Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show (12 page)

In summer 1959,
The Steve Allen Show
migrated to Hollywood and took up residence at NBC Color City, a Burbank studio built for television, a step up from the repurposed radio studios in New York. For the 1959–60 season, the program was renamed
The Steve Allen Plymouth Show
and moved from Sunday to Monday. The show also went from live broadcast to tape and was sweetened with a laugh track, a spool of prerecorded laughter added at moments when the producers wanted the viewing audience to know something funny was happening.

The Knotts family moved west that June. They purchased a modest home in Glendale, a sleepy bedroom community not commonly associated with Hollywood glitterati. Glendale was, in fact, a magnet for John Birch conservatives, and Kay didn't like the place. Don attempted to mollify her by building a pool in the tiny backyard.

Most of the
Steve Allen
gang lived west of Hollywood. Don lived east. He set himself apart from the others, just as he had done in New York. “I would see Kay at the studio,” Sherwin Bash recalled, “but they were so far away that we never really socialized. If you planned to go to dinner with Don and Kay, you had to leave the day before.”

Don quickly warmed to the California ethos. The ceaseless sunshine and the towering palms seemed worlds removed from hardscrabble Morgantown. Don looked forward to a comparatively serene existence on the retooled
Steve Allen
show. For nearly the first time in his career, he would not be performing live. If he forgot his lines on a taped broadcast, they could simply rewind the tape. Now, it seemed, Don could finally get some rest.

But his mind wouldn't settle for long. Soon, Don began to worry that the coming changes would sap the program's rhythm and energy. He felt sure the laugh track made the
Steve Allen
team less funny. “When I questioned whether or not a certain joke would work, the answer was often ‘Don't worry about it. The laugh track will love it,' ” he recalled. Don loved the relaxed atmosphere of a taped show, but he feared the magic was gone.

The new show was much like Don's new Glendale home: relaxed, comfortable . . .and bland. At the end of the season,
The Steve Allen Plymouth Show
would be canceled.

• • •

In May 1957, Andy traveled to North Carolina for a publicity tour to mark the release of
A Face in the Crowd
. He spoke to state legislators in Raleigh, closing with the enigmatic words, “I'd like to wish you all the common sense in the world.” The next day was Saturday, June 1, Andy's birthday. To mark the occasion, Andy returned—finally—to Mount Airy, where town leaders declared it Andy Griffith Day. A motorcade steered up US 52 into town. Then, Andy paraded down Main Street, flanked by marching bands and political glad-handers as he waved from the back of a convertible. Town leaders presented Andy a ceremonial key to the city.

The only thing missing, one attendee recalled, was spectators. The event had been poorly advertized. “There were a few people on the sidewalk, but nothing like anybody expected,” recalled Robert Merritt, the president of Andy's high school class. “So here you had this celebrity, a ticker-tape parade, and no ticker tape, and no people.”

Andy Griffith Day concluded with a showing of
A Face in the Crowd
at the Earle Theatre. As patrons filed in, Andy stole upstairs to the balcony. Mike, his fourteen-year-old nephew, followed at a polite distance. Andy sat down, alone, and watched his old friends and classmates settle into seats for the film. He watched, rapt, as the lights dimmed, the crowd fell silent, and the film crackled to life on the screen. “He was just taking it all in,” Mike recalled. Finally, Andy saw his name appear across the giant screen. As it faded, and the picture began, Andy rose to leave.

Andy would not again appear publicly in Mount Airy for forty-five years.

On June 14, a camera crew filed into the Griffiths' Sutton Place apartment on the East Side to film
Person to Person
, a live celebrity interview program hosted by Edward R. Murrow.
Person to Person
was tailored to bring viewers inside a celebrity's home and, to some extent, inside their lives. Murrow probed a bit deeper than Andy might have liked.

“Barbara,” Murrow asked, turning to Mrs. Griffith, “I know you used to sing and dance and act. You doing anything of that sort now?”

Something flared in Barbara's eyes. She replied through clenched teeth, “Not right now, Ed. I guess one career in the family is enough.” She let the words hang in the air. “However, I would like to—”

Andy broke in. “I hope . . . Barbara is a good actress and singer—”

“Thank you,” Barbara said, with more than a trace of sarcasm.

“—and one of these times, I want us to do a movie or a play together.”

