On this day in 2012, Andy Griffith, famous for his role as the good-hearted, small-town sheriff of fictional Mayberry, North Carolina, on the iconic 1960s TV sitcom \u201cThe Andy Griffith Show,\u201d dies at age 86 at his North Carolina home. The actor also was known for his starring role in the 1980s-1990s TV drama \u201cMatlock,\u201d in which he portrayed a shrewd Atlanta defense attorney.<\/p>\n
Andrew Samuel Griffith was born on June 1, 1926, in Mount Airy, North Carolina. He majored in music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in 1949. Griffith went on to teach school for several years before finding success as a stand-up comedian. In 1957, he made his feature film debut in the critically acclaimed drama \u201cA Face in the Crowd,\u201d starring, in a serious role, as a drifter who becomes a manipulative, power-hungry celebrity.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe Andy Griffith Show\u201d premiered in the fall of 1960 and quickly became a hit. Griffith played the amiable Sheriff Andy Taylor, a widower raising his young son Opie, played by Ron Howard (now a successful Hollywood director, whose credits include \u201cA Beautiful Mind\u201d and \u201cThe Da Vinci Code\u201d). Set in the small, idyllic community of Mayberry (based on Griffith\u2019s hometown of Mount Airy), the show included an ensemble of eccentric characters such as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife (played by Don Knotts), prim Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier), gas-station attendant Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors), Floyd the barber (Howard McNear) and Otis the town drunk (Hal Smith). The folksy sitcom, memorable for its whistled theme song, which played over opening credits featuring Andy and Opie on their way to go fishing, continues to air in reruns. Additionally, the program spawned the TV shows \u201cGomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.\u201d (1964-69) and \u201cMayberry R.F.D.\u201d (1968-71).<\/p>\n
During the 1970s and 1980s, Griffith appeared in several short-lived TV series and various made-for-TV movies before again finding success in the legal drama \u201cMatlock,\u201d which originally aired from 1986 to 1995. The actor\u2019s final role was in the 2009 feature film \u201cPlay the Game.\u201d Also in 2009, the Andy Griffith Museum opened in Mount Airy. The TV legend died of a heart attack on July 3, 2012, at his home on Roanoke Island in North Carolina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On this day in 2012, Andy Griffith, famous for his role as the good-hearted, small-town sheriff of fictional Mayberry, North Carolina, on the iconic 1960s TV sitcom \u201cThe Andy Griffith Show,\u201d dies at age 86 at his North Carolina home. The actor also was known for his starring role in the 1980s-1990s TV drama \u201cMatlock,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3511],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hollywood"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}