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Andy Griffith: Don Knotts
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The Andy Griffith Show is one of many programs from the era that shifted from black and white to color during its run. When repeats are shown on television, networks often run only the older black and white episodes since they feature Don Knotts, who left the show in 1965 to pursue a movie career. Fortunately, The Andy Griffith Show has been released in full-season box sets on DVD, enabling you to catch all the episodes, from black and white to color.
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Before The Andy Griffith Show, Griffith appeared as a country sheriff (who was ... justice-of-the-peace and editor of the local newspaper) in an episode of The Danny Thomas Show. This episode, in which Thomas's character is stopped for speeding in the little town of Mayberry, served as a backdoor pilot for Griffith's own show. Both shows were produced by Sheldon Leonard. Griffith starred in his own series called, The Andy Griffith Show, beginning in 1960, for CBS, alongside other successful 1960s family sitcoms that dealt with widowhood, such as: My Three Sons, Family Affair, Beulah, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Lucy Show, Julia, The Courtship of Eddie's Father and The Brady Bunch. Co-starring on the show was a familiar character actor, comedian and longtime friend of Griffith's from Morgantown, Don Knotts, who played the role of Taylor's cousin and partner, Deputy Barney Fife, from 1960 to 1965, and had a wonderful chemistry, for the show’s first five seasons. And also starring on The Andy Griffith Show was an inexperienced actor, Ron Howard, who played the role of Taylor's only son, Opie Taylor, and for most of the 1960s, there was a strong connection between Griffith & Howard, as the two would share their own values on the show, and created a professional father-and-son relationship.
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The Andy Griffith Show is definitely a TV classic. It ran from 1960 to 1968, producing 249 episodes. The main character, Andy (Andy Griffith), was a widowed father of the polite little boy named Opie (Ron Howard) and is a sheriff, who works with nervous and very suspecting Barney Fife (Don Knotts). They all live in the nice southern town of Mayberry.
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The show took place in Mayberry where Griffith's character Andy Taylor, a widower, was the sheriff and town sage. It was an immediate hit. Though Griffith never received a writing credit for the show, he worked on the development of every script. Though co-star Knotts was frequently lauded, Griffith was never nominated for an Emmy during the show's run. In 1967, Griffith was under contract with CBS to do one more season of the show, but Griffith decided to quit the show to pursue a movie career and other projects, the following year. On one episode of The Andy Griffith Show Taylor and Fife are looking at their old high school yearbook.
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Knotts’s portrayal of Deputy Barney Fife on the American television sitcom The Andy Griffith Show earned him five Emmy Awards. After leaving the series in 1965, Knotts starred in a series of film comedies: The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964), The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966), The Reluctant Astronaut (1967), The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968) and The Love God? (1969).
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Join one of television's best-loved dads -- Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) -- in bucolic Mayberry, N.C., as he dispenses gentle justice and raises his son (Ron Howard) amid a gaggle of colorful town characters. Along for the fun are Andy's Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier) and Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts, who won many Emmys for his singular personification of an epic bungler). Fifth season guest stars include Gavin McLeod, Jerry Van Dyke and Don Rickles.
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