Comprehensive information and links about Andy Griffith

Andy Griffith (born June 1, 1926Andy Griffith is an American actor, writer and producer from Mount Airy, North Carolina. He was a genuine country boy who made sophisticated humor based on his own background.

He attended the University of North Carolina-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 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.

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TV legacy

Griffith is best known as "Sheriff Andy Taylor" in the popular 1960s television series

Comedian to film star

Griffith started out in show business as something of a stand-up comedian, although a better deion 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 most ever saw" 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 United States Highway 1.

By 1954, he was on Broadway, starring in , a play about a country boy in the Air Force, made into a film in 1959, in which he also starred, and which is considered the direct inspiration for . Again, he played a country boy, but this time the country boy was a terrifying psychopath who became a television host and used his show as a gateway to political power. This classic film showcased Griffith's powerful talents as a dramatic actor and singer, and also showed early on the power of television upon the masses. (Directed by Elia Kazan, this superbly prescient film was seldom run on television until the 1990s.) Most critics agree that Griffith never reached this pinnacle again, despite later sensational commercial success in television in a series arguably second only to , 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".

and other series

After leaving his still-popular show in 1968, Griffith starred in less successful series such as as .

Griffith played the title role of Benjamin Matlock, a criminal defense attorney with a Southern drawl, a seersucker suit, and an open countenance that belied his sly intelligence, The series ran from from 1986 to 1993 on NBC and from 1993 until 1995 on ABC. Distributed by Viacom it has seen long-running success in syndication.

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