For sitcoms filming in the early 1960s, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated proved to be an unforgettable day on set. Carl Reiner gathered the cast of The Dick Van Dyke Show around a television to hear the news unfold before sending everyone, “somber and heavy,” home for the day. The mood on The Andy Griffith Show was also disconsolate, but the show’s eponymous star expressed his grief in a very different way, according to Remind Magazine.
Griffith was a big Kennedy supporter, and the news hit him hard. “Andy became unhinged,” according to a family member of someone who was working on the sitcom that day. “He just completely lost it.”
The comic actor allegedly knocked around props and took out his anguish on the courthouse filing cabinet. “The crew knew that this was a moment that had to play out,” says Remind. “They let Andy be as he did his best to work through the swirl of emotions that had erupted from within.”
The one cast member who eventually stepped in? Griffith’s longtime friend Don Knotts, who had no words of wisdom, but offered a comforting arm around his shoulders. Like on The Dick Van Dyke Show, cast and crew were sent home. Knotts stayed with Griffith until he’d calmed down, then left as well.
Remind Magazine presented the angry outburst as out of character for Griffith. The tantrum is out of step with the laid-back, gentile persona of his character, Sheriff Andy Taylor, but according to Griffith himself, the actor had a temper that occasionally erupted on set. “I wish I could be like Andy Taylor,” Griffith told the Saturday Evening Post in 1964, per the book Andy & Don. “He’s nicer than I am — more outgoing and easygoing. I get awful mad awful easy.”
Saturday Evening Post painted an even less flattering portrait. “Griffith does harbor one of the most ferocious tempers extant, his low boiling point — along with his otherwise gracious manners — being parcel to the tradition of the hot-blooded Southerner.”
A 1961 article in TV Guide presented a similar picture: “If he is frustrated or angry, he prowls the set, rampaging in all directions and mussing his curly hair until it looks as if he spent all night in a hay loft.”
To be clear, Griffith’s angry outbursts on the set of The Andy Griffith Show weren’t common. The set was generally run “like a big ole family picnic,” with Griffith playing his guitar and telling jokes after lunch to keep everyone loose and relaxed. For the most part, he was an affable presence behind the scenes.
But Griffith often mentioned his temper in early interviews, a part of his personality that cast and crew were reminded of when he allegedly punched a wall on set. The resulting bandages and cast on his hand can be seen in the episode, “Aunt Bee the Warden.” (The injury was explained away as the result of Andy nabbing some crooks.)
“I do have a purty violent temper. Ah sure do,” he told TV Radio Mirror per Andy & Don. “Both at work and at home.”
