Lanky and handsome, his head thick with wavy black hair, he found summer work at the outdoor drama "The Lost Colony" in Manteo. He taught school for three years in Goldsboro. He went on to UNC Chapel Hill and majored in music, taking five years to get his degree in 1949. He took a liking to music and learned to play the trombone at 16.ĭespite a so-so academic record, he was industrious, earning enough money sweeping the high school after classes to buy a bass horn and guitar. Griffith was born in Mount Airy on June 1, 1926, son of Carl and Geneva Griffith. "But don't the trees seem nice and full?" "Yes son, it sure does," replied sheriff Taylor. "Cage sure seems awful empty, don't it Pa?" observed Opie. Opie then raised the birds himself and, at episode's end, let them fly off, leading to an epilogue emblematic of the show's fundamental optimism. In an unusually serious episode that stretched the dramatic range of television comedy in 1963, Opie killed a mother bird with a slingshot and was forced by his father to listen the cries of her hungry chicks. In the landmark series about family values that entertained millions in the 1960s and thrives five decades later in syndication, their father-son relationship was one of the few that wasn't played just for laughs. Hollywood director Ron Howard, whose formative years were spent on the set of "The Andy Griffith Show" as Opie, played the precocious son of the small-town sheriff Andy Taylor. We will cherish is his art, his music, his talent, and of course, our beloved Andy Griffith Show." "Andy Griffith means the world to the arts everywhere - not just here in Mount Airy," said Tanya Jones, excecutive director of the Surry Arts Council, which oversees the Andy Griffith Museum there. He was Andrew Samuel Griffith, but we knew him best as "Andy." He died Tuesday at age 86 in Manteo. Observer sources have confirmed Griffith's death. An earlier report confirmed that a medical crew had rushed to the Griffith home this morning. He was a vocalist, an actor, a stand-up comic, a producer and once even a schoolteacher, but we knew him best for creating the mythic Mayberry, a Camelot in bib overalls where home-spun wisdom reigned.įormer UNC President Bill Friday broke the news to WITN News in North Carolina. Flowers have been placed at the statue outside the Andy Griffith Playhouse in Mount Airy, NC.
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