Murrow had stumbled upon the central tension in their relationship. He pressed on, inviting Andy to play a song for him, and for Barbara to sing it. Andy picked up a guitar, the one Lonesome Rhodes had played in the movie, and began to strum. Barbara's melancholy soprano rose in song:

I gave my love a cherry without a stone

I gave my love a chicken without a bone

I told my love a story without an end

I gave my love a baby with no cryin' . . .

Something in Barbara's voice rendered this lovely moment unspeakably sad. For a moment, Andy and his interviewer were struck dumb. Then, Andy found his voice and drawled, “And you could just go on and on.” And the moment was gone.

That fall, Dick Linke quit his job in the record industry to manage Andy full-time. His friends were incredulous. A music publisher cornered him on a train and asked, “Dick, you have a good job at Capitol Records. Why would you leave that for a hillbilly?” Dick replied, “Lemme tell you something. He's not a hillbilly. He's a mountain-billy from North Carolina. And I have an intuition for talent. And this guy's gonna be a big star, believe me.”

Now that Andy had fame, he was ready to build a family. The Griffiths purchased fifty-three acres of forest and sand on the Carolina coast, a waterfront estate just up the road from
The
Lost Colony
stage where Andy and Barbara had spent summers together. The land and nine-room house had cost them $30,000. Among the denizens of tiny Manteo, the Griffiths would be royalty.

“Now, no matter what happens, we know that's home, the place we can really be free,” Andy told an interviewer. “We can fly to Hollywood or New York or wherever else I got to be, but Manteo, that's home.”

Both Andy and Don saw themselves as loners. With his move to Glendale, Don had planted his family a few suburbs away from friends and associates. Now, Andy would spend his summers at a distance of 2,750 miles.

In fall 1958, the Griffiths adopted a son, unable to conceive their own. Andrew Samuel Griffith Jr. had been born the previous December. The following year, Andy and Barbara would adopt a daughter, Dixie, to complete the family.

The year also saw the release of the film version of
No Time for Sergeants
; it earned both critical acclaim and a cool $9 million, ultimately ranking as the fourth-highest-grossing film of 1958. The
New York Times
called it a “minor classic,” and critic Bosley Crowther predicted Andy “will have a hard time shedding himself of the aura” of Will Stockdale. They were prophetic words.

Andy wasn't the only one finding fame. Back in Mount Airy, proud Geneva Griffith held court at the Snappy Lunch, the diner Andy had frequented in high school. She would stand by the window with a Coke, waiting for the matinee showing of
Sergeants
to let out. “She'd just stand there,” recalled Charles Dowell, the diner's owner. “Then, she'd walk over to the lobby and sign autographs.”

Warner Bros. looked to
No Time for Sergeants
as a template for Andy's next role. The result, another military comedy, called
Onionhead
, was rushed out five months later, a blatant cash-in. Posters announced, “That wonderful ‘No Time for Sergeants' meathead ANDY GRIFFITH is back as Onionhead.”

In fact,
Onionhead
was not another madcap farce but a comedy-drama about a lovelorn cook on a Coast Guard ship. It wasn't a particularly bad film, but few filmgoers saw it, and fewer knew what to make of it. Andy, typically, was his own worst critic, calling the film “terrible bad.”

A few months earlier, in March, Andy had starred in a woeful television production of
The Male Animal
, an adaptation of a Broadway play. “Strictly a turkey,” the
Los Angeles Times
reviewer opined, “and I'm afraid most of the fault lies in Andy's performance.”

In just a few years, Andy had gone from unknown to Broadway star to box-office king—to has-been. Suddenly, his phone wasn't ringing, and panic was setting in.

“Well, we was sittin' around with the William Morris fellows,” Andy recalled, “and I hadn't done a thing in that year. Not a blessed thing. And I asked 'em if there was any pictures comin' up that I might do, and they hawed about it a bit and said, well, no, there wasn't. So I right out asked one of 'em, ‘Has anybody asked for me?' And I guess this sort of caught him off guard because he said, quicker'n he'd meant to, ‘No.' ”

Andy asked Dick Linke if he should begin to phase out his hillbilly accent. “Sure,” Dick deadpanned, “that's fine, if you want to get out of show business.”

On April 23, 1959, Andy returned to Broadway as the lead in a musical adaptation of
Destry Rides Again
. The name was apt:
Destry
had already cantered through a novel and three films, the lead character interpreted by Tom Mix, James Stewart, and Audie Murphy. Now
Destry
was retooled as a vehicle for Andy's comeback, an odd turn of events for an actor whose Broadway debut was only four years past.

