More than you ever wanted to know.... It's time for a break from the regular ole regular, BLAHg....
You're stuck. No, you don't HAVE to read, but if ya wanna, you're stuck.
I love:
Rock and roll, put another dime in the juke box baby... Peace... Humility.. Chiefs/Royals/MU/William Jewell/Liberty HS... Baseball Ray, Basketball Dr. J, Golf.. Women (I can fall in love faster'n you can name that tune.) Dogs, cats.. humor.. self deprecation.. pecan pie.. lasagna.,, my family, friends... much...
But I also love, have loved TAGS for a long, long time (Since October 3rd, 1960). TAGS, The Andy Griffith Show. Turn left here if you no likey, but what follows is all really, really usesless, "I didn't know that" stuff about TAGS.
Of course you've got your regular characters. . Andy, Barn, Ope, Aunt Bee (pronounced with the Mount Airy twang "Ain't Bee")..Floyd, Gomer, Goober, Otis, Thelma Lou, Helen Crump, Sarah, Ernest T. Bass, etc...
But didya know, these folks appeared on TAGS? Barbara Eden, Buddy Ebsen, Max Baer Jr., Don Rickles, Bob Denver, Jamie Farr, Gavin MacLeod, Rob Reiner, Terri Garr, Artie Johnson, and uh huh, Jack Nicholson.
TAGS about TAGS... Trivia, stuff you might not normally read about us folks..
When I was born, I lived with relatives until my folks were able to afford a home. At that time, I didn't have a bed or a crib so I slept in dresser drawers. I went to college to study to be a preacher, changed my major to music and I taught music and drama at a High School for a few years after I graduated. My first wife and I adopted two children. In 1983 I was paralyzed from my knees down for 7 months (Guillain-Barre). TAGS was actually the 2nd longest running TV show I was on. Yep, I'm Andy.
I was the youngest of four sons.. My mom was 40 when she had me. My dad suffered from alcoholism and schizophrenia and actually used to threaten me with a knife. I turned inward. He died of pneumonia when I was 13. I enlisted in the Army, served in WWII. I had actually done a little ventriloquist work when I was a kid so one of the things I did was entertained troops in the war. I was lucky, I also was awarded the World War II Victory Medal, The Phillipines Liberation Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal (with 4 bronze service stars), The American Campaign Medal, The Army Good Conduct Medal and the Army Marksman Badge. I went to college at West Virginia University where I got a degree in Education with a minor in speech. My first marriage lasted 17 years until we divorced, and after that I raised my daughter as a single father. One of the writers called me "The most beloved person in all of show business," it was also said 'he's a very quiet man, very sweet, nothing at all like Barney Fife. Oops, yep, I guess that was me."
I was born in Duncan, Oklahoma. I was 18 months old for my first screen appearance in 'Frontier Women', they needed a crying baby. They said I was good and it didn't even seem like I was actng. 1958, my parents rented a house two blocks from Desilu Studios where TAGS would be filmed two years later. Close your ears. My wife and I have four children and they are all named after where they were conceived: Bryce Dallas Howard, Paige Carlyle and Jocelyn Carlyle (the Carlyle Hotel in NYC) and Reed Cross after a specific road. I was teased A LOT on the playground when I was a kid. I was called Soapy and Dopey, later in life Opium, and it didn't help matters when I was hosting SNL in 1982 Eddie Murphy and he introduced me as Opie Cunningham. Of course, I'm Ron Howard.
I went to Columbia University and I wanted to be a teacher. I never married. I spent more years on TAGS and Mayberry RFD than ANYONE. In the pilot of TAGS, I wasn't my regular, long lasting part, I actually portrayed a local widow named Mrs. Henrietta Perkins.While I was born in New York, I fell in love with the pretty roads and trees in North Carolina so I retired in Siler City, NC. I started a $100,000 trust fund for the Police Force in Siler City, and every year at Christmas the interest is divided up as a Christmas bonus for the 20 or so police men and women. Yes, I am Aunt Bee, aka, Frances Bavier.
I was born in LA and I served in WWII in the United States Army Air Corp. Before TAGS I was actually on the RADIO show Gunsmoke as the voice of Doc Adams. Two years before TAGS, I was on Leave It To Beaver as a barber named Andy, and I actually gave Wally his first shave. After the very first year on TAGS I had a debilitating stroke that rendered the left side of my body nearly paralyzed. I left for a year and a half to recuperate, and rumor has it, they loved me so they invited me back on the show, I was filmed seated on a bench for the most part, my left arm holding a newspaper or resting on my lap, but I moved my right arm when I spoke. I passed at the young age of 63 as a result of complications from pneumonia caused by my stroke. Yes, I'm Floyd the Barber, aka, Howard McNear.
This and that...
The town was originally called Mt. Pilot before Mayberry! Andy had three girlfriends in all the TAGS years, the least known, and middle one, "Peggy" is said to be the first ever female character to wear pants on a TV show.
Cindy Brady sat on my lap when I was Santa Claus on the Brady Bunch, but I was the town drunk, Otis on TAGS.
In season 2, a criminal was believed to be headed to Mayberry. Thus, Barney deputizes Sam, Art the grocer, and Floyd the barber. Barney paces back and forth in front of his recruits hollering "We've got to NIP IT! NIP it in the bud! You got that? Let's hear it!" right after this speech, the mild-mannered Floyd shouts with shivering ferocity "NIP IT!" Don Notts lost it, laughing each and every time hysterically when Floyd said "NIP IT". It took 20 takes!
Ernest T. Bass ("It's me, it's me, it's Ernest T") of rock through window fame, aka, Howard Morris, actually directed 8 episodes of the show.
Thelma Lou, aka, Betty Lynn, (Barney's Girlfriend) too fell in love with North Carolina. After retirement her house was robbed in California, she immediately up and moved to Mt. Airy, NC. By 2019, she actually made monthly appearances at the Andy Griffith Museum signing autographs and meeting her fans (at age 92!)..
If this boredya, I'm sorry! I thoroughly loved (and love) that show. A wonderful era of life.
By Henry Gibson, (Cheers toast by Otis)
Love, Victurd
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