From today’s point of view, it’s probably difficult for most people to recognize just how big a celebrity Jim Nabors was back in the 1960s and 1970s. He first caught the television audience’s attention as mechanic Gomer Pyle in the third season of The Andy Griffith Show, where he introduced into the popular vernacular phrases like “Gol-ly!” and “Shazam!” He appeared on that show a total of 23 times before being spun-off into his own highly successful series, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., which saw the character joining the United States Marines. This in turn led to his own variety show and success as a recording artist. But so much of it all comes back to Gomer, which was just fine with the late actor/singer.
“I really love Gomer,” Jim proclaimed to Allan Newsome during an interview for his Two Chairs, No Waiting Andy Griffith Show podcast. “I had the good fortune, if you’re gonna play a character, to play as nice a guy as he was. People always ask me if I would like to be identified differently and I tell them, ‘Absolutely not!’ I really enjoyed it and still do. I haven’t necessarily made my career totally on Gomer, because I’ve used so much music in my career, but I’ve been very blessed in that I’ve had a diverse career. I had a situation comedy, a concert career and a variety show. It’s all been really wonderful, because in show business you’re always kind of looking for your next job. It’s a very insecure business. Fortunately, I was never without a job in 40 years.”
His one regret, he told the New York Daily News, was that early on “I didn’t have more experience. Still, when your opportunity comes along, you don’t ask. You keep your fingers crossed and try your best.”
It all began for James Thurston Nabors on June 12, 1930, in Sylacauga, Alabama, when he entered the world and was greeted by police officer father Fred Nabors, mother Mavis Pearl and older sisters Freddie and Annie Ruth. Singing first became a part of his life in high school and at church. This expanded to acting when he attended the University of Alabama and began performing in skits.
“I grew up singing, but never as a soloist,” he told Allan. “I sang in church choirs, I sang in the ‘glee club’ in high school and things like that. But I never sang a solo. When I went away to college to the University of Alabama, I used to sing around the fraternity house just for fun, as guys do.”
Upon graduation, he moved to New York City, where he worked as a typist for the United Nations. “They paid me $55 a week,” he related to the Press and Sun-Bulletin of Binghamton, New York, in 1963. “It wasn’t much salary, but the work was interesting.”
Jim’s journey continues, just scroll down.
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The Big Move
He spent about a year in New York before moving to Chattanooga, Tennessee and an NBC television affiliate station, where he worked as a film cutter. “I sort of liked show business,” he told The Times of San Mateo, California in 1965, “but I did not know how you got in. Finally, I couldn’t keep away any longer, so I got that job in Chattanooga, which consisted mostly of inserting commercials into the late, late movies. But I was sort of in show business, which was just fine.”
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CBS Television Distribution
Heading to Hollywood
Suffering from asthma, he ultimately decided he needed a different environment, which led him to Los Angeles. “Like I said,” he continued, “I didn’t know how to get into show business, but I figured that the place to go was Hollywood and I got a job as an assistant film editor at NBC.”
While doing so, he also began acting and singing at a couple of places, most notably Santa Monica tavern The Horn. There he presented a character not dissimilar to what would become Gomer Pyle, and what caught the audience by surprise was the fact that one minute he would be speaking in a higher-pitched comedic voice and then start singing in a baritone.
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Gaining Momentum
Unfortunately, not everybody enjoyed his performance. “I was singing along there, minding my own business,” he reflected in 1963, “when some guy in the audience stands up and says, ‘Get off the stage, you big hick, and bring on the girls.’ Well, I was so embarrassed, all I could do was stand there and look ashamed of myself. For about a minute I just looked down at my shoes and felt like crying or something. I didn’t have any smart-aleck things to say to that fella, so I just stood there feeling real bad. It was awful quiet. Then some of the crowd got riled up at that man and told him to get out. Then they clapped for me and I started singing again. So everything worked out.”
