Acknowledgments

I FIRST MET Don Knotts at Walt Disney World. The year was probably 1992, and Don was in Florida for a promotional tour. (Forgive me: I was there as a brother-in-law, not a reporter, and I took no notes.) Don was in a relationship with Francey, beloved sister of my wife, Sophie. We were there mainly so the sisters could reconnect, and I don’t suppose it had occurred to either Sophie or me what it meant to visit Disney World with Don Knotts.

Don, you see, was like Elvis. People mobbed him whenever he and Francey set forth from their penthouse suite at the Disney hotel. Grandparents from Phoenix, young couples from Atlanta, teenagers from Fort Lauderdale—everyone recognized him, everyone approached him, everyone wanted a piece of him. Thousands of smiles greeted us at every turn, along with seemingly endless requests for an autograph, or a conversation, or a hug. Tiny children would stop and point and cry, “Mr. Limpet!” The dimensions of his celebrity were staggering. How could this man get from one end of a room to the other?

Later that year, we moved to California, and Don became a fixture at holiday gatherings, sitting quietly in the corner of my mother-in-law’s living room, smiling benignly as the family pageant played out around him. Here, oddly, Don was invisible, and Sophie would periodically prod me to walk over and talk to him. I would approach Don sheepishly and invoke my interview skills. “I’d love to hear the story of how you created the Nervous Man,” I would say, although I had heard it before; or, “Tell me again how you broke into radio.” Then Don would straighten up, clear his throat, and raise his raspy but instantly recognizable voice.

He still sounded a bit like Barney Fife, but an entirely different brain labored behind those eyes: serious, intelligent, contemplative, calm. Don was Barney at his most relaxed, chuckling with Andy on the front porch and sharing some serene meditation on the day’s events.

I met Andy Griffith just once, at Don’s funeral, in 2006. Andy was old and frail, but his face still shone with that unmistakable glow of celebrity. When his time came to speak, Andy didn’t just speak: he testified. Andy’s body shook as he summoned that big, booming voice. “And ah take comfort,” he quaked, “because ah know that Don . . . is . . . in . . . paradise!” At that moment, Andy’s love for Don all but knocked us out of our chairs.

In fall 2012, shortly after Andy’s death, I set out to write something about their historic friendship. I took my family down to Mount Airy, North Carolina, for the annual Mayberry Days festival, and I brought two yellow legal pads. I filled them up with all the sights and sounds of an event that felt like a big memorial service for Andy. We returned home, and I set about interviewing everyone I could find who had ever been close to Andy or Don. The project quickly grew too big for an article, and I pitched it as a book.

This manuscript came together between fall 2012 and spring 2014, and I continued to collect interviews and ephemera through the end of the year. I amassed a cubic foot of articles about my subjects from newspapers, magazines, and wire services, purchased and read every significant book on Andy or Don or The Andy Griffith Show, scanned dozens of memoirs for pertinent chapters, and tracked down every lengthy interview I could find, including the impressive collection at the Archive of American Television. My main subjects were dead, but I found and interviewed every living soul who would talk to me about their lives: Griffith Show costars Ron Howard, Jim Nabors, Betty Lynn, Elinor Donahue, and Maggie Peterson Mancuso; Don’s manager, Sherwin Bash; Andy’s manager, Dick Linke; Don’s children, Karen and Tom Knotts; Andy’s daughter, Dixie; Don’s former wives, Kay and Loralee, and his widow, Francey; Don’s friends, including Al Checco, John Pyles, Mary Lopez, and the late Richie Ferrara; Andy’s friends and old classmates, including the late Emmett Forrest, Garnett Steele, J. B. Childress, Robert Merritt, Barbara Folger Chatham, Betsy Mills McCraw, Ed Sutphin, Robert Hurley, George Vassos, the late Carl Perry, Quentin Bell, Edward Greene, Craig Fincannon, and William Ivey Long. I also spoke to many of Andy’s and Don’s professional peers, some of whom had become dear friends. That group includes actors Clive Rice, Ivan Cury, Lee Grant, Earle Hyman, Tim Conway, Pat Harrington, Rance Howard, Ken Berry, Ronnie Schell, Elaine Joyce, Frank Welker, Claudette Nevins, Joan Staley, Barbara Rhoades, Lee Meriwether, Michael Brandon, Joyce DeWitt, Richard Kline, Dodie Brown, Stella Berrier, Sharon Spelman, Jamie Smith-Jackson, and Nancy Stafford; producers Dean Hargrove and Joel Steiger; directors Bruce Bilson and Peter Baldwin; and writer Sam Bobrick. I spoke to surviving relatives of key characters who had died, including Robert and Mike King, Barbara Griffith’s nephews; Bridget Sweeney, daughter of director Bob Sweeney; Kit McNear, son of actor Howard McNear; George Lindsey Jr.; and Jesse Corsaut and Jennifer Scarlott, brother and niece, respectively, of actress Aneta Corsaut. I interviewed Griffith Show scholars Neal Brower and Richard Kelly. I am deeply indebted to all of them for their help.

Many others provided inspiration and counsel: Karyn Marcus, Sydney Tanigawa and Molly Lindley, my wonderful editors at Simon & Schuster; Geri Thoma, my terrific agent at Writers House; John Cuthbert, director of the West Virginia and Regional History Center at West Virginia University; the Reverend Dr. Arvid Straube, who led Don’s funeral service; Pat Bullins, queen of Griffith Show trivia; Marjorie Harrington, whose memories helped me set the scene; Charisse Gines, who put me in touch with Jim Nabors, and Jacqueline Beatty, who helped me connect with Tim Conway; Tom Hellebrand, whose statue dream may finally become reality; Jeff Gossett and Ivan Shreve, who helped me track down long-lost episodes; Beth Lancaster at Converse College, Barbara’s alma mater; Troy Valos at the Norfolk Public Library; David Bushman at the Paley Center for Media; David Lombard at the CBS Photo Archive; Amy Snyder at the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History; and numerous helpful souls at the vast Library of Congress and the University of Maryland Libraries.

My reporting efforts did not always succeed. I could not reach Andy’s second wife, Solica; Andy’s widow, Cindi, politely declined interview requests. Some sources died before I could speak to them. Others, including the wonderful Richie Ferrara and the loyal Emmett Forrest, died before we could finish our conversations. I heard contradictory accounts of some stories and incomplete accounts of others, leaving unanswered questions that I have attempted to flag in the manuscript. Who really conceived “The Pickle Story”? Who persuaded Don to take his Nervous Man to Steve Allen? We may never know.