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Andy Griffith is a famous American actor, producer, and writer, best known for his show ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ which aired from 1960 to 1968, and for his role on the series ‘Matlock’, which aired in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Andrew Samuel Griffith was born on June 1st, in Mount Airy, North Carolina. He earned a bachelors degree in music in 1949 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During his college years he was the president of the glee club and was involved in a lot of school musical productions.
His professional career would begin with stand up comedy. In 1953 he recorded his ‘What it was, was football’ routine which met with a lot of success. He went on to record his ‘Number One Street’ story that same year, which also caught a lot of attention in the world of comedy. He made several appearances doing his comedy routines on the Ed Sullivan show and began to garner national recognition.
He made his stage debut on Brodway in the 1954 production ‘No Time for Sergeants’. The play was eventually made into a film five years later, with Griffith taking the lead.
Throughout Griffith’s comedy routines, stage roles and movie appearances, he had a trend for ‘country boy’ parts that mirrored his own country background. Many have suggested that Griffith’s colorful characters may have been the inspiration for the cartoon character ‘Huckleberry Hound’, and for the character made famous on the series ‘Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.’.
When the Andy Griffith Show began in 1960 it was an enormous success, going on for eight follow up seasons. After the show ended in 1968, Andy had a few more series, including ‘The Headmaster’ and ‘The New Andy Griffith Show’, but none of them were nearly as successful as his original show. Griffith was nonetheless a popular icon through this period, making appearances on television shows throughout the 1970s, and winning an Emmy nomination for his role in the 1981 TV movie ‘Murder in Texas’.
The series ‘Matlock’ began in 1985, and it was successful enough to run for six seasons. Though many enjoyed Andy’s performances, the show itself was criticized for being unoriginal and poorly written.
Though his career has slowed down considerably in his older age, Andy Griffith is already a legend in the entertainment industry. He has been involved in numerous charitable efforts, and he won a Presidential Medal of Freedom in November of 2005.