For eight seasons, Mayberry, North Carolina, sheriff Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) had several love interests on “The Andy Griffith Show.” The widowed sheriff dated local beauties Ellie Walker, Helen Crump, and Nurse Peggy (just to name a few) on the old-school sitcom, but in 1962, he had his eye on a new girl in town.
In the 1962 episode ” “The County Nurse,” Andy crossed paths with Mary Simpson (Julie Adams) as the small town’s new nurse needed help getting old curmudgeon Rafe Hollister (Jack Prince) a tetanus shot. In a subsequent episode, Andy later asked the brainy brunette out on a date, but here’s the thing: by the time the character returned, she was played by a different actor, Sue Ann Langdon.
Maybe that’s because Adams was so busy doing other things. By the mid-1960s, she’d racked up a long list of acting credits on everything from “Perry Mason” to “The Big Valley,” but it was actually a decade earlier that she got “carried away” in the cult classic film “The Creature From the Black Lagoon.”
Julie Adams felt she had to take the role in the campy film
In 1954, Julie Adams was a long way from Mayberry when she played swimsuit-clad Kay Lawrence in the monster horror film “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.” At the time, Adams was under contract with Universal Pictures and felt she had to take the role, even though it was out of her usual genre, for fear she would become blacklisted in Hollywood.
Adams spoke about it the situation in a 2013 interview with The Horror Society where she revealed that she was initially put off by the script –- and by her creature-like co-star “The Gill-man” after working with dreamy leading men such as James Stewart and Rock Hudson. “I thought the creature from what? What is this, because I had been working with some major stars …on what I thought were loftier ideas of film,” she said. “But I read it and I thought if I turn it down, I won’t get paid and I’ll be on suspension.” Adams added that she then considered it might actually be fun — and it was. “It was a great pleasure to do the picture,” she said.
“The Creature From the Black Lagoon” turned out to be one of Adams’ biggest films and earned her a place in sci-fi history. In a 1991 interview, the actor admitted the unlikely role defined her career. “No matter what you do, you can act your heart out, but people will always say, ‘Oh, Julie Adams — “Creature From the Black Lagoon,'” she said, per The New York Times.
