Mayberry RIP - Boston Herald

Television icon Andy Griffith will be remembered for a theatrical, film and television career that spanned more than 50 years. Griffith, 86, died yesterday at his home in North Carolina.

He was most beloved for playing one of TV's most memorable fathers on "The Andy Griffith Show," which ran from 1960 to 1968. As widower Andy Taylor, he helped young son Opie (future director Ron Howard) navigate life's little and great challenges with humor, patience and abiding integrity in the small town of Mayberry.

Howard told MSNBC yesterday that Griffith was "a natural leader, extremely intelligent ... but, you know, a really thoughtful guy who loved to laugh and created a very humanistic kind of environment."

Post-Mayberry, Griffith guested on such series as "Here's Lucy," "Hawaii Five-O," The Bionic Woman" and the miniseries "Centennial." In a rare change of pace, he played a hippie-hating psycho on a hog in the 1974 TV film "Pray for the Wildcats."

While attempts to re-create his early TV success faltered in such short-lived series as "Headmaster," "The New Andy Griffith Show" and "Salvage 1," Griffith made a bona fide comeback in the courtroom mystery drama "Matlock," which ran from 1986 to 1995.

As crusty Ben Matlock, he used his Southern drawl and homespun manner to wring out murder confessions, most often right on the witness stand.

Griffith started his run in rustic roles with his 1955 TV appearance in "No Time for Sergeants," about a hayseed in the Air Force, and starred in the 1958 film version.

He showed his dramatic flair in Elia Kazan's 1957 movie "A Face in the Crowd" as a charismatic bumpkin who uses his charms to manipulate the public and win political power. The film still speaks to today's audiences.

His last credited film role was in the 2009 romantic comedy "Play the Game" as a widowed grandfather who learns to date again with his grandson's help.

In 2005, President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the country.

Griffith reprised his role as Sheriff Taylor in the TV reunion film "Return to Mayberry" in 1986 and played him for the last time in a 2008 Internet video made by Howard urging viewers to vote for Barack Obama.

The opening to "The Andy Griffith Show," with Andy and Opie carrying fishing rods and walking hand-in-hand to the local fishing hole, is one of the sweetest, most fondly remembered in TV history and manages to encapsulate the show's goodwill and warmth in just a few seconds of screen time.