Secrets of the ‘Andy Griffith Show’ Revealed: The Story Behind the Making of the 1960s Hit Program

The series was born in an episode of The Danny Thomas Show.

Entertainer Danny Thomas had a major success with his own sitcom from 1953 to 1964. In the episode “Danny Meets Andy Griffith,” Danny is speeding in Mayberry and gets pulled over, where he gets a taste of country justice (and a bit of comeuppance for his arrogance). The episode nicely set up what would eventually become The Andy Griffith Show.

Andy himself had been doing well on the big screen and the stage, and he had become curious about television. While performing in the play Destry Rides Again, he was approached by legendary TV producer Sheldon Leonard with the idea of what would become his own series. He didn’t like the concept, but he did like Sheldon, so he said yes. Not hurting his decision-making is the fact that, ultimately, he would end up owning more than half the show.

Throughout the first season, Andy Taylor went through a number of changes.

When Andy first started playing the character, his portrayal was described as more of a country bumpkin — in the style he would deliver comic monologues on stage — than the character that would ultimately endear himself to viewers. Then he realized, according to producer Aaron Ruben, that he had to be a straight man to all “these kooks” around him. As a result, in season two he was, as Ruben called it, a more “Lincolnesque character,” which meant that more and more of the “drama” and craziness would come from the residents of, or visitors to, Mayberry, would require him to lend a helping hand. In the pages of The Andy Griffith Show Book, he revealed, “In the beginning [the pilot] I was supposed to tell funny stories about people around the town and be very very southern, very rural, and very mountain — rural was the vogue then.”

There are words to that iconic theme song.

Remember that wonderful opening theme of the show? Well, it actually has lyrics, and Andy Griffith even recorded a version of it. But the decision was ultimately made to go with an instrumental version. In truth, we’re happy that they did (but, man, is it hard to get that theme out of your head when you start thinking about it). Take a listen to the song with its lyrics:

Ronnie Howard couldn’t read when he started the show.

At the age of six when he began playing Opie Taylor, Ron (then Ronnie) Howard didn’t know how to read yet, so his father and other cast members would have to go over his lines with him. Ron, of course, would go on to play Richie Cunningham on Happy Days. It was a sort of pit-stop for his Hollywood directing career. You’ve come a long way, Opie!

For his part, Ron told Closer Weekly that acting on the show was a lot like living in Mayberry: “It was warm and funny, like the show. I learned hard work and fun were not diametrically opposed. In fact, they could work hand in hand. Andy taught me about the spirit of collaboration, which I’ve carried with me forever. I grew up in an environment with an equilibrium, a work ethic but also a sense of joy.”

Don Knotts left Mayberry five years in for a reason.

When the show started, Andy Griffith was adamant that it would run for five years and that would be it; he would be moving on. That sounded good to Don Knotts, who, as the fifth year was coming around, had gotten an offer for a film deal from Universal. Then, Andy decided to continue the show, but Don elected to leave anyway. On the show, it was explained that Barney had joined the Raleigh, North Carolina police force, while in real life the actor actually began making movies (he did return for a total of five episodes). Don would win five Emmy Awards in the category of Best Supporting Actor as Barney.

In regards to Don leaving the show, his daughter, Karen, told us, “Put yourself in his place. That show was hard, hard work. Then think of the character, and also the energy that it took to play him. Imagine the intensity, plus the level of perfection that was being strived for. Then, all of a sudden, you get offered a five-picture deal to be a star in your own right and make all the decisions. After five years of Andy’s show, I don’t care what it is, writers start to run out of ideas. There’s only so many stories you can tell. If you keep on going, hitting yourself over the heard, you’re going to start repeating stuff and then it loses its quality and its perfection. That’s probably the reason why at first Andy himself said he only wanted to do the show for five seasons, but they offered him a fortune to keep on with the show. I don’t think he wanted to continue on, especially not without Barney, because they couldn’t replace him. They tried.”

To be fair, though, she adds, “A lot of times people say to me, ‘Oh, your dad really made the show.’ They don’t realize what Andy was to the show. He was the backbone. They took notes from each other. My dad would say, ‘Hey, Andy, could you get me that a little bit quieter?’ and Andy would give him a note back and say, ‘How about trying this or that?’ They constantly talked about their characters and their performances. They were both completely consumed with it.”

