Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show (19 page)

The reviews were good.
Life
magazine said Don had been “perfectly cast.” But Don was disconsolate. “Warner Bros. released the picture rather carelessly, and it was not marketed well,” he recalled later. The film did a middling business. At Karen Knotts's junior high school, other children called her “fish lips” in cruel homage to her father's animated alter ego.

In spring 1964, as the fourth season of the
Griffith Show
neared its end and Jim Nabors prepared to depart, Goober was introduced as Gomer Pyle's witless cousin, a character much discussed in previous episodes but never seen. Goober was cast essentially as a simulacrum of Gomer, but with a bit more mechanical skill.

“The Fun Girls,” broadcast April 13, plays very much like an orientation film for Gomer's replacement. George Lindsey had won the part of Gomer in the first place, only to lose it to Jim. A year later, George had not forgiven him. “Jim and I didn't have a lot of interaction off camera during the filming of that episode,” George recalled.

In the opening scene, Gomer walks into the sheriff's office with Goober and demands that Andy listen to his cousin's Cary Grant impression. Andy beholds Goober with palpable distaste, looking not remotely pleased to meet him. Apparently it was not an act.

“The bad news about my first
Griffith
episode was that Andy didn't like it, and the producers told me so,” George recalled. “Of course, I could easily see that for myself, because if Andy liked your work, he was very friendly to you. If he didn't, he wasn't. It wasn't so much what he said; it's what he didn't say. The silence would just kill you.”

A few weeks later, “The Rumor” brought Howard McNear back to Mayberry as Floyd the barber after a sixteen-month absence recuperating from a crippling stroke.

Toiling on a script at the Desilu studio, producer Aaron Ruben had lamented to Andy, “Boy, do I wish we had Howard.” Someone replied, “Why don't we see if we can get him.” A call was placed, and Howard was back, to the palpable delight of cast and crew.

Andy recalled, “He was paralyzed all down his left side, and so we couldn't show him walking. We had him sitting or we built a stand that supported him. He could then stand behind the barber chair and use one hand. Most of the time, however, we had him sitting. His mind was not affected at all.”

Andy and his producers could easily have written Howard off the show and hired a replacement. Instead, Andy labored to accommodate the stricken actor. Andy felt deep loyalty toward those who stuck by him, an impulse just as powerful as his repudiation of anyone who abandoned him. On the
Griffith
set and off, Andy's act was viewed as an extraordinary gesture, the impulse of a television icon at his most benevolent.

“Andy Griffith had a big heart and knew that my mom had never really worked and that I had gone to school and we didn't have a lot of money,” recalled Kit McNear, Howard's son. “And he brought my dad back. He didn't have to. That is a really, really rare thing in Hollywood.”

Even as the ensemble celebrated Howard's return, they bid adieu to Jim Nabors with a season-ending pilot, “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.,” for his spin-off. Aaron Ruben, founding producer of
The Andy Griffith Show
, would follow Jim to
Gomer Pyle.

Though Gomer was gone, money was yet to be made. In spring 1964, Andy, Don, and Jim traveled together to William Harrah's Lake Tahoe nightclub for a celebrated one-week stand. The three men deeply admired each other's talents and loved working together. Andy trotted out his old country monologues. Don revived his Nervous Man. The two replayed favorite scenes from the
Griffith Show
. Jim walked onstage as Gomer Pyle, then burst into the aria “Vesti la giubba” from
Pagliacci
. That brought down the house. Jim drew the biggest applause of the night. Andy would walk back onstage to a chorus of boos from an audience that wanted more Jim. “Gomer'll be back,” Andy would tell the crowd, looking vaguely annoyed. Rumor had it he felt upstaged.

As the fourth season of
Griffith
concluded, its two stars seeded rumors that the next season might be the last. “One of TV's more highly rated and hardy perennials,
The Andy Griffith Show
, is showing signs of breaking up,” a
TV Guide
columnist announced on June 20. “The program is set definitely for its fifth season next fall, but the one after that remains questionable.” Don hinted he was poised to exit: “I have some offers to do my own show, but things are vague at the moment.” As for Andy, manager Dick Linke said motion pictures might lie in his future, but he allowed, “If a television sponsor waves a lot of money at him, this could have an effect.”

