De Visé Daniel - Andy and Don : the making of a friendship and a classic American TV show

A CELEBRATION OF THE REAL-LIFE FRIENDSHIP BEHIND THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW ONE OF AMERICAS MOST ICONIC TELEVISION PROGRAMS

Andy Griffith and Don Knotts met on Broadway in the 1950s. When Andy went to Hollywood to film a TV pilot about a small-town sheriff, Don called to ask if Andys sheriff could use a deputy. The comedic synergy between Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife elevated The Andy Griffith Show from a folksy sitcom to a timeless study of human friendship, as potent off the screen as on. Andy and Donfellow Southerners born into poverty and raised among neer-do-wells, bullies, and drunkscaptured the hearts of Americans across the country as they rocked lazily on the front porch, meditating about the simple pleasure of a bottle of pop. Although Andy and Don ended their Mayberry partnership in 1965, they remained best friends for the next four decades, with Andy visiting Don at his deathbed.

Written by Don Knottss brother-in-law and featuring extensive unpublished interviews with those closest to both men, Andy and Don is the definitive work on the legacy of The Andy Griffith Show and two of Americas most enduring stars.

Daniel de Vis is an author and journalist who has worked at The Washington Post , The Miami Herald , and three other newspapers in a twenty-five-year career. His first book, a memoir of amnesia, I Forgot to Remember (with Su Meck), was published in 2014.

Simon & Schuster

On Sale November 3, 2015 978-1-4767-4773-6 $26 U.S./$34 Can.

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Dear Reader,

The Andy Griffith Show is one of the great television classics. And viewers are still finding their way back to Mayberrythrough syndication. In the fifty years since the show debuted, it has never been off the air.

In Andy and Don, Daniel de Vis gives us an exciting new perspective on the show and on an iconic comedy duo. More than just playing at being a sheriff and his trusted deputy, Andy Griffith and Don Knotts had a real-life friendship that spanned their lifetimes. This book captures the talent of these menand the magic between them.

So settle back with a bottle of pop and enjoy a privileged account of a Hollywood friendship just as humorous and entertaining, if not quite as serene, as the classic show which made it famous.

All best,

Karyn Marcus

Senior Editor

Simon & Schuster, Inc.

ALSO BY DAN DE VIS

I Forgot to Remember

(with Su Meck)

Simon & Schuster
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New York, NY

Copyright 2015 by Daniel de Vis

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ISBN 978-1-4767-4773-6
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To Sophie, Madeleine and Donovan.

Introduction

A NDY T AYLOR and Barney Fife could make the world stand still. Stretching out on the front porch of Andys Mayberry home, Andy and Barney would reel off hypnotic meditations on the mundanities of life. Their conversations defied the frenetic pulse of their medium, network television. For millions of viewers, The Andy Griffith Show was a sanctuary in a nervous world, with two friends at its center, reclining on a porch.

Ya know what I think Im gonna do? Barney tells Andy in one moment of Mayberry Zen, as Andy strums a guitar. Im gonna go home, have me a little nap, then go over to Thelma Lous and watch a little TV. Several seconds pass in silence. Yeah, I believe thats what Ill do: go home, have a nap, head over to Thelma Lous for TV. More silence. Yep, thats the plan: ride home, a little nap...

The Andy Griffith Show endures like no other artifact of televisions golden era. In the fifty-five years since its October 1960 debut, Andy Griffith has never left the air. At the dawn of 2015, Griffith episodes air several times a day, watched by a fan club with more than one thousand chapters and celebrated in an annual festival that draws thirty thousand fans to a real-life Mayberry. To fully appreciate this programs staying power, even by comparison to other television classics, try to find a Honeymooners convention.

The Griffith Show tapped the talents of its eras finest television producers, writers, and directorsalong with an unparalleled ensemble of actors, a cast that included not only Don and Andy but also future Hollywood powerbroker Ron Howard and the multitalented Jim Nabors. But the programs undeniable quality does not fully explain its longevity.

There is something iconic, something quintessentially American, about The Andy Griffith Show. The program appeared at a moment of dramatic flux in American society. People were leaving farms for factories and towns for cities. The civil rights movement was waxing, and antiwar protests were coming. It was a time of assassinations, electrified music, and slackening standards on sex and drugs. Yet, the Griffith Show refused to embrace those changes, or even to acknowledge them. Instead, the program trained its gaze backward, revisiting and reviving the rural Americana of the 1930s, the time of Andys childhood in North Carolina, and Dons in West Virginia. The Griffith Show helped viewers recall a simpler time, helped them reconnect with their own past, at a moment when Americans desperately needed the reminder. As Technicolor chaos swirled around them, millions of viewers embraced the black-and-white tranquility of the Griffith Show and held on tight.

The Griffith Show would showcase televisions most tender friendship: Ange, affable sheriff of the rural hamlet called Mayberry, and Barn, his jumpy deputy. Andy was a gentle parody of a country lawman, fighting crime in a town that had none, protecting a citizenry that was palpably safe. Barney was a parody of Andy, bug-eyed, childlike, and diminutive. Andy protected Barney from the outside world, holding its bitter realities at bay, just as he protected Mayberry itself, its denizens and its homespun traditions.

Sheriff Taylors fatherly bond with Deputy Fife emanated from real life; it was the foundation of their friendship. Their personalities meshed. Andy was dominant; Don was submissive. Andy was big and loud, ribald and wild, quite the opposite of the sage sheriff. Don was gaunt and quiet, restrained and reserved, a sharp contrast to the manic deputy. They shared a past. Both had known stark poverty: Andys first bed was a bureau drawer, Dons a cot in the kitchen. They grew up on the same diet of radioJack Benny, Edgar Bergen, The Lone Ranger and amid cinemas golden age. Both men embraced entertainment as an identity as they approached manhood. Both rode their talents as far as their local arts scene would take them. Both men came to New York and bombed, retreated to the South, then returned to take Manhattan by sheer force of talent and will.