Another theory on names for "Andy Griffith Show"
As reported in a recent story, friends and family of the late Bill Taylor Jr. and his still-living former wife, whose nickname was “Buzz,’’ believe Andy Griffith named Sheriff Andy Taylor and Aunt Bee for the two on the “Andy Griffith Show.”
Griffith was a friend of the couple and stopped by occasionally to visit them at their stage decoration business near the UNCG campus.
Now, comes Lee Kinard, the legendary retired WFMY-TV broadcaster, with yet another theory.
Kinard says the word around the station was that Andy “cropped the named Gomer (Pyle) from Gomer Lesch.”
Lesch was the station’s program director during the 1950s, “during the period,’’ Kinard says, “Andy would have been interviewed while playing the Plantation circuit with “What It was, was football.’’’
Griffith performed the funny monologue about football on a record but in nightclubs such as the old Plantation Club on the High Point Road.
Of course, the answers to all this speculation could easily be answered by Griffith, who maintains his ties to North Carolina through his home in Manteo.
But some say the Andy of young isn’t the Andy of old. Bill Taylor Jr. reportedly had a fallen out with Griffith in the 1980s when Griffith said he didn’t have time to talk to him on the phone. Taylor took it as a snub.
Kinard said Channel 2 tried to get questions answered about Griffith’s show, which ran from 1960-68.
“We just could never,” Kinard says, “break through his shield to get an interview and heaven knows we tried.”