Actor Andy Griffith, who won the hearts of 1960s TV viewers with his role as gentle Sheriff Andy Taylor in “The Andy Griffith Show,” then returned as a 1980s country lawyer in “Matlock,” died Tuesday at 86. The news was confirmed to North Carolina television station WITN by Bill Friday, former president of the University of North Carolina and a Griffith friend.
Griffith began his entertainment career with comic monologues and moved into movies, debuting in 1957’s “A Face in the Crowd” with Patricia Neal. But it was as the widower sheriff Andy Taylor on “The Andy Griffith Show” that he really made his mark. The show, which also starred a young Ron Howard as Griffith’s son Opie, and comedian Don Knotts as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife, ran from 1960-1968. Its setting, in the fictional small-town of Mayberry, became almost as famous as any one episode.
Continue reading America’s sheriff Andy Griffith dead at 86
Andy Griffith rocked.
I liked the whole part where he played a sheriff that people liked, and he never once resorted to beating up pregnant women, tasering Grandma, pepper spraying college students at a peaceful protest, evicting families from their home after they were cheated out of it by banks, or serving court papers on behalf of a corrupt hospital.
We need an "Andy Taylor" type sheriff here in Huntington, one that isn't just another corrupt arm of the bankster capital system.
Posted by: Ryan | July 05, 2012 at 01:27 PM