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DARE COUNTY, N.C. -- Andy Griffith has died Tuesday at his home in North Carolina, according to reports.
Emergency medical crews responded to the Griffith's home in Dare County Tuesday morning.
Griffith, 86, was well known for his starring role on the television hit named after him, "The Andy Griffith Show," which first aired in 1960.
-- LJ/News
I am a little surprised and disappointed that Griffith’s death has not merited more coverage. I thought it would be highlighted on the front page of the New York Times, the Web page that is, but his death is apparently only getting some local news coverage. His Mayberry show is up there with “Leave It To Beaver” in signifying that romanticized lost America that gray-haired conservatives beweep, the days before racial integration and the sexual revolution, when life was simpler and sane. I suppose the Internet era really makes those days bygone days, a way of life almost as unrecognizable as medieval Europe or ancient Greece, like something out of the late neolithic era. I enjoyed the show when I was a kid. I liked “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Beverly Hillbillies” more, but I liked the show. I suppose it was more educational or instructional in a moral sort of way.
Ah, before I could get this posted, I see that the Times has caught up. Either they are running slow or LJ is really fast, both of which seem rather unlikely. Let’s get some of that high-end publishing:
Andy Griffith, an actor whose folksy Southern manner charmed audiences for more than 50 years on Broadway, in movies, on records and especially on television [...]
But his fame was never as great as it was in the 1960s, when he starred for eight years as Andy Taylor, the sagacious sheriff of the make-believe Southern town of Mayberry, running weekly herd on a collection of eccentrics like his ineffectual deputy, Barney Fife, and the simple-minded gas station attendant Gomer Pyle while, as a widower, patiently raising a young son, Opie.
[...]
The show imagined a reassuring world of fishin’ holes, ice cream socials and rock-hard family values during a decade that grew progressively more tumultuous.
I particularly liked the part where we learn that Mr. Griffith was apparently annoyed when people thought that the man and the character he played on his main show were largely one in the same:
One thing that always bothered Mr. Griffith was people’s assumption that in his depiction of Sheriff Taylor he was pretty much playing himself. He said he not only threw himself into creating a textured persona for the small-town lawman, but also helped write almost every episode — though he didn’t receive writing credit.
“You’re supposed to believe in the character,” Mr. Griffith said. “You’re not supposed to think, ‘Gee, Andy’s acting up a storm.’ ”
He presumably did not like being considered cornpone and ‘backward’. I suppose sometimes a person can become a prisoner of his success. Well, that has to be better than being a prisoner of your failure. Sheriff Taylor may have been simplistic and idealized in a “Leave It To Beaver” kind of way, but it was a sweet, well-intentioned show.
Emergency medical crews responded to the Griffith's home in Dare County Tuesday morning.
Griffith, 86, was well known for his starring role on the television hit named after him, "The Andy Griffith Show," which first aired in 1960.
-- LJ/News
I am a little surprised and disappointed that Griffith’s death has not merited more coverage. I thought it would be highlighted on the front page of the New York Times, the Web page that is, but his death is apparently only getting some local news coverage. His Mayberry show is up there with “Leave It To Beaver” in signifying that romanticized lost America that gray-haired conservatives beweep, the days before racial integration and the sexual revolution, when life was simpler and sane. I suppose the Internet era really makes those days bygone days, a way of life almost as unrecognizable as medieval Europe or ancient Greece, like something out of the late neolithic era. I enjoyed the show when I was a kid. I liked “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Beverly Hillbillies” more, but I liked the show. I suppose it was more educational or instructional in a moral sort of way.
Ah, before I could get this posted, I see that the Times has caught up. Either they are running slow or LJ is really fast, both of which seem rather unlikely. Let’s get some of that high-end publishing:
Andy Griffith, an actor whose folksy Southern manner charmed audiences for more than 50 years on Broadway, in movies, on records and especially on television [...]
But his fame was never as great as it was in the 1960s, when he starred for eight years as Andy Taylor, the sagacious sheriff of the make-believe Southern town of Mayberry, running weekly herd on a collection of eccentrics like his ineffectual deputy, Barney Fife, and the simple-minded gas station attendant Gomer Pyle while, as a widower, patiently raising a young son, Opie.
[...]
The show imagined a reassuring world of fishin’ holes, ice cream socials and rock-hard family values during a decade that grew progressively more tumultuous.
I particularly liked the part where we learn that Mr. Griffith was apparently annoyed when people thought that the man and the character he played on his main show were largely one in the same:
One thing that always bothered Mr. Griffith was people’s assumption that in his depiction of Sheriff Taylor he was pretty much playing himself. He said he not only threw himself into creating a textured persona for the small-town lawman, but also helped write almost every episode — though he didn’t receive writing credit.
“You’re supposed to believe in the character,” Mr. Griffith said. “You’re not supposed to think, ‘Gee, Andy’s acting up a storm.’ ”
He presumably did not like being considered cornpone and ‘backward’. I suppose sometimes a person can become a prisoner of his success. Well, that has to be better than being a prisoner of your failure. Sheriff Taylor may have been simplistic and idealized in a “Leave It To Beaver” kind of way, but it was a sweet, well-intentioned show.