Andy Griffith was not a fan of filming in front of an audience.

Sitcoms of the time (and many years afterward; not quite as common today) were filmed or taped in front of a live studio audience. Andy was never a fan of the idea though, and had no interest in that being a part of his show. As he told author Richard Kelly, “With [the audience] you must have jokes every so often, every few minutes… Most of those three-camera shows don’t have character comedy at all. They have joke comedy. The audience is what creates the problem. You must entertain that little handful of people. So you have to have the jokes. When you shoot with one camera, you have no audience, so you have character comedy. I prefer that.”

Writing romance on the show was a problem.

Andy Griffith’s discomfort with being demonstrable with women in real life became an issue on the series. Basically, it was incredibly difficult to set Andy Taylor up with a romantic partner. Eventually, though, a relationship with schoolteacher Helen Crump (Aneta Corsaut) developed, but in many ways, while it was cute and wholesome, it was also superficial. Initially, he and the writers thought the problem was with the various actresses they tried (including, in season one, with Father Knows Best‘s Elinor Donahue as the druggist Ellie), but realized they simply didn’t know how to write romance, and Andy didn’t know how to play it.

“I went pretty much immediately from Father Knows Best into The Andy Griffith Show where I was really playing a grownup with a profession, and moxie and stuff,” Elinor explains to us in an exclusive interview. “But the truth is, I felt like a bird out of a nest. I didn’t feel like I had all my feathers yet and I didn’t feel capable. It was the strangest feeling. I had a three-year contract for that show, but at the end of the first year I asked to be let out of it, because I didn’t feel that I was playing the role properly. I just didn’t feel right about it. In retrospect, from things that people have said to me — very lovely things — I was doing OK. I was just not a happy camper and there was no point in my trying to continue with it.”

Years later, Elinor attended an event and saw Andy there. She went up and apologized for having left the show. “He was as gracious to me as you could imagine,” she smiles. “He said they just didn’t know how to write for me. That could have been part of it. I didn’t think there was any real chemistry there. They tried a lot of other women periodically, but then Aneta Corsaut came in. I have since read they had a hot and heavy thing going, and in that case he was able to relate.”

George Lindsey played the character of Goober for almost 30 years on different shows.

One of the residents of Mayberry was Goober Pyle (cousin to Gomer), played by actor George Lindsey. Together, the cousins ran the local filling station/car repair shop. Not only did George play the role on The Andy Griffith Show, but continued to do so onto the spin-off Mayberry R.F.D. That show ended its run in 1971, and the following year he joined the cast of the syndicated Country Western variety show Hee-Haw, where he once again played Goober and did so until 1992. That’s got to be some sort of record. Deal with that Kelsey Grammer, who as you know, played Frasier Crane for “only” 20 years on Cheers its spin-off, Frasier.

The show was actually filmed in a variety of places.

All of the interior sets were based at the Desilu Studios, which had been created by the then-married Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, and served as home base for most of the top sitcoms of the time. There you’d find the interior of the courthouse, Andy’s living room, kitchen and porch, the filling station run by the characters Gomer and Goober, and so on. Standing in for Mayberry itself though was Culver City, California’s Forty Acres, where cast and crew would gather weekly to shoot what they needed. Cold Water Canyon in Los Angeles stood in for the North Carolina woods.

Jim Nabors got his own show based on Gomer Pyle, a character he couldn’t ever seem to shake.

Jim Nabors originated the role of the innocent and goofy Gomer Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show, but the character proved so popular that he was spun off into his own show. Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. saw the character join the Marines. A success in its own right, the show had its pilot air as the season four finale of Andy Griffith and then debuted on its own in 1964. The series, focused mostly on the interactions of Gomer and Frank Sutton’s Sgt. Carter, ran five seasons, concluding in 1969. Like Andy Griffith, Nabors decided to end the show on his own, wanting to try different things. Later he observed, unfortunately, that everything he ended up playing felt like just a variation of Gomer.

