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Andy Griffith (an actor whose folksy Southern manner charmed audiences for more than 50 years on Broadway, in movies, on records, and especially on television, most notably as the small-town sheriff on the long-running situation comedy that bore his name) died Tuesday at his home on Roanoke Island in North Carolina. He was 86.
The Dare County sheriff, Doug Doughtie, said Mr. Griffith died Tuesday morning.
Mr. Griffith was already a star, with rave reviews on Broadway in “No Time for Sergeants” and in Elia Kazan’s film “A Face in the Crowd,” when “The Andy Griffith Show” made its debut in fall 1960.
He delighted a later generation of television viewers in the 1980′s and 90′s in the title role of the courtroom drama “Matlock.”
But his fame was never as great as it was in the 1960′s, when he starred for eight years as Andy Taylor, the sagacious sheriff of the make-believe Southern town of Mayberry, running herd on a collection of eccentrics like his ineffectual deputy, Barney Fife, and the simple-minded gas station attendant Gomer Pyle while, as a widower, patiently raising a young son, Opie.

Andy Griffith.

Close your eyes and picture it – small-town America.
It has a little post office, of course. A general store, too, and a fishing hole. There’s a barber who knows everyone — and knows about everyone. There’s a friendly auto mechanic. The picture wouldn’t be complete without several women who could be anyone’s favorite older sister or aunt.
Kids scurry around at reasonable paces, making low-grade mischief while dirtying their short-sleeve plaid shirts or striped T-shirts. Quirky characters wander about in a landscape of picket fences and healthy storefronts. And the police officer in charge? He’s tough but fair, community minded, the Solomon of his entire, geographically limited jurisdiction. He’s Atticus Finch without any of the racial tension.
This is, today, the comforting script America often reaches for when it summons the vanished rural nation that so many say they long for. Not coincidentally, it is also the state of mind given to us by Andy Griffith and his long-running TV show.
More than anyone except perhaps Walt Disney, Griffith was the entertainment-world emblem of the 20th-century values Americans often like to say they prize most. He spread the notion, begun by no less a figure than Thomas Jefferson, that somehow the very best of us was contained in the rural life (in this case, the fictional tales of Mayberry that “The Andy Griffith Show” delivered for almost a decade).
“The show is kind of like a step back in time, especially for my generation” – Molly Jones (24), of Raleigh, N.C., said after learning of Griffith’s death Tuesday. “It’s kind of like, ’Oh, this is how it used to be,’ and ’Why isn’t it this way still?’ Things were so much simpler back then.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUERL6ITsAE

A former North Carolina high school music teacher, Griffith launched his career as an entertainer in the early 1950′s by writing and performing comic monologues for civic clubs that he delivered in an exaggerated Southern drawl that he once described as “sounding like three yards out on a Carolina swamp.”
Before the end of the decade, he was a star known for his Tony-nominated Broadway performance as a hayseed recruit in “No Time for Sergeants” and his film debut as an Arkansas vagabond who becomes a power-hungry TV sensation in director Elia Kazan’s dark drama “A Face in the Crowd.”
His portrayal of Sheriff Andy Taylor on “The Andy Griffith Show,” which aired on CBS from 1960 to 1968, gave him a place in television history as one of the medium’s most memorable characters, alongside such iconic TV fathers as Robert Young of “Father Knows Best” and Lorne Greene of “Bonanza.”
Griffith scored a second triumph on series television starring in “Matlock,” the legal drama that ran from 1986 to 1995 on NBC and ABC. He played Benjamin L. Matlock, a Harvard-educated lawyer with a down-home sensibility.
As an actor, he learned early on to play to his strengths.
“Any time I try to play anything that doesn’t come natural, I’m just plain bad” – he once told TV Guide.
As Sheriff Taylor, his most famous role, he was just plain good.
He made his debut as the avuncular sheriff in early 1960 during a guest spot on CBS’ “The Danny Thomas Show,” in which Sheriff Taylor picked up nightclub entertainer Danny for speeding through Mayberry on his way to Miami.
“The Andy Griffith Show” earned a spot on the network’s fall lineup and high ratings for eight seasons.
Comic actor Don Knotts, who had a supporting role alongside Griffith in the Broadway and film versions of “No Time for Sergeants,” had seen the “Danny Thomas Show” episode and called to suggest that Andy Taylor should have a deputy.
The addition of Knotts as the incompetent but full-of-bravado Barney Fife quickly shifted the balance of the show.
“I was supposed to have been the comic, the funny one” – Griffith told The Times in 1993. The series, he said, “might not have lasted even half a season that way, but when Don came on I realized by the second episode Don should be funny and I should play straight to him.”