Daniel de Vise - Andy & Don

Here is a journalist's poignant and eye-opening story of the long friendship between Andy Griffith and Don Knotts.  Both are no longer with us.  Both cut a large path across the entertainment world from the 50's until recently.  It's quite a story.

Everyone of my generation remembers The Andy Griffith Show fondly.  The show aired for 8 years from 1960 to 1968.  Don Knotts worked the first 5 years as the legendary character Barney Fife.  He won 5 Emmys.  Andy Griffith didn't win a single one.  Each did other work over the decades, but this is what we mainly remember.

Andy and Don were fellow Southerners, Andy a native of North Carolina and Don from Morgantown, West Virginia.  They grew up during the great depression.  One graduated from UNC and the other from WVU.  Both carried their upbringing with them the rest of their lives.  The author makes it clear that Andy Griffith carried grudges all his life.  Too bad.

Don grew up in a boarding house close to the WVU campus.   His father was abusive.  Scary stuff.

Andy had a more tranquil upbringing but he had trouble dealing with early slights.  He seemed to have a love/hate relationship with North Carolina.

It is The Andy Griffith Show that will always stand supreme in the public accomplishments of both men.  Gomer Pyle was on the show for only one year.  I did not realize this.  Goober was never really accepted.  Aunt Bee seemed to think she was better than the rest of the cast.  Warren never really made it.  Neither did Ellie.

Don and his friend Stan set out for New York. They arrived on 32nd- Street near the Hotel Pennsylvania, but took a room at the Sloan House YMCA on 34th-Street.near the Empire State Building, then the largest residential Y in the country.  P. 13

"At the close of the 1960's, Andy Griffith's telephone wasn't ringing.  He did some TV guest spots and spent three months with his family at his Manteo estate, bored and brooding.  'I'm not a fisherman, I'm not a carpenter, I'm not a carpenter, I'm not a hunter.  There was nothing to do,' he told a Chicago Tribune columnist   'I am emotionally not a person who can be unemployed.'  P. 194