“They were trying to really keep it on the down low and they didn’t think anybody knew— but everybody knew.”
Poor Jim Fritzell was one of the writers on The Andy Griffith Show and was dating Aneta Corsaut when she auditioned for the role of Helen Crump. According to Daniel de Visé’s Andy and Don, when Corsaut secured the role, she began splitting her free time between Fritzell and one of the most famous sitcom stars of all time.
Andy Griffith started spending more and more time in the writers’ room. While he was surely invested in the show’s scripts, his presence may have also been motivated by one of the show’s newest guest stars.
In Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show, de Visé quotes Aneta Corsaut’s brother, who would drive down to The Andy Griffith Show set from Monterey Bay.
According to Jesse Corsaut, Andy “was coming over every other day and hanging around with her in the late afternoon.”
“He’d come in, have a drink, and just sit around and chitchat.” Aneta Corsaut’s brother described Griffith as acting “exactly the way he appeared on the screen, except that he wasn’t silly.”
Aneta didn’t break things off with her writer boyfriend Jim Fritzell, though. According to Jesse Corsaut, “She kept them both going.”
Things weren’t quite as lowkey as Andy Griffith and Aneta Corsaut would’ve preferred it, though. Bridget Sweeney, daughter of director Bob Sweeney, admitted that the liaison was a well-known secret.
“They were trying to really keep it on the down low and they didn’t think anybody knew— but everybody knew.”
