Read Online Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show by Daniel de Vise - Free Book Online Page A

the late-night vaudeville act would eclipse his interest in The Lost Colony .
    It occurred to Andy one night to build a skit around the most famous lines from Hamlet . But he wasn’t sure quite how to do it; “just doing it with a Southern accent didn’t seem funny,” he recalled. Besides, Andy had never read Hamlet . He called Bob Armstrong, his university buddy and Lost Colony costar. Bob came over and walked Andy through the play. Andy wrote down the names of the characters and committed the story to memory. He crafted a monologue, performed it the next Saturday, and drew huge laughs. “The idea was that I was selling these books, five great tragedies by this fella named William Shakespeare who lived over in the old country,” Andy recalled.
    Andy didn’t write down his skits, but a version of the Hamlet sketch survives on record:
    And it’s a pretty good show. And the moral of it is, though, I reckon, if you was to ever kill a fellah and then marry his wife, I’d be extra careful not to tell my stepson.
    Andy had learned to poke fun at his own intellectual limitations, to laugh at his rough edges and his hick heritage—in short, to mock the very qualities that fed his deepest insecurities. He soon learned that those foibles were not his alone. The Shriner audience howled.
    â€œHe talked just like we did,” recalled Robert Edwards King, nephew of Barbara Griffith. “That’s the way we are. We laugh about that stuff.”
    In spring 1952, Andy gave his notice at Goldsboro High School, over the objections of the principal, who told him, “You’re never gonna make any money running around the country.” The Griffiths moved back to Chapel Hill, rented a house for eighty-five dollars a month, and began to channel their ambitions into a traveling variety show.
    Andy’s first impulse was to head straight for Miami and the regional nightclub scene there. Barbara proposed a more practical alternative: They would play the local Rotary Club circuit, driving around the state and performing at any civic function that would have them. If they were good, someone would eventually invite them to New York.
    Andy cashed out his $300 in accumulated teacher retirement pay, borrowed $1,000 more, bought a used station wagon, and printed up flyers. He and Barbara lived, for a time, not much better than starving artists. Their parents—Barbara’s, in particular—fretted for their future. Andy was giving up a comfortable teaching career. “I really think our families thought we were slightly crazy,” Barbara recalled. But Andy was determined, and no one in the family tried to stop him.
    â€œUnique entertainment for your group with Andy and Barbara Griffith,” the couple promised in a trifold brochure. “No occasion too small, no job too big. Andy and Barbara Griffith offer one of the most unusual and entertaining programs to be found today. Their act is as versatile as it is warm and appealing to every type of audience.”
    Andy recalled, “She’d sing. I’d do the comedy. We’d hire a piano player for fifteen dollars. We had our own lighting system. I never used a microphone; never had one.”
    Andy and Barbara collected listings of every convention or chicken dinner planned in North Carolina for the next six months. “We figured that at least one out of every hundred would have need of entertainment,” he recalled. They sent out their brochures. Offers began to trickle in.
    Mike King, Barbara’s nephew, went with his family to see his aunt and uncle in an early gig, at Fred Koury’s Plantation Supper Club in Greensboro. “They were like a duo,” he recalled. “They would play off of each other. One would be the straight guy. . . . They were basically a team, back then.”
    Around this time, J. B. Childress received a letter from his boyhood friend. Andy had read in the paper that J.B.