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Getting Discovered
Geoffrey Mark, an entertainment performer, author and pop culture historian, explains, “Jim wanted to do stage work. He wanted to be a singer/actor kind of guy, and he put together an act kind of loosely based on a cabaret act Andy Griffith had done. Most people don’t know this about Andy, that originally what made him famous and brought him to national attention was where he did a stage act of a Southerner looking at something that most Americans think is ordinary, but seeing it through different eyes. So the thing that got Andy noticed was the routine, ‘What it was, was football,’ approaching it as if a southerner doesn’t know what football is. Back then it was funny. And then he would sing. So that’s what Jim was doing: the hick act and then opening up his mouth and singing with that gorgeous voice of his. I know that Andy went and saw him, but also my friend Bill Dana claimed that he was the first one to see Jim do it. Andy said he was first, but my friend Steve Allen saw him and put him on his show. So Jim was another of Steve Allen’s discoveries like I was.”
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Reaching Stardom
“That gave Jim enough juice that when they wanted to add a character to The Andy Griffith Show, they thought of him,” continues Geoffrey. “On sitcoms you must add characters or change situations so you’re not writing the same story over and over again. And he was familiar with Jim’s work, knew he could do the Southern thing really well and knew that Jim could sing so they could use his voice on the show. And they wrote Gomer Pyle in. It’s one of those things where they tried it once and the audience loved it and his coworkers loved it. Everybody who worked with him was, like, ‘Wow, this guy’s really good,’ except for Frances Bavier [Aunt Bee]. She just saw him as a threat; somebody else who would take screen time away from her.”
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Creating Memories
For his part, Jim was delighted to be with the show. “As a matter of fact,” he told Allan Newsome, “it’s been one of my favorite things I’ve ever done, because I didn’t have to carry the show. And yet it was a learning experience for me. I couldn’t wait to go to work every day, because I knew I was gonna laugh, enjoy myself and have a good time.”
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CBS Television Distribution
Working Alongside Don Knotts
“The Andy Griffith Show was,” he continued, “one of the best ensembles that have ever been on television. Andy was secure enough as a performer in his own right that he could let each one of us go with whatever we could do. Of course, it was hard for me not to laugh when I’d do a scene with Don Knotts sometimes, because he was so hysterical. He used to break me up and I was supposed to be standing there looking kind of dumb and I’d always start grinning. Then the director would start sayin’, ‘Don’t do that. Don’t do that!’”
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CBS Television Distribution
Important Connection
Despite the fact he was only in a couple of dozen episodes across seasons three and four, there was obviously a connection between Jim’s Gomer and the audience. Muses Allan, “I think the appeal of the character of Gomer was his innocence. It was an innocent behavior. His outlook on life was kind of a rosy one. He always saw the best in people, never assumed anybody was a bad person. And I think there’s something attractive about that, to see somebody that is genuine and really believes what he lives.”
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CBS Television Distribution
Endless Possibilities
That connection resulted in the creation of a spin-off show for Jim, which took the form of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., which saw the Mayberry mechanic enter the Marines where he would innocently square off against Frank Sutton’s Sergeant Carter. Frankly, the creation of the show was strictly a business decision. Explains Geoffrey, “The very ambitious — and it’s important to use that word — producing team of Danny Thomas and Sheldon Leonard took the Make Room for Daddy money that Desi Arnaz had invested in it — none of this would have happened if Desi hadn’t given Danny Thomas the money to make Make Room for Daddy — and kept investing their money in other things. Because The Andy Griffith Show was a spinoff of Danny Thomas’ show, they saw the possibility in Gomer Pyle.”
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RKO
Mayberry
“Sheldon Leonard,” he elaborates, “thought this was somebody they could build a show around. Take the character out of Mayberry and create a scenario for him, but he would be the same naïve, good-natured, but getting into trouble awkward guy with a singing voice. What they came up with was the idea of putting him in the military right at the time the United States was starting to get involved with Vietnam. So our military was a topic of discussion, but it was not yet controversial. They got to surround Nabors’ slightly effeminate Gomer with a lot of testosterone-filled costars to balance it out. They were very lucky that Frank Sutton was brilliantly cast as Sergeant Carter.”