“Aunt Bee” was known for having a bit of an attitude.

By all reports, actress Francis Bavier, who was the wonderfully doting “Aunt Bee”, could be difficult on the set of the series. Some attribute this to the fact that the pace of television was much more intense than she had been used to on feature films. She also did not handle cursing on set and made that clear to everyone. Apparently, her co-stars oftentimes felt they had to walk on eggshells around her. In a TV interview, Andy Griffith said that a few weeks before her death (at the age of 87) she phoned him to apologize for “being difficult” on the set.

Sheldon Leonard was best known as an actor at first, but he actually accomplished so much as a producer.

Sheldon Leonard may have started his career as an actor (we love him as Nick the bartender in It’s a Wonderful Life), but his accomplishments as a producer were truly amazing. Check out these credits besides The Andy Griffith Show: The Danny Thomas Show, Brokaw, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., I Spy and the animated series My World and Welcome to It. Interesting bit of trivia, on The Big Bang Theory, series creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady paid tribute to him by naming their two lead characters, Sheldon and Leonard. See the interesting things you pick up from us?

The switch to color from black and white seemingly took forever.

A total of 249 episodes of the show were produced. 159 of them, representing seasons one through five, were shot in black and white, and seasons six through eight (consisting of 90 episodes) were in color. Interestingly, given the nature of the show, looking back at the black and white episodes doesn’t make it feel dated at all.

As one show ended, a new one began to fill the void The Andy Griffith Show was about to leave.

The idea of a spin-off getting a pilot episode within an established series is certainly not a new idea, but The Andy Griffith Show handled it differently. Andy was leaving the show following the end of its eighth season, but there was a desire to keep the series (which was ranked #1 in its last year) in some form on the air. To this end, Ken Berry was brought in as Sam Jones, a widower farmer, who moves to town with his son, Mike (Buddy Foster). As the last season of Andy Griffith ended, the last few episodes switched much of the focus to Sam. In many ways, Mayberry R.F.D. really felt like a straight line from The Andy Griffith Show, maintaining most of the supporting cast, with even Aunt Bee now employed as Sam’s housekeeper.

“Naturally it was scary,” says Ken Berry. “You go into it with great apprehension. All you hope is that you don’t hurt it, because I had nothing to do with the success of The Andy Griffith Show. I wasn’t even a character in the town or anything, and I just hoped that I wouldn’t do anything wrong, that’s all. Of course, one of the big stars of Mayberry R.F.D. was the town itself. It was like visiting Brigadoon once a week. It was a wonderful place to visit, and it never existed. It was idealized, but people loved to visit there, including me. I watched every Andy Griffith Show I could.”

Andy made sure the storylines from The Andy Griffith Show carried over into its spin-off in the beginning.

Since Andy Griffith owned more than 50% of The Andy Griffith Show, one would imagine that carried over to Mayberry R.F.D. as well. If so, it’s understandable that it was in his interest to make sure the new show was as steady as it could be. So not only was the spin-off set up in the last few episodes of his series, but when it premiered the following season, Andy Taylor and longtime girlfriend Helen Crump (Aneta Corsaut) got married. Don Knotts returned as Barney Fife to serve as Andy’s best man, and Ronnie Howard was back as Opie. Andy, Helen and Opie would stick around for a few episodes before moving to Charlotte, North Carolina.

Return to Mayberry was the only reunion movie.

Produced in 1986, this made-for-TV movie reunites most of the original cast in what would be the only such reunion. Andy Taylor, who has been U.S. Postal Inspector in Cleveland, returns to Mayberry to run for sheriff, but is reluctant to do so when he learns that Barney Fife is running as well. At the same time, the now married Opie is expecting his first child, while trying to decide whether or not he wants to become a reporter in Binghamton, New York.

There’s much more, but suffice to say it was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with the characters from the The Andy Griffith Show and recapture a little bit of the magic of the original series. There was also something reassuring to note that as much as the world had changed by 1986, Mayberry itself hadn’t. There’s a reason the TV show captured the imagination of so many people over the decades, and this film was a gentle reminder as well as a chance to check in on some old friends one more time.