As far as Don knew, Andy had every intention of rolling up the Mayberry sidewalks the following spring; they had always talked of
Griffith
as a five-year project. Perhaps Don felt fatigue creeping in, as well. The cast and crew had completed 127 episodes in four years, and Don yearned for something bigger.

The show seemed to get better every year. Yet, when the 1964 Emmys were handed out,
The Andy Griffith Show
received not a single award. Don, the three-time winner, wasn't even nominated. Perhaps voters had tired of Barney Fife. Or maybe the arrival of Jim Nabors had blunted Barney's impact on viewers. By the end of his one full season on the
Griffith Show
, Jim was involved in most of the comedy right alongside Don. Barney was funnier, but Gomer was sweeter. And now he was gone.

10.

Andy and Barney, Phfftt

T
HE
A
NDY
G
RIFFITH
S
HOW
continued to imitate life. Season five opened with a batch of story lines mining themes of reflection, restlessness, and departure, amid persistent chatter around Hollywood that the program might be drawing to a close.

The
Griffith
writers presumed they were producing an ephemeral product and thus didn't trouble themselves much with narrative continuity. Consider: The episode “Citizen's Arrest,” in season four, had opened with Andy and Barney reminiscing about the deputy's ten years on the job. Now, in season five, “Barney's Physical” opened with Barney chagrined that Andy had forgotten his anniversary—his fifth. “Spend five years in a place,” he fumes, “it's like nobody even noticed.”

The season's seventh episode, “Man in the Middle,” explored how much easier Andy and Barney found it to navigate their own friendship than to consort with the opposite sex, a lesson surely inspired by their real-life relationships with increasingly estranged spouses. The story opens with Thelma Lou and Barney having a fight. They patch things up, but the dispute spawns more arguments. Thelma Lou winds up angry at Andy, and then at Helen. Andy feels compelled to side with Helen—and that puts him in conflict with Barney, his best friend. Reflecting on their contretemps, Barney recites an adage borrowed from the Gospel of John, one that neatly captures the spirit of his off-camera friendship with Andy: “So deep a friendship hath one man for another that no female caress shall ever tear it asunder.” Then Barney deadpans, “Boy, the guy that wrote that must've been some kind of a nut.”

Aneta Corsaut, Andy's on-screen girlfriend, owed her presence on the
Griffith Show
at least partly to Jim Fritzell. He was a respected writer in Sheldon Leonard's stable and was dating Aneta when she auditioned for the role of Helen Crump. Jim was a wordsmith, and Aneta would often sit with him as he worked. With his goatee, Coke-bottle glasses, and close-shaved head, Jim would never be mistaken for an actor. And now, his beautiful girlfriend was dwelling among actors. Before long, one of them began spending more and more time with Jim and Aneta in the writing room.

Soon, Andy was paying regular visits to Aneta's bungalow after work. Andy “was coming over every other day and hanging around with her in the late afternoon,” recalled Jesse Corsaut, Aneta's brother, who would drive down from Monterey Bay to visit. “He'd come in, have a drink, and just sit around and chitchat,” acting “exactly the way he appeared on the screen, except that he wasn't silly.”

Now Aneta had two boyfriends, Andy and Jim, and she seemed unable to choose between them. Instead, Jesse recalled, “She kept them both going.”

It wasn't Andy's first affair with a
Griffith
costar. He had told Don of at least one other: Joanna Moore, the Georgia beauty and future mother of Tatum O'Neal, cast in four episodes at the start of season three as a potential girlfriend for the television sheriff.

On-screen, Andy's double dates at the diner with Helen, Barney, and Thelma Lou had become routine on the
Griffith Show
. Offscreen, Andy and Don would make excuses to their spouses and head out for a considerably more upscale double date at some Hollywood bistro with their real-life girlfriends, Andy with Aneta, Don with Lynn Paul, a fiery brunette who worked for Andy's manager, Dick Linke.
I

Aneta admired Don's work, but the two never grew close, and Aneta later conceded she never felt entirely comfortable around him. In a sense, Aneta competed with Don for Andy's affections.

One evening, members of the
Griffith
crew unleashed a practical joke on Andy and Aneta: a young crewman donned a waiter's uniform and delivered dinner to the couple's love nest at a Hollywood hotel. Andy was furious. “They were trying to really keep it on the down low and they didn't think anybody knew—but everybody knew,” said Bridget Sweeney, daughter of director Bob Sweeney.