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CBS Television Distribution
His Departure
One genuine question — especially considering that more people remember Gomer from The Andy Griffith Show than his own series — is whether or not his departure actually hurt the series. “I would not say Gomer leaving hurt The Andy Griffith Show, but a talent like Jim had with Gomer and in the strength of the character, it obviously impacted the stories and the things we got to see Gomer do from then on,” suggests Allan. “There was definitely an impact, but he had the talent and the ability to carry his own show, which was pretty evident as the series progressed. It was a very strong character that people did like, and it’s not really a surprise that it was able to bounce off and become its own series and just continue on. The character drew you in to see what he was going to do and how he was going to behave in these different situations. Of course, watching him go off and join the Marine Corps was just out of character for what you would have thought Gomer Pyle would be doing.”
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CBS Television Distribution
Audience Favorite
“The character of Gomer Pyle wasn’t on Andy Griffith from the beginning; he doesn’t appear until the third season, so the audience had a chance to react to the character and like him, but he wasn’t there long enough for him to become a regular,” adds Geoffrey. “He wasn’t on every week. He wasn’t on as often as Floyd the Barber was or Aunt Bee. And they were very wise in that they brought in his cousin, Goober [George Lindsey], while he was still on the show. They wrote an episode introducing Goober, whose name was Beasley at first. Eventually they rewrote history, because when Goober was introduced, Andy had never met him before. Goober was a cousin from his mother’s side of the family who had not been brought up in Mayberry. After Jim left the show, they changed his last name to Pyle and all of a sudden Goober had grown up with Andy and everybody had always known him. So they had the Goober character as a placeholder for Gomer and they had a good comedy actor. He couldn’t sing, but maybe he was a better actor than Jim was. When they had to do pathos with Goober, George Lindsey might’ve been able to deliver more than Jim could have. Jim was wonderful at broad comedy, but George was an actor first and a comedian second. So the audience was not robbed of the Gomer character.”
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TV Week
Huge Change
He continues, “Sheldon Leonard and Aaron Ruben, who created the show and was creatively in charge, made sure they had coverage, that they wouldn’t have been without. They were also aware that Don Knotts was leaving after the fifth season, so it was a good time to pull Gomer out. The whole feeling of the show was about to change — it was about to go to color from black and white, Don was leaving and they wanted to make sure that had on screen time between Don and George before Don went away so that the audience would accept George and the character of Goober. It was very-well orchestrated.”
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BearManor Media
Television Success
Denny Reese, author of Gomer Says Hey! Inside the Manic and Much-Loved Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., admits, “I was probably more of a fan of Gomer Pyle as a TV series than The Andy Griffith Show. His character on The Andy Griffith Show never had much dimension, but once he got his own show, it just expanded him. And then, of course, playing against Frank Sutton as Sergeant Carter was the perfect chemistry. To me, it’s one of the all-time great series of the 1960s that I think has been overlooked. It was popular at the time, so it’s a little surprising that it’s kind of almost forgotten. You talk to people today and a lot of them don’t even remember it. The younger people haven’t ever seen it.”
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CBS Television Distribution
Front and Center
It would seem that by placing Gomer at the center of a show, it would give the character an opportunity to change and evolve, but that wasn’t necessarily the case. “He was locked into place because of that innocence the character had,” Allan says. “He didn’t really change. If you watch the Gomer Pyle series, he actually changes the people he interacts with. They start off picking on him and trying to take advantage of this country bumpkin because of his innocence, but he basically wins them all over. That’s because, I believe, of the sincerity of the character. So he didn’t change and it didn’t change him by having him join the Marines. He didn’t become the gung-ho, charge-the-hill type Marine. But he did his duty and was always reliable to the men around him.”
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CBS Television Distribution
Popular Characters
Differs Denny, “I think the character started to change while he was on Andy Griffith, but not to the extent he did on Gomer Pyle. On Gomer Pyle, both Gomer and Sergeant Carter change, because when it starts out, Gomer is pretty raw. He’s pretty dumb. He’s a hayseed from Mayberry, he’s never been exposed to the city and city slickers, but he outwits them in his own way, because of his common sense. In the beginning he’s just gullible, but over time he starts to see through other people. And Sergeant Carter is sort of tough and no-nonsense in the beginning, but by the end of the series there’s a progression where it’s almost like a switch happening. Gomer hadn’t become tough, but he’s wiser than Carter because Carter sort of becomes a buffoon. You can see it as the series goes on. I don’t even know if a lot of people realize it, but if you watch the early black and white episodes, in the first four or five Carter’s not really all that funny, but he becomes funny over time.”