Destry
was “half a hit,” Griffith recalled. “What I mean by half a hit is, we stayed open—just barely. Monday through Thursday we were on twofers—two tickets for the price of one—and on holidays—Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the like—there was a sign out front that said, ‘Matinee Today.' ” The songs “were mundane at most,” Andy recalled. “The dancing was what kept that show open.”

Don went to see
Destry
before his family left for Hollywood. After the show, Don met his friend backstage and told him, “Ange, it's fun the way you danced there.” But Don could tell Andy wasn't emotionally invested in the work and knew the performance was nowhere near what Andy could be. It was time for his friend to try something else.

5.

Andy Takes a Deputy

I
NSIDE THE
Last Chance Saloon, on the set of
Destry Rides Again
, Andy Griffith mulled his future. At thirty-three, Andy sensed he was on a downward trajectory. In the New York and Hollywood of the 1950s, one flop could sink a promising career. Andy wasn't likely to get another crack at a leading film role after
Onionhead
, and now his Broadway currency was in decline.

Andy had yet one more card to play: television. Though well entrenched by 1959, television was nonetheless viewed as the least desirable option for a performer—an actor's Last Chance Saloon. “I'd always been afraid of it,” Andy recalled, “because I figured if you strike out there, that's it.”

Andy and his manager, Dick Linke, set up a meeting with Abe Lastfogel at William Morris. Andy told him, “Mr. Lastfogel, I've struck out in movies and now on Broadway, and I don't want to go back to nightclubs, so maybe I'd better try television.” Lastfogel went to see Sheldon Leonard, the powerful producer of television's
Danny Thomas Show
. He asked if Sheldon knew of Andy. Sheldon replied, “Yeah, he did a record, a funny record.” Lastfogel said, “He'd like to do television. Can you think of something for him?”

It didn't take Sheldon Leonard long to respond. “Thinking of something for a personality is the easiest part,” he recalled. “Andy Griffith, country boy. What's the show going to be? He's going to be a country boy.”

One winter night in 1959, Sheldon traveled to New York, where Andy was in a 472-show run of
Destry
, to see him backstage.

“I was told that a man named Sheldon Leonard would come to see me one night,” Andy recalled. “A little time went by and I didn't think much more about it. And one night, after the show and curtain calls—which didn't take very long—I passed the stage door on my way to my dressing room. There was a man standing there smiling. I kind of smiled back and went on. I thought I had seen him before—maybe playing heavies in movies.”

Born in 1907, Sheldon Leonard Bershad attended Syracuse on scholarship and attained a modest fame playing bad guys in a string of films, characters with such names as Pretty Willie, Lippy Harris, and Jumbo Schneider. Most infamously, Sheldon played Nick, the hard-hearted barkeep in
It's a Wonderful Life
who hurls Jimmy Stewart into the snow. By the late 1950s, Sheldon had tired of acting and ascended into management, serving as both producer and director of the Danny Thomas vehicle
Make Room for Daddy
. The program would remain on the air for eleven years, one of television's longest-running sitcoms. Tall, dark, and handsome, Sheldon demonstrated a brilliant mastery of the television medium and an uncanny ability to match personalities to shows.

Sheldon escorted Andy out to Forty-Fifth Street. “We went to his favorite bar on Eighth Avenue and sat and had a beer and a sandwich, and I told him the idea we had, which was to make him sheriff of a small town,” Sheldon recalled.

The conversation spawned a series of meetings between the two men and Dick Linke at the elegant Hotel St. Moritz. At the first meeting, Andy listened intently, said little, and left uncommitted. Sheldon was impressed: Most actors would jump at the chance to star in their own show. At the second meeting, Andy sat and nodded politely. But then he broke his silence, raised his voice in an exaggerated Carolina drawl, and set about probing the producer on everything from the program's financing to its artistic direction. Sheldon was stunned; Dick Linke just smiled.

At the third meeting, Sheldon and Andy shook hands on
The
Andy Griffith Show
. When the contracts were signed, Sheldon asked Andy, “Why all this advance rigmarole?” Andy replied, “Jest wanted to know who I wuz dealing with.”

To Sheldon, the entire challenge of television lay in finding a personality to build a show around; once he found his personality, the show would write itself. And Sheldon knew he could write a show for Andy. He plotted to insert Andy into a small town and surround him with characters to whom he could react; Sheldon felt that Andy's gift lay in the unsung art of reactive comedy. He envisioned Andy as a broadly comedic bumpkin, not unlike Andy's Will Stockdale character in
No Time for Sergeants
.

