Griffith back in fashion

Press, 23 February 1987, Page 18

Griffith back in fashion

The friendly, familiar features of Andy Griffith have returned to television after an absence of many years. His role as a brilliant lawyer, Ben Matlock, in the series “Matlock” which screens on Monday evenings on One at 8 p.m., has assured that Griffith is not consigned prematurely to TV history. But whatever happened to Griffith in the missing years between the end of the “Andy Griffith Show” in 1968, and the beginning of “Matlock” in 1986? Griffith admits that when he voluntarily ended the hit comedy, he thought he was “hot stuff” and ready to move on to feature-film stardom.

That did not happen and nor did attempts to re-establish himself as a TV star. Soon he was grateful to get even a small part in a show. “I fell out of fashion,” he says. “The phone didn’t ring much.” Several nearly tragic factors also conspired to spoil any career chances for Griffith. He was on the roof of his North Hollywood house bne day, trying to fix a rain leak “when I

notice the tools started to slide off. Then I started to slide off. I made one lunge for a big tree limb, missed and hit the ground in a sitting position about 20 feet later. I remember an extraordinary shot of pain going through my whole body, then I passed out.”

Orthopaedic specialists worked on repairing his lumbar vertebrae, pronounced him lucky to get off with that “and now it doesn’t bother me much as long as I don’t try to lift Linda Purl (co-star) or

anybody else.” He was also plagued by the potentially fatal Guillain-Barre syndrome, which paralysed Griffith’s, legs up to the knees three years ago. ‘lt’s a rare disease and hits different people in different ways. As I understand it, it involves an elevated protein level in your spinal fluid. It’s a real wipe-out, a very debilitating thing. I got terribly depressed at times.” But within a year, he was out of his wheelchair: “I’m still recovering. The

pain varies daily. I can walk without braces, but I wear them to ease the pain. Otherwise, all I do is take aspirin.” Griffith, much like his down-home depiction in the “Andy Griffith Show,” lives in a small town and raises chickens. The combination of operating in high-powered urban environments and retaining down-home qualities, Griffith says, “is something I kinda share with this character” (Matlock). Now aged 60, Griffith was raised in a strict

religious faith called Moravian, and was tempted at one point to become a minister, though he eventually settled with a degree in music and the teaching profession. “I still am a Christian,” he says. “I’ve never succumbed to cynicism in that area.”

Teaching lasted only so long, however, and he soon became renowned for his homespun explanations of Shakespeare, and “What It Was, Was Football” turned into hit recordings. Although Griffith is glad of his current success in “Matlock,” his chequered career has cultivated a realistic attitude.

"I’m tickled silly to be playing a colourful guy like Ben Matlock and having producers and a network think I’m back in fashion. But even if the show’s successful, it doesn’t mean I’m gonna live happily ever after. “What you do is, you approach everything realistically and give it the best caring effort you know how, and then maybe things will turn out.”