Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 31, 1994 TAG: 9411030049
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ESTES THOMPSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WILMINGTON, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
But no matter how well he plays Ben Matlock, Griffith says the character could never endure like Andy and the other residents of Mayberry. The names Aunt Bea, Opie, Floyd and Barney Fife have become parts of the language.
``I'll certainly never do anything, I don't imagine, that'll last like that has,'' Griffith, now 68, said during an interview in his motor-home dressing room on the set of ``Matlock.'' ``Everything about it seemed to work.''
``The Andy Griffith Show'' ran 249 episodes between 1960 and 1968. ``Matlock,'' entering its ninth season, already has run longer.
The ABC series, set in a fictional town in Georgia, actually is filmed in Wilmington. Griffith also has a home here, in addition to one on Roanoke Island.
``The Andy Griffith Show'' was shot with one camera and no audience and was written to feature one character a week, with Sheriff Taylor as the straight man. Comedy depended on the characters instead of jokes.
``That's why when people see it a second, third, fourth or fifth time and they can say `watch what he does there' and they can laugh every time,'' Griffith said.
In ``Matlock,'' which airs at 9 p.m. Thursdays on WSET-Channel 13, Griffith frequently is the comedic character, but sometimes plays the straight man.
``This character has real feet of clay,'' he said. ``This character is very vain. This character is very cheap, cheap in every way. ... He thinks he looks great in these gray suits. He thinks he has a wonderful figure.
``It's fun for me. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not all that bright. I KNOW what kind of figure I've got and I'm not vain. I'm also not cheap. But I really love to play this part and allow this character to have all these weaknesses.''
Though Griffith is executive producer of ``Matlock,'' he says his only real skills are performing and writing.
``I know how to write, and I can't come up with an original idea,'' he said. ``I don't have that skill. I'm a rewrite person. I can find flaws, especially when it comes to comedy. I enjoy that a lot.''
Griffith's career started the day he quit thinking about entering the Moravian ministry and switched majors to music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
His first comedy hit was the recording of ``What It Was Was Football,'' a comic description of a football game from a hick's perspective. Griffith made up the act as he drove from Chapel Hill to Raleigh to perform between acts at a theater.
Before that, he had done comedy routines for civic clubs, gotten laughs and then become hooked on comedy. He taught choral music in Goldsboro for three years, and later made a living performing monologues based on famous plays and operas.
``I got to where I was working six nights a week,'' he said. ``I never went broke but once.''
Orville Campbell, a Chapel Hill businessman and newspaper publisher, recorded the football act and Capital Records bought it. That launched the career Griffith hadn't exactly planned when he was young. Back then, he longed to be a classical singer instead of a furniture-maker like his father in Mount Airy.
Griffith moved to New York, where he and his wife lived in a $101-a-month apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens, while he performed in nightclubs. He made his Broadway debut in ``No Time for Sergeants.''
``That's how it started,'' Griffith said. ``In its own way, it was pretty fast. It was about a five-year training period, and then it was on Broadway.''
Elsewhere in television ...
OH, O.J.!: The biggest news story in the land gets a little bigger, and a heckuva lot broader, courtesy of Comedy Central tonight. It's all just a little Halloween treat for Comedy Central viewers, but they better be prepared for an evening-long trick that will repeatedly interrupt the network's regular programming with breaking ``news'' concerning ... well, you'll have to wait until it happens. Instant CCN ``coverage'' (as in Comedy Central News) begins about 6:15 p.m. (If you miss it, a recap will be aired Tuesday.) And don't believe your eyes.
by CNB