Aneta was a Greenwich Village bohemian at heart. Her home “was always a horrible mess,” brother Jesse recalled, not least because of the injudicious quantity of dogs and cats with which the young actress surrounded herself. “She would never clean it up. Aneta would stay up until two or three every night reading mystery stories, and then she'd sleep till noon. And then she'd spend two or three hours putting on makeup, and then she'd look great.”

Andy couldn't get enough of Aneta. Eventually, he proposed, even though he was already married. He popped the question at least once and possibly two or three times, Aneta hinted in later years. She turned him down. Her outlook on marriage seemed to mirror that of Helen Crump, who prized career over domestic bliss. “She didn't want to marry anyone,” Jesse recalled. “She wanted to keep her personal freedom. And then [Andy] became pretty sore at her.”

Andy would have to settle for marrying Helen Crump, in the glare of studio lights, on a spin-off of the
Griffith Show
. But he and Aneta would remain a couple for years, and friends for life. “That was true love,” recalled Ronnie Schell, Andy's longtime friend. “They were closer than anyone knew.”

Themes of impermanence and departure surface again in “Good-bye, Sheriff Taylor,” broadcast November 23. The story has Andy contemplating leaving Mayberry for a job in the big city.

Barney is incredulous. “Leave Mayberry?” he cries. “Partners all these years, then just like that, phfftt?”

Andy replies, “I told you there might come a time when I'd be movin' on.”

“Yeah, but I didn't think you meant anything like quittin'. I thought you just meant dyin'.”

Andy labors to explain. “I've been sheriff for twelve years. Twelve years. Ev'rybody needs a change.”

By fall of 1964, after four years on the
Griffith Show
, Don Knotts was looking for a change. His stock as an entertainer stood at an all-time high. He was a three-time Emmy winner—the only member of the
Griffith
cast to have even been nominated for an Emmy—and probably the most celebrated television sidekick since Art Carney in
The Honeymooners
. (The parallel didn't end there. Art, like Don, took home Emmy after Emmy for his supporting role, while Jackie Gleason, like Andy, was overlooked in his starring role.) Almost everyone on the Desilu lot concurred in that view—with one notable exception. Sheldon Leonard, executive producer of
Griffith
, tended to speak of Don as if he were expendable, an interchangeable piece in an ensemble puzzle.

Don earned not quite $100,000 a year, chump change for a television icon. Once, early in his tenure, Don had approached the producers for a raise. They had bristled:
Who the f—- do you think you are? Do you think you're the star of the show or something?
Andy wasn't present at the negotiation and may never have learned what transpired.

But everyone knew Don deserved a better deal. As the fifth season began, Don began quietly negotiating an exit from Mayberry.

One Sunday evening, midway through season five, Dick Linke arranged a meeting with leaders of the William Morris Agency and told them, “I have an idea how to keep Andy Griffith.”

Andy had no intention of continuing his namesake show beyond the fifth year, despite its soaring ratings. But Dick encouraged the agents: “Anytime you want to make it so palatable they can't turn it down, get 'em a huge sum of money.” Abe Lastfogel asked Dick what kind of sum he had in mind. Dick replied, “a million dollars. I can tell you right now, he's gonna take it.” Abe told Dick the figure sounded “very ambitious.” Dick replied, “Well, if you want to keep him on the air, that's the only way I can think of.”

The network agreed. Dick called Andy into his office. “Andy, I know you don't want to go beyond five years. But I don't think you're gonna want to turn this down.”

Andy perked up. “What is it, Dick?”

“How would you like to make a million dollars a year to stay on the show?”

Andy paused. “My goodness,” he exhaled finally. “A man can't turn that down.”

The next step was to approach Don. Both friends had always treated the show as a five-year endeavor, and Andy knew Don was casting about for other work.

By this time Don had met with various studio heads and had collected “some pretty attractive television offers,” he recalled. But his dearest hope was to progress from television into film. Don always sought to make his mother happy. Elsie loved to collect movie-star autographs. Perhaps one day she would ask for his.

Don met with Lew Wasserman, head of Universal Studios. Wasserman had seen
The Incredible Mr. Limpet
and “was very impressed with the picture,” Don recalled. “He told me that if Disney had made it and promoted it the way they do, it would have been a blockbuster.”