To Andy, it sounded like a mishmash of tired Southern clichés and unflattering stereotypes. He particularly disliked Sheldon's notion of casting Andy in multiple roles, playing not just the sheriff but also the town's newspaper editor and justice of the peace, all for madcap effect. Andy thought to himself, “This will last maybe two weeks.”

Yet, Andy agreed to everything Sheldon Leonard proposed. He wasn't investing in the show so much as the man who had proposed it.

Sheldon wanted to present the new character as a guest star in an episode of
Danny Thomas
. It was a consummate Hollywood deal: To film a pilot for
The Andy Griffith Show
, as was the custom, would have cost $50,000. Presenting it instead as an episode of
Danny Thomas
allowed Sheldon to sell the new show while also delivering a
Danny Thomas
episode at no extra cost to the sponsor, General Foods. Sheldon and Danny Thomas would own shares of the resulting
Griffith Show
, if one materialized, making them business partners with Andy and his manager and lining everyone's pockets. “I didn't realize it,” Sheldon recalled, “but I was inventing what is now called the spin-off.”
I

Sheldon put
Danny Thomas
writer Artie Stander to work on a pilot. Andy got a week off from
Destry
and flew to Hollywood in January 1960 to film it. He arrived on a set buzzing about this larger-than-life actor, Kazan's wild man, and the magical chemistry he could brew with a live audience. But when rehearsals started, it seemed that Andy had left his mojo in New York. He was as flat as stale pop. The cast and crew whispered behind his back, “What is this magic they're talking about?” But as rehearsals progressed, Andy recalled, “I got looser and looser. And when they brought the audience in, I was on top of it, and whatever I bring happened.”

A week on the set of
Danny Thomas
gave Andy an eyeful of the nascent television industry, and he didn't like what he saw. “The first day, Artie Stander, Danny Thomas, and Sheldon Leonard yelled at each other all day,” Andy recalled. Andy pulled Sheldon aside and told him, “If this is what television is, I don't think I can handle it.” Sheldon replied, “Andy, the star dictates what the attitude will be on the set. Danny likes to yell, so we all yell. If you don't want to yell, nobody will yell.”

The pilot, broadcast on February 15, 1960, opens with a hand-drawn sketch of Andy's face, looking a bit like a sinister ventriloquist dummy, and a voice-over announcing, “Tonight's special guest: Andy Griffith.” Then, the camera reveals a first glimpse of Mayberry, a modest set constructed on the
Danny Thomas
soundstage. The lens descends to a street, where Andy sits in his Ford Galaxie 500 squad car, escorting Danny and his family back into town. Danny has been caught running a stop sign. The story, titled “Danny Meets Andy Griffith,” invokes a 1950s New Yorker's nightmare of driving through the rural South.

“You picked on the wrong guy this time, Clem,” Danny bristles.

“Name ain't Clem,” Andy replies, his face cleaving into a broad grin. “It's Andy. Andy Taylor.” On that cue, the audience breaks into polite applause.

Bits and pieces of
The Andy Griffith Show
are already there, but some are in the wrong places. The town drunk shambles onto the set, announces, “I'm under arrest!,” and locks himself in his cell. But he is not Otis, and he is not played by Hal Smith. Frances Bavier comes to see Andy, but she is not Aunt Bee; she is Henrietta Perkins, a widow who is behind on her taxes. Little Ronny Howard is there; but Don Knotts is not. Sheriff Taylor has no deputy.

Don and Kay spent that evening playing bridge at the home of Pat Harrington, Don's friend and costar on
The Steve Allen Show.
Pat, awaiting a guest role on
Danny Thomas
, halted the proceedings at nine o'clock to watch that night's episode. He switched on the set, and Don glimpsed the face of his old friend.

Andy and Don had lost touch since their time together in the cast of
No Time for Sergeants
, half a decade earlier. Now they were three thousand miles apart—Don in Hollywood, Andy in New York—and their correspondence had fallen off. Andy was unaware
Steve Allen
had been canceled. Don had no inkling Andy was working on a television show.

Now, as Don beheld Andy on Pat Harrington's television set, it struck him that there might be a place for him in Mayberry. A part on Andy's new show might just rekindle Don's career—and their friendship.

The next day, Don telephoned Andy in New York. “Listen,” he said, “don't you think Sheriff Andy Taylor ought to have a deputy?”

A long pause followed.

