Andy Griffith

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Andy Griffith
Griffith as Andy Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show
Birth name	Andy Samuel Griffith
Born	June 1, 1926 (age 80) Mount Airy, North Carolina, USA

Andy Samuel Griffith (born June 1, 1926) is an American actor, Grammy Award winning singer^[1], writer and producer from Mount Airy, North Carolina. Best known as the star of A Face in the Crowd, The Andy Griffith Show and Matlock, he was the only child of Carl Lee and Geneva Nann Nunn Griffith. He began college studying to be a Moravian preacher, but changed his major to music. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned a bachelor's degree in music in 1949. While at UNC, he was president of the UNC Men's Glee Club and was a member of the Alpha Rho Chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, America's oldest fraternity for men in music. After graduation, he taught English at Goldsboro High School, Goldsboro, NC for a few years.

He was married to Barbara Bray Edwards for 23 years (1949-1972), with whom he adopted two children, Andy (now deceased) and Dixie. After his divorce from Edwards, he married Solica Cassuto (1973 - 1981). Griffith married his current wife, Cindi Knight, on April 2, 1983.

Contents 1 TV legacy 2 Comedian to film star 3 Dramatic pinnacle 4 The Andy Griffith Show 5 Matlock and other series 6 Movies 7 Singing and recording career 7.1 Albums 8 Honors 9 Trivia 10 Wife 11 Children (all adopted) 12 References 13 External links

[edit] TV legacy

Griffith is best known as "Sheriff Andy Taylor" in the popular 1960s television series The Andy Griffith Show and in the title role in the television series Matlock, which ran from 1986 to 1995.

He is loved by many people all over the world, and noted for putting a moral in every episode of The Andy Griffith Show and Matlock.^{[citation needed]} He is one of the most famous television actors of the 20th century, and one of the most loved, iconic figures in both music and television history.

[edit] Comedian to film star

Griffith started out in show business as something of a stand-up comedian, although a better description might be monologist. His first success was a 1953 live recording of "What It Was, Was Football," a story about a country boy at his first football game delighting in the "big orange drinks" and the boys running up and down the "cow pasture" in "the awfulest fight I have ever seen in my life" and "these purty girls a-wearin' these little-bitty short dresses and a-dancin' around." Later that year, he recorded "Number One Street", telling the story of a rural family travelling to Florida on U.S. Route 1.

By 1954, he was on Broadway, starring in No Time for Sergeants, a play about a country boy in the Air Force. Griffith reprised his lead role in the play for the movie version in 1958; the film also featured Don Knotts as a military psychiatrist, marking the beginning of a life-long association between Griffith and Knotts. No Time for Sergeants is also considered the direct inspiration for Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.. Also in 1958, Griffith portrayed a United States Coast Guard sailor in the movie Onionhead.

[edit] Dramatic pinnacle

In 1957, Griffith starred in A Face in the Crowd. Again, he played a "country boy", but this "country boy" was manipulative and power-hungry; a drifter who became a television host and used his show as a gateway to political power. Co-starring Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau, Tony Franciosa and Lee Remick (in her film debut), this now-classic film showcased Griffith's powerful talents as a dramatic actor and singer.

It also showed early on the power of television upon the masses. Directed by Elia Kazan, written by Budd Schulberg, ostensibly based on the alleged onstage phoniness of Will Rogers and Arthur Godfrey, the prescient film was seldom run on television until the 1990s. A 2005 DVD reissue came complete with a mini-documentary on the film with comments from Schulberg and surviving cast members, Griffith, Franciosa and Neal.

[edit] The Andy Griffith Show

The Andy Griffith Show, which aired from 1960 to 1968, became an instant hit with its American audience. Viewers immediately felt a connection with Taylor, his son Opie (Ron Howard), Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier), Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts), Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors), Goober Pyle (George Lindsey) and the entire town of Mayberry.

[edit] Matlock and other series

After leaving his still-popular show in 1968, Griffith starred in less successful series such as The Headmaster (1970), The New Andy Griffith Show (1971), Salvage 1 (1979), and The Yeagers (1980).

He scored another prime-time hit in 1986 with Matlock. Griffith played the title role of Ben Matlock, a criminal defense attorney with a Southern drawl, a signature gray suit, and an open countenance that belied his sly intelligence. The series ran from 1986 to 1992 on NBC and from 1992 until 1995 on ABC. Distributed by Viacom it has seen long-running success in syndication. In 2001, he made a brief appearance on The WB's hit drama Dawson's Creek

He is set to appear in the movie Waitress which comes out in 2007, he plays a character named "Old Joe", he briefly promoted the role when he appeared on Larry King Live in 2006, on an episode paying tribute to Don Knotts.

