The basic comedy The Andy Griffith Present ran for eight years on CBS, starting in 1960. Beginning out in black-and-white movie, by 1965 the present went full-color and had modified considerably. Right here’s how the still-popular program starring Griffith and Don Knotts concluded.
‘The Andy Griffith Show’ started on one other TV present
Andy Griffith’s present started in 1960 on a totally completely different program, The Danny Thomas Present. Starring producer and actor Danny Thomas, the collection centered on entertainer Danny Williams and his household.
The episode introducing Sheriff Andy Taylor and his younger son Opie, performed in fact by Ron Howard, was titled “Danny Meets Andy Griffith.” Within the episode, Danny goes by a cease check in Mayberry and is jailed by Andy when he refuses to pay a tremendous.
The pilot was a hit and Griffith and younger Howard’s performances led to CBS placing The Andy Griffith Present of their fall lineup that yr.
Griffith informed The Andy Griffith Present writer Richard Kelly about his anxiousness earlier than the reside efficiency on The Danny Thomas Present: “I came out [to Los Angeles], did the pilot – and I remember a lot of that, too, because Danny Thomas made me very nervous. I was wooden, very wooden. And as the show progressed, I got looser and looser and when they brought the audience in, I was on top of it. And the show, in fact, did sell.”
The ‘Griffith Show’ ended with the pilot episode of ‘Mayberry R.F.D.’
Andy Griffith was prepared to depart his present and introduced he would accomplish that after the eighth season. The present had modified dramatically from the Mayberry of the primary season. Don Knotts had left the collection in season 5, different characters had been launched, and the collection was offered in technicolor by its sixth season.
By the eighth — and last — season, a brand new present, Mayberry R.F.D., was introduced as a derivative from The Andy Griffith Present. The final episode of Griffith launched the brand new comedy and served as its pilot.
In The Andy Griffith Present finale, farmer Sam (Ken Berry) sponsors his former Military pal Mario to come back from Italy and assist him on his land. Sadly, Mario brings alongside his father and sister as nicely, with out Sam’s consent.
Simply as Sam is about to counsel the household could also be higher off in a extra spacious neighboring city, Andy involves the rescue and talks Sam into letting them keep. The brand new arrivals love Mayberry and the city has taken to them as nicely. They comply with keep, though they’re by no means seen once more on Mayberry R.F.D.
Griffith had little or no curiosity within the spinoff collection
Goober Pyle actor George Lindsey wrote in his memoir Goober in a Nutshell that by the point Mayberry R.F.D. aired, Griffith had mainly checked out of the present and spent little time on it.
After the Griffith Present led to 1968, Lindsey remained on Mayberry R.F.D. together with Aunt Bee actor Frances Bavier, Hope Summers who performed Clara Edwards, Emmett Clark actor Paul Hartman, and Jack Dodson, who portrayed Howard Sprague.
“I never felt that the scripts on Mayberry R.F.D. were as strong as those for The Andy Griffith Show,” Lindsey wrote. “No doubt that had a lot to do with the fact that Andy Griffith, though still executive producer, only appeared in a handful of episodes and was not as directly involved on the set and with the scripts.”
The standard of the scripts paled to the Griffith Present‘s, he added: “Goober had a lot more lines in Mayberry R.F.D., but in all honesty, they usually didn’t measure up to the razor-sharp standards of the original series.”