Andy Griffith was one of the biggest television stars during the 1960s, reaching peak fame from his starring role in The Andy Griffith Show. But did you know that before his successful acting career he rose to fame as a monologist?
One of his most successful monologues was “What It Was, Was Football” which follows a country preacher who accidentally finds himself at a football game and doesn’t really know what to make of it. The original recording was produced in North Carolina and mass-produced by Capitol Records in 1953.
The performance charted at No. 9 on the Billboard chart and was instrumental in boosting Griffith’s television and comedy career. It even landed him an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1954. The script of the monologue was printed in Mad magazine in 1958 and even turned into a short film in 1997.
We was going to hold a tent service off at this college town, and we got there about dinnertime on Saturday. Different ones of us thought that we ought to get us a mouthful to eat before we set up the tent.
So we got off the truck and followed this little bunch of people through this small little bitty patch of woods there, and we come up on a big sign. It says, “Get Something to Eat Here.”
I went up and got me two hot dogs and a big orange drink, and before I could take a mouthful of that food, this whole raft of people come up around me and got me to where I couldn’t eat nothing, up like, and I dropped my big orange drink. I did.Well, friends, they commenced to move, and there wasn’t so much that I could do but move with them.
Well, we commenced to go through all kinds of doors and gates and I don’t know what-all, and I looked up over one of ’em and it says, “North Gate.” We kept on a-going through there, and pretty soon we come up on a young boy and he says, “Ticket, please.”
And I says, “Friend, I don’t have a ticket; I don’t even know where it is that I’m a-going!” I did.
Well, he says, “Come out as quick as you can.”
And I says, “I’ll do ‘er; I’ll turn right around the first chance I get.”