In that silence, Andy must have weighed the pros and cons of adding his friend to the
Griffith
production. Don's comic talent would unquestionably elevate the show. The two men had already proved how well they could play off each other. Besides, Andy loved having Don around. If there was a downside, perhaps it was the danger that Don's comic star might one day outshine Andy's own. Dean Martin had watched this happen with Jerry Lewis, all the critics ignoring the straight man and lavishing praise on his funnier partner. Yet, Andy loathed the hayseed part that had been assigned him in Sheldon Leonard's pilot. He cringed at the thought of portraying another simpering Southern stereotype, trolling for yucks with a gap-toothed grin and scenery-shredding pratfalls. With a deputy, especially a wide-eyed, manic comedic dervish such as Don—why, maybe then Andy could reshape Sheriff Andy Taylor into something palatable, something enduring.

Andy's voice crackled back onto the line: “That's a hell of an idea! I didn't know you were out of a job.”

“Yes, Steve was canceled.”

“Lord! Call Sheldon Leonard.”

Don did. Andy telephoned Sheldon, too, and told him he wanted Don. Thus, barely a week after the pilot aired, Don found himself walking into Sheldon's office on the Desilu lot. Don had a sheaf of old scripts tucked under his arm, a ruse to create the impression he was brimming with offers rather than conspicuously unemployed.

Sheldon was savvy. He played it cool, acting as if Don had to convince him a deputy in Mayberry was a good idea. In an hour-long meeting, Don recalled, Sheldon “prodded me with questions about what I thought this deputy character should be like.” Don had “no preconceived ideas,” but he knew he didn't want another reincarnation of his Nervous Man, any more than Andy wanted to ape Will Stockdale. The character of Barney Fife took his surname from Fife Street, back in Morgantown. Don envisioned playing him as a grown man with the mentality of a nine-year-old boy, given to flights of Tom Sawyer fancy and prone to wear his emotions plainly on his face.

There was no formal audition. Sheldon dismissed Don coolly, telling the fretful actor that his idea “would be taken under advisement.” Decades later, Sheldon recalled that his original thought was to hire Don for a single episode.

He kept Don waiting for three agonizing weeks. Don filmed his final
Steve Allen Show
in the interim. He was now officially out of work. He sat by the phone. Finally, Sherwin Bash, Don's manager, called to relay the offer: the part was his. Don nearly fainted with delight. “I had a good feeling about this,” he recalled. “I had a real good feeling, even before it started.”

However fateful the casting, Don Knotts wasn't the first or even the second actor hired to populate Mayberry.

Sheldon Leonard's first impulse was to give Andy a son. Ronny Howard was the progeny of Rance and Jean Howard, New York actors who had met in college. Ronny was born while Rance served in the air force, touring the country and entertaining the troops. “Backstage, Jean would have Ron in a bassinet or in her arms,” Rance recalled. By age two, Ronny was attending his parents' rehearsals and performances. One day, Rance discovered Ronny had an uncanny talent to learn lines, apparently by osmosis, as the boy could neither read nor write. Father and son began to entertain friends by reciting scenes from the play
Mister Roberts
from memory.

In fall 1959, five-year-old Ronny was cast in a television pilot called “Mr. O'Malley.” Hosted by Ronald Reagan as part of the series
General Electric Theater
, “Mr. O'Malley” was based on the intellectual comic strip
Barnaby
and meant to launch a comedy-fantasy series about five-year-old Barnaby (Ronny) and his fairy godfather.

Sheldon saw the pilot, and he liked Ronny. He met with Rance and told him he wanted Ronny to play Andy Griffith's son on his new show. The boy would be named Opie, after the Southern bandleader Opie Cates, a favorite of Andy's. Ronny was bound to the
Mr.
O'Malley
show by CBS. That didn't seem to bother Sheldon. He told Rance, “The show will not sell.” Rance asked why. “Because the show is fantasy,” Sheldon said, “and fantasy is not selling on TV now.” The two men agreed to a contingency plan: If
Mr. O'Malley
sold, Ronny was free to do it. If it didn't, he would do the
Griffith
Show
. “And of course, Sheldon was right,” Rance recalled.
Mr. O'Malley
didn't sell.

The second permanent addition to Mayberry, Frances Bavier, was a product of Columbia University and a veteran of stage and screen, endowed with a dignified air and a transatlantic finishing-school accent. Her manner was haughty and patrician from the day she walked into the Forty-Eighth Street Theatre in New York, fresh out of acting school in 1925, and announced to director Howard Lindsay, “I'm a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.”