The Andy Griffith Show

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The Andy Griffith Show was an American television series that aired from 1960 to 1968. The series was an immediate hit with its audience, and still enjoys success in syndication. Its whistled theme song ("Down by the Fishing Hole, " by Earle Hagen) is instantly recognizable to fans of the show.

Related Topics:
American - Television series - 1960 - 1968 - Syndication - Earle Hagen

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When the show premiered in 1960, viewers immediately felt a connection with widowed "Sheriff Andy Taylor" (played by Griffith), his son "Opie" (Ronny Howard), his "Aunt Bee" (Frances Bavier), his cousin and deputy sheriff, "Barney Fife" (Don Knotts), auto mechanic "Gomer Pyle" (Jim Nabors, whose role was spun-off into the series Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.) and his cousin "Goober Pyle" aka "Goober Beasley" in early scripts (George Lindsey), town drunk "Otis Campbell" (Hal Smith), hell-raising mountain man "Ernest T. Bass" (Howard Morris), absentminded barber "Floyd Lawson" (Howard McNear), and the rest of the townsfolk of fictional Mayberry, North Carolina. The show centered on rural Sheriff Andy Taylor who rarely carried a gun, and was also the Justice of the Peace dispensing summary judgments. In addition to the town of Mayberry, he apparently had jurisdiction in the surrounding county as well.

Related Topics:
Premiered in 1960 - Sheriff Andy Taylor - Griffith - Opie - Ronny Howard - Aunt Bee - Frances Bavier - Deputy sheriff - Barney Fife - Don Knotts - Gomer Pyle - Jim Nabors - Spun-off - Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. - George Lindsey - Hal Smith - Howard Morris - Floyd Lawson - Howard McNear - Mayberry - North Carolina - Justice of the Peace - Summary judgment

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Griffith left the show in 1968. Ken Berry joined the cast that year, and the show was retitled Mayberry R.F.D. and continued until 1971. In the first episode of that series Andy married his longtime girlfriend, Helen Crump and they moved away from Mayberry.

Related Topics:
Ken Berry - Mayberry R.F.D. - 1971

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The original pilot of The Andy Griffith Show was actually an episode of The Danny Thomas Show in February, 1960. In that show, the character Danny Williams (Danny Thomas) is arrested by the Sheriff for running a stop sign (at a spot where no crossroad has been built yet) while driving through Mayberry. Andy Griffith was already a well-known actor, and received a large hand from the studio audience upon entering the scene ("The name ain't 'Clem', it's 'Andy', Sheriff Andy Taylor!") While Danny is waiting for a resolution to the problem, various denizens of Mayberry wander through the courthouse, notably Frances Bavier, who is playing a different character from her eventual Aunt Bee: a widow victimized by a formal wear shop owner, who is making her pay eternal rent for the tuxedo her husband was buried in. The Andy Griffith Show, its format and cast somewhat retooled from the premise of this pilot, made its actual debut that fall.

Related Topics:
The Danny Thomas Show - February - 1960 - Danny Thomas

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The show operated on at least two levels. There were the corny, nitwit antics of the supporting players, who provided most of the humor. There was also the straightforward presentation of the occasional story involving a criminal to be caught or a love interest to be established, and there was often a storyline of a serious nature concerning Andy's being a single parent to Opie.

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Years after the series ended, tourists driving through rural North Carolina still ask for directions to Mayberry, not realizing that the town depicted in the series is a composite of Surry County and the town of Mount Airy. The adjacent town to fictional Mayberry is named Mt. Pilot, and is an obvious reference to nearby Pilot Mountain, which is just a mountain rather than a town. The TV show itself was filmed entirely in Hollywood, on the RKO Pictures backlot called "Forty Acres", which is recognizable to fans of the 1950s program The Adventures of Superman and was used in many other TV shows and movies. Even the apparently rural fishing hole that led off each episode was actually in the Los Angeles area: Franklin Canyon Lake, in Beverly Hills.

Related Topics:
Tourist - Surry County - Mount Airy - Mt. Pilot - Pilot Mountain - Hollywood - RKO Pictures - 1950s - The Adventures of Superman - Los Angeles - Beverly Hills

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List of all Andy Griffith Show Cast

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List of Andy Griffith Show episodes

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