Andy Griffith biography

Synopsis

Early Career

Born on June 1, 1926, in Mount Airy, North Carolina, Andy Griffith's first career ambition was to be an opera singer. Later, he decided he wanted to become a Moravian preacher, and enrolled as a pre-divinity student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1944. While in college, he became involved in drama and musical theater, and graduated in 1949 with a degree in music.

Griffith taught high school music for three years before setting out, with his new wife, Barbara Edwards, a fellow actor at UNC, on a career as an entertainer. The couple developed a traveling routine, featuring singing, dancing and monologues performed by Griffith. One of these monologues, called "What It Was Was Football," was released commercially in 1953 and became one of the most popular comedic monologues of all time.

Griffith and his wife moved to New York, where he made his television debut as a guest monologist on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1954. That same year, he won the role of Will Stockdale in the TV version of Ira Levin's play, No Time for Sergeants. When the play was produced on Broadway in 1955, it became a hit, and Griffith was nominated for a Tony Award for outstanding supporting actor. Like his co-star and fellow southerner, Don Knotts, Griffith went on to reprise his role in the 1958 film version of No Time for Sergeants, which met with a mixed critical reception.

In 1960, Griffith earned another Tony nomination, this time for best actor in a musical, for Destry Rides Again. He made his feature film debut in 1957, in the provocative A Face in the Crowd, directed by Elia Kazan. He was also a regular, with Knotts, on the NBC variety series, The Steve Allen Show, from 1959 to 1960.

'The Andy Griffith Show'

Griffith's 1960 guest appearance as a small-town mayor on the sitcom Make Room for Daddy led CBS to give him his own sitcom, The Andy Griffith Show, in which he played the gentle, philosophical small-town Sheriff Andy Taylor. The show was a tremendous success, consistently ranking among the most popular sitcoms during the entirety of its eight-year run. Knotts co-starred from 1960 to 1965, as Taylor's high-strung deputy sheriff, Barney Fife. The young Ron Howard also co-starred, as the sheriff's red-haired son, Opie.

TV Shows

After The Andy Griffith Show went off the air in 1968, Griffith appeared in several feature films, including Hearts of the West (1975), also starring Jeff Bridges. For the most part, however, he concentrated on TV, and appeared in several short-lived attempts to recapture the success of The Andy Griffith Show, including Headmaster (1970-'71), and The New Andy Griffith Show (1972), both on CBS, Salvage (1980) on ABC, and the ABC Western comedy series, Best of the West (1981-'82). Griffith was also the executive producer of Mayberry, R.F.D., the first spinoff of The Andy Griffith Show, which ran from 1968 to 1971.