Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 10, 1993 TAG: 9302090245
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TIM FUNK KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: WILMINGTON, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
IT'S ANDY, OPIE, BARNEY - AND LOVE
It's barely past 10 a.m. at Carolco Studios in Wilmington, and Andy Griffith has just finished taping the next-to-last episode of "Matlock" - his lawyer series on ABC.The day's acting done, the snowy-haired TV star heads for a spare screening room and signals he's ready to talk.
Tonight CBS will air "The Andy Griffith Show Reunion."
And Capitol Records has just released "Andy Griffith: An American Original." The compact disc is a compilation of his comedy monologues from the '50s and '60s, including the classic ("What It Was Was Football") that launched his national career.
Griffith spoke recently with The Charlotte Observer. Here's an edited version of that interview.
Q: What will we see on "The Andy Griffith Show Reunion"? And will the whole gang be there?
A: There's six of us. It's all guys. It's myself and Don Knotts [Barney] and Jim Nabors [Gomer] and George Lindsey [Goober] and Ronny Howard [Opie] and Jack Dodson [Howard Sprague].
It's about half clips and half me talking to the camera about what we did and how we did it. And me talking to the other guys. It's only an hour show, and it's a very fast show.
Q: Do you see those other guys much?
A: Well, I was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame some time this year. And George Lindsey and Don Knotts came down, and were there and introduced me.. . . And then I got another award the year before from NATPE (National Association of Television Program Executives). And Ronny Howard introduced me for that. But we don't see one another real often. Jack did our show ["Matlock"] one time. Don did our show a number of times.
Q: Would you call yourself friends?
A: Oh yes, we're friends. Oh my God, yes, we're friends. We will always remain friends. You know, you do a show and you like somebody and you say, "let's get together," and you mean it. And you never do. But, you know, all of us guys spent all day long together for years. And years and years. And we know a great deal about one another. We all know an enormous amount about one another. And so we feel a closeness because of that. And we have influenced one another's lives because of those times that we spent together.
Q: A lot of people who watch "The Andy Griffith Show" reruns almost feel like they know all of you, too, almost as friends. If somebody comes up to you in a restaurant and says, "Remember what you said to Barney in Show No. 31," is that flattering or is it disconcerting?
A: Sometimes I can't remember what I said. There are people who know what we've said better than we know what we've said. There are people who are students of this show. And, you know, I don't think about it all that much. 'Cause I'm trying to think about something else. But I will tell you this: I have a record that's coming out, it's a remake. You know, I started out as a comic. And most of the stuff, a lot of the stuff that I did over the years I recorded for Capitol back in the '50s. And some in the '60s. And they came out at different times, and they decided this year to re-release a bunch of the stuff that I did on one CD or tape.
Q: What do you think keeps this show going after 25 years?
A: I don't know. We did something right. All we tried to do was do the best show each time and be true to the characters. And we were true to the characters. And we painted it as a real little town. Bob Sweeney said it appears to be a normal small town, but it has a border of insanity around it. Bob Sweeney's passed away now but he was our first director. And Andy Taylor was such a good man. But you know, until about the last year, we could not write shows that were about Andy. Because Andy was too good. You have to have a weakness somewhere in order to write a show for you. There has to be a flaw. And Andy was a good man. So we never wrote, if you look back on all those shows, they were never about Andy. While I was in every show, in almost every scene, it wasn't about me. It was always about one of the other characters.
Q: Each of whom have their own following. When you were filming, did you watch to make sure everybody was on their mark [getting actors to stand in the right place for the camera] or was it just funny all the time?
A: I used to put Frances (Aunt Bee) on her marks. Frances never knew where her mark was. Do you ever notice I had my hand on Frances and my hand on Ronny a lot? A lot of that's not affection. A lot of it I'm putting them on the mark.
Q: At one of these reunions in Charlotte, I asked a secretary who'd flown all the way from Dallas why she'd come. And she said, "We're all misplaced Mayberrians. That show gave us the best characters and the best morals." Did you set out to give viewers a weekly lesson, or did you just want to entertain them?
A: We just wanted to entertain. But we were careful. We were very careful with Opie. When we did Opie stories, we did father and son stories. Now, Opie wasn't really raised by a single parent because he had Aunt Bee there . . . I tell you, the show had good morals only because the show was based on love. If you have to say, "What was the show about?" It was about love.