[edit] Movies

He also starred in many television films such as The Strangers In 7A (1972), Winter Kill (1974) and Pray for the Wildcats (1974). In 1981 Griffith won an Emmy nomination for his role in the TV film Murder In Texas and in 1983 won further acclaim for his role as a homicidal villain in the TV film Murder In Coweta County, co-starring music legend Johnny Cash as the hero. During this period, Griffith also appeared in two big screen movies, both of which were flops at the box office. He co-starred with Jeff Bridges in the 1975 comedy Hearts of the West, and appeared alongside Tom Berenger as the villainous Colonel Ticonderoga in the 1985 movie Rustler's Rhapsody. He also had an appearance as the villain in the 1996 movie Spy Hard. Savages (1974), a made for TV movie based on the novel Deathwatch by Robb White, is an excellent though neglected thriller^{[citation needed]} with many surprises and a literate, well-reasoned script. Griffith plays the villain. In the 1999 film A Holiday Romance, directed by Bobby Roth, Andy played the role of "Jake Peterson." A Holiday Romance is available on DVD.

[edit] Singing and recording career

Griffith sang as part of some of his acting roles, most notably in A Face In The Crowd and on some episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. Within recent years, he has recorded successful albums of classic Christian hymns, for Sparrow Records. In 1999 Andy was inducted into the Country Gospel Music Hall of Fame with fellow artists, Lulu Roman, Barbara Mandrell, David L Cook, Gary S. Paxton, Jimmy Snow, Loretta Lynn and Jodi Miller. ^[2]

Griffith was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush on 9 November 2005.

[edit] Albums

[edit] Honors

• He received a Grammy Award in 1997.
• He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 9, 2005 ^[3]. A few weeks earlier, he helped preside over the reopening of the Memorial Hall on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus and donated a substantial amount of memorabilia from his career to the university.
• A statue of Andy and Opie was constructed in Pullen Park in Raleigh.
• He received a "Tip of the Hat" from Stephen Colbert on the May 21, 2006 episode of The Colbert Report.

[edit] Trivia

• Griffith may have been an inspiration for the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Huckleberry Hound, introduced in 1958, although voice actor Daws Butler had employed the same generic "Southern drawl" for other cartoon characters starting in the 1940s.

• Griffith, revered for his wholesome image for decades, revealed a more complex side of himself in the A Face in the Crowd DVD documentary, where he recalled director Kazan prepping him to shoot his first scene with Lee Remick. Remick played a teenage baton twirler who captivates Griffith's character on a trip to Arkansas. Griffith recalls that Kazan wanted a specific facial expression from him to convey the character's emotional state, which Kazan summed up in the phrase, "Insert mean words here!"

• Before The Andy Griffith Show, Griffith appeared as a country sheriff (who was also justice-of-the-peace and editor of the local newspaper) in an episode of The Danny Thomas Show. This episode, in which Thomas's character is stopped for speeding in the little town of Mayberry, served as a backdoor pilot for Griffith's own show. Both shows were produced by Sheldon Leonard.

• Griffith drove a full-sized Ford Galaxie in The Andy Griffith Show and the corresponding Ford Crown Victoria in Matlock. Even in scenes where he was not in his Crown Victoria, Matlock usually drove or rode in a Ford (a Tempo in one episode, a Taurus in another, for example).

• Griffith was spoofed in a surreal sketch on the Canadian comedy series SCTV. The sketch conflated his Andy Taylor character with the persona of TV talk show host Merv Griffin. In SCTV's version of Mayberry, the sheriff (Rick Moranis) and Floyd the barber (Eugene Levy impersonating Howard McNear's character from the show) both exclaimed, "Ooh!" in unison.

• It is reported that Griffith traveled from his Manteo, North Carolina home to Los Angeles to visit a terminally ill Don Knotts in the hospital as Knotts succumbed to complications of lung cancer.

• To this day, Mount Airy, North Carolina, Griffith's home town, annually celebrates The Andy Griffith Show. In the town, Floyd's Barber Shop is still open and visitors can eat a meal in the Snappy Lunch Diner, a place Griffith often visited growing up and even mentioned once on The Andy Griffith Show.

• In Episode 2x01 and 2x02 of the TV-sitcom Married... with Children, the fictional town of Dumpwater has only one celebrity, a man who met Andy Griffith.

• He was born on the same day as Marilyn Monroe.

• William Harold Fenrick of Platteville, Wisconsin legally changed his name to Andrew Jackson Griffith and ran for sheriff of Grant County in November, 2006 (he lost). Subsequently, actor Griffith filed a lawsuit against Griffith/Fenrick, asserting that he violated trademark, copyright and privacy laws by changing his name for the "sole purpose of taking advantage of Griffith's notoriety in an attempt to gain votes."

[edit] Wife

• Current (3rd) Wife: Cindi Knight Griffith; married since 1983

[edit] Children (all adopted)

• Son: Andrew Samuel Griffith, Jr. (aka "Sam Griffith"), real-estate developer (b. 1957 - d. January 17, 1996)
• Daughters: Dixie Griffith, Nan Griffith

[edit] References

1. ^ Press release from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Griffith's alma mater. Griffith received the Grammy in 1997 for his album "I love to tell the story"
2. ^ Country Gospel Music Hall of Fame
3. ^ 2005 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients.

[edit] External links

• "What it was, was football", includes links to audio of the routine and MAD magazine treatment.
• Andy Griffith at the Internet Movie Database
• Fans created replica of Sheriff Andy Taylor's Mayberry home for B&B
• Taylor home replica inn
• IMDB - A Holiday Romance