For those of you that LOVE The Andy Griffith Show, well, you know who Mr Schwamp is. Mr Schwamp was a portly gentleman that could always be seen in the background of episodes of the show.
His first appearance on the show was in the 1964 episode "My Fair, Earnest T. Bass" and then 26 more episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, a few on Gomer Pyle USMC, and Mayberry RFD.
When asked who portrayed Mr Schwamp, all of the actors (including Andy Griffith) do not remember his name, although they do remember the character.
A few hints were given here and there about the life the character of Andy Taylor led before the show started. Let's see if we can't sift through a few (although "history" never really meant much on the show as it was constantly changing).
In the first episode it is mentioned that Aunt Bee raised Andy (and being that Aunt Bee's last name is Taylor, one would think that she must be Andy's father's sister). Andy also spoke of his father a few times, mentioning that he would strike matches on the bottom of his daddy's shoe and how his father taken the title of "Keeper of the Flame" from him and made him the keeper of the flash light instead.
I believe that Andy's wife (Opie's mother) was mentioned once when discussing "that deep down kinda love" that they had for each other. I guess a lot of the fun of the show is in using your own imagination and filling in the blanks as you thought it might have been.
The regular Andy Griffith Show watcher will remember that in two episodes of the show (#55 Aunt Bee, The Warden and #56 The County Nurse) that Andy had his hand bandaged up. The reason Andy Taylor's had was bandaged because of a hard time arresting "the Gordon Boys", now on the other hand Andy Griffith had his hand bandaged up because in a fit of rage, he punched a wall at home (not sure what made him mad though).
Being a police officer, it was easy for the writers to come up with an excuse for this, but one has to wonder, what could have made him mad enough to punch a wall?
I
n doing research for some posts for this page, I ran across a bit of information that I actually didn't know (there's not much I don't know about this show). Did you know that CBS ran a variety show (that only aired one time) in order to show off the many talents of their top 3 stars, Andy Griffith and Don Knotts from The Andy Griffith Show and Jim Nabors from Gomer Pyle USMC?
It was of course titled: The Andy Griffith, Don Knotts, and Jim Nabors Show. Below is a video of the beginning of that Variety Special, enjoy!
The Mayberry squad car was a Ford Galaxy. The cars were supplied free of charge by a local Ford dealership and whenever the newest model would come out it would be shipped to the studio and the old one would be shipped back to the dealership to be repainted and sold ( is it just me or don't you think they could have gotten more money for it, if they would have sold it as the "Mayberry squad car"?).
All together there were about 10 different Ford Galaxies used during the run of the show.
The Andy Griffith Show only did one Christmas show in it's entire run. This is also one of the few episodes where you see the characters wearing coats, hats and gloves (seems it was always warm in Mayberry).It's also the show when we first meet that mean old man with a heart of gold, Ben Weaver.
To be honest, this wasn't one of my favorite episodes, but listening to Ellie and Andy sing "Away in a Manger" together was very easy on the ears, great harmony. Although it's not one of my favorites, it also doesn't quite feel like Christmas until I get to see this episode.
Hope everyone had a Merry and Blessed Christmas, more to come friends.
The cast of the show reunited for a made for tv movie in 1986, entitled, Return To Mayberry. A few facts about this reunion that you might not know are; although the series and both spin-offs aired on CBS, Return To Mayberry aired on NBC. It was a HUGE ratings hit and cemented the reunion as one of the top ten tv movies of all time. To be honest, I wasn't a big fan of the movie itself, but have watched it several times because I enjoyed seeing the cast all together again.
One cast member that wasn't seen in the movie was Francis Bavier, who originally played Aunt Bee in the series. She was sick at the time and home bound. She considered doing the audio during the scene in which Andy visited the grave site of Aunt Bee, but decided against it. Another actress provided the voice of Aunt Bee (it's a shame that she couldn't take part in this historic movie).
(Ken Berry was set to reprise his role as Sam Jones, but at the time the movie was starting to be filmed, "Mama's Family" was filming as well.)