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Big Ideas
It’s Geoffrey’s opinion that unlike The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. was, in a sense, trapped in its premise. The original idea was that Sergeant Carter is running a boot camp that Gomer is working his way through. “Yet somehow in five seasons, Gomer never leaves boot camp,” he laughs. “He never leaves San Diego. He never leaves the base. His coworkers kind of stayed the same, some of his buddies come and go as they get work in show business. It is where Ted Bessell was discovered, later to be part of That Girl. And Ronnie Schell went on to much success. But it was stuck in its premise and they began to really completely redo story points over and over and over again. They kept a large hook back into The Andy Griffith Show. Frances Bavier appears on the show, Ron Howard is on the show, they had episodes where Gomer went back to Mayberry. They always made sure the connection was there.”
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‘Gomer Pyle’
Gomer Pyle aired from 1965 to 1969 and a total of 150 episodes. But then it was decided by everyone involved to cancel the series, mostly because there were enough episodes for reruns and no point in putting more money into the show. “Jim,” points out Geoffrey, “wanted to spend more time singing and doing Vegas, and he wanted to do a variety show. Creatively, he wanted to do what he wanted to do. The Gomer Pyle money gave him the financial freedom to do that. And the show was tired; they wouldn’t have been able to keep the quality up, so the decision was made to reap the profits from what they’d already done.”
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CBS
‘The Jim Nabors Hour’
Debuting on CBS in 1969 was The Jim Nabors Hour, a variety show that showcased his baritone voice, featured guest singers, comedy sketches and co-starred from Gomer Pyle Frank Sutton and Ronnie Schell. “Most everybody told me not to leave Gomer,” Jim explained at the time. “But I tell them the new show will be exciting. I love to sing and I thought a variety show of my own would be more rewarding to me personally. As to the money, I didn’t know, but as it turned out, doing the variety show has meant more money for me.”
And for those who felt they would miss Gomer, he stated, “Every sketch I do turns out to be Gomer no matter what kind of character I’m playing, except in one skit when I played the Lone Ranger. But I could go on doing this for the test of my life if they’d have me. It’s quite a challenge to come up with that hour.”
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CBS
Cancellation
In 1971, CBS decided that they no longer wanted to have him. Or The Jackie Gleason Show, Petticoat Junction, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Ed Sullivan Show and others. All were eliminated as part of the so-called “rural purge,” through which the network decided to focus on the demographics of their audience rather than its size. As it turned out, kids were watching Gomer Pyle as were older people, but those coveted by advertisers in their 20s and 30s were not. Rudely, Jim found out about the cancellation like everyone else: he read it in the newspaper. “I guess you could say I was a little upset about the show being pulled out from under me,” he told The San Francisco Examiner in 1972. “I didn’t think we deserved to be canceled. Our ratings were very good, but we sort of got lumped with all those other country shows. Maybe you could call me country a little bit, but certainly not the rest of the cast.”
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Sony Pictures Television
Finding Work
When he read about the cancellation, Jim said, “I got on the phone the very same day. I started mapping out a summer-long tour that took me to Lake Tahoe, Baltimore, Washington, Dallas, Kansas City, St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago … It wasn’t a question of dollars and cents, image or even pride. I just wanted to work, to stay busy, to get back on the stage where I could do the only thing I really know — entertain.”
There’s no question that Jim found work in the 1970s and 1980s, from Saturday morning TV (The Lost Saucer) to guest star appearances (The Rookies, in a dramatic role), nightclub and concert engagements, a touring production of Man of La Mancha, a few Burt Reynolds films, the 1986 reunion TV movie Return to Mayberry and more. But his career was never what it had been, though he nonetheless kept at it.
