Andy Griffith turns 85!
Wishing a very happy 85th birthday to TV legend Andy Griffith!
Andy Griffith, who was born on June 1, 1926, began his long career with the now-classic comedy bit,
The town of Mayberry featured in The Andy Griffith Show stemmed from Griffith's own hometown of Mt. Airy, NC. In Archive his interview he notes:
"At first, producer Sheldon Leonard didn't want it to be in North Carolina. He just wanted it to be somewhere in the south. And I hate these made up names. So we did have Mt. Pilot which there is a place called Pilot Mountain up near Mt. Airy, but I gradually started slipping in real towns in North Carolina like Asheville and Raleigh and Silver City. And so it became during that first year, it became a town in North Carolina."
Here's a special video (edited by Steve Wyant) of selections from Andy Griffith's Archive of American Television 1998 interview: