the role for the 1958 film version.

Griffith, Steve Allen & Elvis 1956

His film debut was in the provocative and prophetic A Face in the Crowd (1957), in which Griffith gave a performance that has been described as stunning. In 1959, Griffith returned to Broadway in the musical comedy “Destry Rides Again,” in a role that had been played in films by Tom Mix, James Stewart, Joel McCrea and Audie Murphy.

The pilot of “The Andy Griffith Show,” in February 1960, was actually an episode of “The Danny Thomas Show” in which Mr. Thomas, as Danny Williams, is arrested by a sheriff for running through a stop sign while driving through Mayberry. Sheldon Leonard, producer of Mr. Thomas’s show, had decided to build a sitcom around  Griffith after seeing him in “Destry.” Mr. Griffith negotiated for 50 percent ownership, which gave him a large say in the show’s development.

Griffith portrayed a folksy small-town sheriff who shared simple heartfelt wisdom. The series was one of the most popular television series in history. It generated some successful spin-offs, and the original is still seen in reruns to this day. To viewers, . Griffith’s portrayal of the sheriff seemed so effortless, they presumed he was just playing himself. He wasn’t, he insisted; he was always acting. But he took that misimpression as a compliment to his artistry.

After the 1967-68 season,  Griffith had had enough and left the show. But he did produce a kind of sequel series for the following season, “Mayberry R.F.D.” His acting career stalled afterward, despite a five-year deal with Universal Pictures. He said he was not offered roles he wanted to play. Returning to television in 1970, he starred in two short-lived shows, “The Headmaster” and “The New Andy Griffith Show.” He created his own production company in 1972, which produced several movies and television series.

In 1981, he was nominated for an Emmy for his portrayal in Murder in Texas (1981). In 1983, Griffith was stricken with Guillain-Barre syndrome, but he recovered after rehabilitation. In 1986, he produced and starred in the very successful television series Matlock (1986). The series spawned numerous television movies as well. When he accepted the People's Choice Award for this series, he said this was his favourite role. Griffith continued to play occasional movie and television parts, including that of an 80-something widower who rediscovers romance in a nursing home in “Play the Game.”

He never lost his singing voice. In 1996 he recorded a gospel album, “I Love to Tell the Story: 25 Timeless Hymns,” which won a Grammy. 

In 2005 he was awarded Presidential Medal Of Freedom. In 2010 he showed a political side when he extolled President Obama’s health care legislation in a television commercial for it.

Andy Griffith died at age 86 of a heart attack in his home in Dare County, North Carolina on July 3, 2012. 

(Edited from NewYork Times & IMDb)