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Live Performances
“For a time, Jim became a live performer,” says Geoffrey. “He wasn’t recording anymore, because his music was considered old fashioned. It’s very hard on television to build a long term career. Jim was able to parlay what Andy and Bill Dana saw in a small nightclub into a long term career, but he was never going to be a superstar over a long period of time. Singing ‘The Impossible Dream’ and playing Gomer Pyle ate up what Jim was capable of. He was brilliant singing that kind of song, he was very funny as Gomer Pyle, but you’ve now seen pretty much what Jim can do. As a variety show host, he did not have the talent, which is not putting him down, of Carol Burnett or Jackie Gleason or Red Skelton to play different characters. He didn’t have it in him. He couldn’t sing a variety of different kinds of music. He was not a good enough actor to tour in a musical. I think he did a few, but he wasn’t very successful at it.”
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Singing Career
One thing that did give Jim enormous personal pleasure was the fact that between 1972 and 2014, he sang “Back Home Again in Indiana” with the Purdue All-American Marching Band before each Indianapolis 500 race. “I used to go to the race every year with one of my employers, Bill Harrah of Harrah’s Clubs,” Jim told Allan. “Mr. Harrah was a close friend of Mr. Hulman, who owned the track. Mr. Hulman asked me one time, ‘Hey, we haven’t got anyone to sing. You know that song?’ I said, ‘Sure, I know it.’ And so he asked if I would want to sing and I said, ‘Sure, I’ll walk down there and sing.’ So I came back the next year and he said, ‘Hey, you want to sing again?’ and I said, ‘Okay.’ Then it just kind of became a routine thing and before I knew it, I’d done it for 30 years and I became part of the tradition. It’s really one of the big thrills I have in my life. When I walk up there in front of thousands of people, not to mention all the folks on television, it’s quite a boost.”
Probably the closest he’d come to it previously was in 1971 when he joined Bob Hope at the Marine base in Da Nag during an entertainment tour to Vietnam. “I got the most moving ovation I have ever received in my life,” he told The Los Angeles Times. “There were 40,000 Marines and all Hope said was, ‘Gentlemen, I bring you your leader.’ And they cheered.” In 2013, Jim was named an honorary Marine.
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Marriage
Jim was gay, a fact that he kept hidden for much of his life, though the people he worked with — particularly on The Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle — were aware, but it never mattered to them (magazines were reporting rumors, including a supposed relationship between he and Rock Hudson). In 1976 Jim and his partner, Stan Cadwallader, would move to Hawaii where they ran a very successful macadamia plantation on Maui. They would also marry in 2013. “Jim and Stan were together for 38 years when they got married,” says Geoffrey. “He’d been there all along. People referred to him as a firefighter, but he was Jim’s manager. In Hawaii, Jim worked less and less as time went on. He was happy in his life, happy not having to worry about what people were saying about him. And he found his personal serenity there. And good for him and good for him going public before others did. So with Jim you had another celebrity showing you that there was no reason to stay in the shadows.”
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Return to the Stage
In 1994 (three years after receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame), Jim nearly died from hepatitis B, which resulted in liver failure. It was actually close friend Carol Burnett who managed to work things out with the transplant division of the University of California, Los Angeles to obtain a liver transplant. After recovering, he would tell Allan, “I can’t encourage people enough to be organ donors. It saved my life, gave me a few more years. I’ve been totally blessed by the good Lord that I could be here. It got down to the wire. I didn’t have very long … a week maybe.”
In the aftermath, and once he recovered, Jim performed again and, between 1997 and 2006, he starred in the annual A Merry Christmas with Friends and Nabors at Honolulu’s Hawaii Theatre Center.
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His Legacy
The transplant that saved Jim’s life in 1994 actually gave him 23 more years as he would pass away on November 30, 2017 at the age of 87. In his conversation with Allan, he was asked if he had a message for the many fans who had prayed for him while he was ill. “I bless them always and I thank them very much for their love, their kindness and their compassion to help me out during my time of need,” Jim said. “It was truly a blessed time for me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was. I found out a lot of things about myself. Found out a lot of things about life. Most people go through life never facing up to their mortality, but once you have to do it, it’s a cleansing effect.”
Adds Geoffrey, “Jim Nabors had money, he had love and he had serenity. Show business is littered with the bodies of people who blew their money, never found love and never found peace. He did.”