Wasserman offered Don a five-picture contract. “He said he wanted to build my name in family motion-picture comedies. He offered me free rein. He said I could pick my own screenwriters and decide on my own pictures.”

Shortly after that meeting, Andy approached Don and told him he had decided to carry on with
The Andy Griffith Show
. Don was shocked. He hadn't yet signed a contract with Universal, but he and Lew Wasserman had made a verbal agreement, and to Don, a deal was a deal.

Andy told Don, “We've got a new deal to offer you,” and tendered his friend a small stake in the
Griffith Show—
probably a few percent.
II
Andy and Dick Linke, by contrast, owned more than half the show between them. “What do you think?”

“Sorry, Andy. I've already committed.”

And that is the end of the story, as Andy and Don told it.

But according to Sherwin Bash, Don's manager, the full account is more nuanced.

Sherwin never doubted the
Griffith Show
would continue past five years. Even as press reports forecast its impending demise, Sherwin assumed fate—or, more likely, sponsors—would intervene.

“When it got down to the fifth year, Andy was playing the game,” Sherwin recalled. “Nobody ever believed that
The Andy Griffith Show
wouldn't continue.”

Sherwin knew Don wanted to make movies. Television operated on a fall-to-spring calendar, which left Don free in the summer; low-budget comedies, in that era, took only a month to shoot. “So, we negotiated a tentative deal with Universal to make movies,” he recalled.

Sherwin planned to approach the
Griffith
producers about extending Don's tenure, but they preemptively approached him, offering a new contract and “a big raise,” probably to $5,000 an episode, or about $150,000 a year. Sherwin relayed the offer to Don, who said, “I want to talk to Andy personally.”

Don later reported back to Sherwin: he and Andy had talked, and Don didn't want Sherwin to proceed.

Don never elaborated. Then again, Don and Andy operated differently from most television actors. “In the fifty years I was in the business, I don't think I was ever involved with another performer who had that kind of a relationship with somebody he was working for,” Sherwin recalled. Don “was really an employee of the show, but he had a different feeling about Andy. Don was older, but Andy was like his older brother. It was much closer than I realized all those years. I don't think that Don and Andy quote ‘had a meeting.' They didn't have that kind of relationship.”

Sherwin says he finally learned what had transpired four decades later, at Don's 2006 memorial service. There, Sherwin told Andy of his disappointment that Don had rebuffed the offer to continue on the show.

Andy told Sherwin it wasn't quite so simple. At the fateful meeting, Don had told Andy he was ready to continue on the
Griffith Show
—if he could be Andy's partner.

“What's wrong with that?” Sherwin asked.

Andy replied, “I wasn't going to share the ownership of the show fifty-fifty with him. It was my show.”

Sherwin was stunned. “Did Don ever say fifty-fifty, or did he say he wanted a share? Did you ever explore that he might have been thrilled to have ten percent, or some other small amount?”

Andy shook his head.

According to Sherwin, the negotiation failed out of simple miscommunication. When Don asked to be Andy's partner, Andy assumed Don wanted half of Andy's share, or a quarter stake in the show. Sherwin believes what Don really wanted was a fair share: something larger than 3 or 4 percent, surely, but smaller than 25. With the help of a negotiator, such as Sherwin, the two men might have settled the math. But Andy and Don wanted to handle the negotiations between themselves, as friends.

In an interview late in life, Andy seemed to corroborate Sherwin's account, but with a significant variation. Andy said Don came to his home and told him, “Andy, if you'll be partners with me, I'll stay.” But in this version, Don proposed a theatrical partnership, like that of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Andy said he turned it down: “Don, I'm afraid, because people become partners and they lose their friendship a lot of times, and I'm afraid that might happen to us.”

Perhaps Andy confused one conversation with another. Late in life, Don recalled that he indeed asked Andy around this time to consider forming a permanent comedy partnership. “I had asked Andy if we could team up for good,” Don once told Larry King, “but he was too good an actor to want to do that. And he shouldn't have, and he didn't.”

It's stirring to imagine what might have come of that partnership.

“If they'd been twenty years earlier,” Ron Howard mused, “they would've been Abbott and Costello or something. They would've been Laurel and Hardy.”