Well, remember that Griffith’s initial fame was as a nightclub performer who’d put on his “ignorant southern rural yokel” schtick for ritzy NYC supper-club audiences. Always seemed to be a tinge of contempt towards small-town/Southern culture and values in his early humor, unlike a lot of previous rural-style comedians like Judy Canova and Bob Burns and such.
Thus, the irony that Griffith wound up headlining a show (and a brilliant classic it is) that became such an iconic fixture for solid, mid-american conservative values. A pretty miserable cuss in real-life as well. Of the two or three dozen folks I’ve talked to who have worked with Griffith or met him, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a nice word uttered about him!
” A pretty miserable cuss in real-life as well. “
I never met him, but I worked in the studios years ago, and was told he was an SOB.
I first heard of him in the movie “No Time for Sergeants” which was hysterical. Don Knotts is in it as well, playing a psychologist who is assigned to evaluate the Griffith charachter, and Knotts ends up thinking he’s crazy. I think that’s why the Andy Griffith show was started to capitalize on the popularity of the movie, but as time went on, Andy became the less funny one, and Barney took over. I also think that Gomer went into the Marines to emulate Griffith’s “No Time for Sergeants” character.