Andy Griffith
Andy Samuel Griffith (born June 1, 1926) is an American actor, director, producer, Grammy Award-winning Southern-gospel singer, and writer. Griffith was born in Mount Airy, North Carolina, the only child of Geneva (née Nunn) and Carl Lee Griffith.
Griffith’s early career was as a monologist, delivering long stories such as What It Was, Was Football, which is told from the point of view of a rural backwoodsman trying to figure out what was going on in a football game. Griffith later reprised his role for the film version (1958); the film also featured Don Knotts, as a corporal
in charge of manual-dexterity tests, marking the beginning of a life-long association between Griffith and Knotts.
Beginning in 1960, Griffith starred as Sheriff Andy Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show for the CBS television network — alongside other successful 1960s family-oriented situation comedies that dealt with widowhood, such as: My Three Sons, Family Affair, Beulah, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Lucy Show, Julia, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and, a decade later, The Brady Bunch.
After leaving his still-popular show in 1968, Griffith starred in less-successful television series such as The Headmaster (1970), The New Andy Griffith Show (1971), Salvage 1 (1979), and The Yeagers (1980). 
After spending time in rehabilitation for leg paralysis because of Guillain-Barré syndrome in 1986, Griffith returned to television as the title character Ben Matlock, in the legal drama Matlock.
For most of the 1970s, Griffith starred or appeared in many television films including The Strangers In 7A (1972), Winter Kill (1974) and Pray for the Wildcats (1974).
Griffith sang as part of some of his acting roles, most notably in A Face In The Crowd and in many episodes of both The Andy Griffith Show and Matlock. In addition to his recordings of comic monologues in the 1950s, he made an album of upbeat country and gospel tunes during the run of The Andy Griffith Show, which included a version of the show’s theme sung by Griffith under the title “The Fishin’ Hole”
Griffith and Barbara Bray Edwards were married on August 22, 1949, and they adopted a son, Andrew Samuel Griffith Jr. (known as Sam Griffith), a real-estate developer (born in 1957) and a daughter, Dixie Nan. They were divorced in 1972. Sam died in 1996 after years of alcoholism.
In 1973 Griffith and Solica Cassuto were married; they were divorced in 1981. He and Cindi Knight were married on April 2, 1983.
In addition to his online video with Howard in 2008, in politics Griffith has favored Democrats and recorded television commercials endorsing North Carolina Governors Mike Easley and Bev Perdue. He spoke at the inauguration ceremonies of both.
