NEED TO KNOW
- Margaret Kerry opened up about her time on The Andy Griffith Show
- The 96-year-old actress explained how stars Andy Griffith and Don Knotts made the show special behind the scenes
- The beloved series ran from 1960 to 1968
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Margaret Kerry, who’s best known for playing Tinker Bell in the 1953 animated Peter Pan, spoke about the series, which turned 65 this year, in a Nov. 20 interview with Woman’s World. Kerry, now 96, appeared in two episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. The actress, who began performing professionally as a child, said that the set of the beloved comedy was different from any other she’d been on because of the tone Griffith set.
She remembered the moment they left. “He walked over, tugs up the waist of his trousers, becomes very businesslike,” she remembered. “He said, ‘Welcome aboard.’ Just like that. No fuss. Just warmth.” Griffith, who died in 2012 at 86, played Sheriff Andy Taylor, a steady force in the fictional town of Mayberry. He was also the father of Ron Howard’s Opie.
On typical sets, guest actors were treated like outsiders, and the main actors basically ignored them. “You could go to different kinds of shows where the key players don’t mix,” she said. “Perfectly fine, but separate. But not with The Andy Griffith Show. You were part of it.”Don Knotts, who played Andy’s deputy Barney Fife, also helped the guest star settle in. While waiting for the scene set up, he would stay in the shadows, going over his script. When the cameras were ready, she remembered, “He’d say something just as he walked into the light and everyone would laugh. Andy laughed out loud. And Don would look around like, ‘What?’ And then he’d say, ‘Are we going to get to work here?’ The fun was allowed.” Knotts died in 2006 at the age of 81.Kerry also reflected on how The Andy Griffith Show still resonates with fans decades later. “How does it still connect? I think once they glom onto it… they see something different. Something nice. They recognize someone they knew,” she said. “Or they say, ‘Oh, look how that turned.’ It touches their hearts. And their minds. And they think, ‘I want to watch this again.’ ”Kerry has often attended Mayberry Days in Mount Airy, N.C., which is Griffith’s real hometown and the inspiration for Mayberry. “When you asked what it feels like to still be here, celebrating the show after all these years, it feels… right,” she said. “People don’t have to dress up. They can be themselves. They’re with their friends. They’re home.”
Back in September, Howard, now 71, told PEOPLE of the series, which began when he was 6, “It does represent my childhood. . . . To think about that being 65 years now, it’s pretty mind-blowing.”
He added, “I don’t remember everything about it, but I remember a lot and I’m really grateful that, you know, those memories are fondness.”
The series ran from 1960 to 1968 but continued to find new fans in syndication for decades.
Howard, who also starred in Happy Days, eventually moved into the realm of directing and has helmed movies like Splash, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Beautiful Mind. He told PEOPLE in 1986 that the seeds of his directing dream began when he was on The Andy Griffith Show. He told Griffith and the producers that one day, he’d be a “writer-producer-director,” so they bought him his first camera.
Read the original article on People
