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The Andy Griffith Show, he said, “might not have lasted even half a season that way. “I was supposed to have been the comic, the funny one,” Griffith told The Los Angeles Times during a 1993 interview. Once Knotts was on board, however, Griffith saw that the basic dynamic of the sitcom had changed. Griffith and Leonard found merit in the idea and invited Knotts to join the cast.
#ANDY GRIFFITH SERIES#
But wouldn’t the series be even funnier if Sheriff Andy had, you know, a deputy? Sure, Knotts said, he really enjoyed the pilot.
#ANDY GRIFFITH TV#
Shortly before production began, however, comic actor Don Knotts – a TV variety show veteran and, more important, Griffith’s co-star in the stage and screen versions of No Times for Sergeants – telephoned Griffith to make a fateful suggestion. Griffith was warmly accepted by viewers in the role of this drawling lawman, so Leonard had no trouble launching a spin-off series revolving around that character in the fall of 1960 (scheduled right after The Danny Thomas Show on Monday evenings). In the episode, Thomas – more or less playing himself as a combustible singer-comic with a New York attitude – is stopped for speeding while driving through the sleepy little town of Mayberry, North Carolina, and held in the local jail when he runs afoul of the easygoing, but not infinitely patient, Sheriff Andy Taylor. Leonard resolved to construct a sitcom around the rising star and filmed a backdoor pilot as an episode of The Danny Thomas Show, a top-rated series he already had running on CBS. The Andy Griffith Show started out as the brainchild of producer Sheldon Leonard, who had been greatly impressed by the folksy charisma Griffith conveyed on Broadway during the 1950s while starring in the hit comedy No Time for Sergeants (later filmed with Griffith repeating his lead role) and a musical adaptation of Destry Rides Again.
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On the occasion of what would have been his 96th birthday, we’re celebrating the star and his enduringly popular sitcom.Īndy Griffith - who was born on this date in 1926, in Mount Airy, North Carolina - often said he had an epiphany while filming the second episode of the classic sitcom that bore his name.