How Andy Griffith’s Dark Film Role ‘Chewed Him Up and Spit Him Out,’ Before He Found TV Stardom

Andy Griffith‘s failed feature film debut was “probably his single greatest role as far as a one-off thing” — but it came at a cost, his biographer has revealed.

Daniel de Vise, who wrote Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show, recalled in an interview with Woman’s World published on Tuesday, April 21, that landing the lead role in A Face in the Crowd was a “major, major coup” for Griffith.

While de Vise said it was a “big deal” for Griffith to work for legendary director Elia Kazan — who had helmed A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront and Baby Doll — the movie was a flop.

According to the biographer, Griffith used a part-method acting approach to play drifter-turned-TV star Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, and he “kind of became” the character during filming.

“There’s nothing that even approaches the work he did on A Face in the Crowd,” de Vise added.

“I know from what I read about him and what people told me, that it really chewed him up and spat him out during that role because he sort of method-acted it,” he continued. “I can’t overstate that he became more like the Lonesome Rhodes character while he was playing him, and probably had to chill out and decompress after that role, and then became more normal again afterwards.”

While Griffith was denied a movie career, he turned his attention to TV — just like Rhodes — and had a subsequent small-screen hit courtesy of The Andy Griffith Show.

From 1960 to 1968, Griffith portrayed good-hearted Sheriff Andy Taylor, alongside the likes of Ron Howard (Opie), Don Knotts (Barney Fife), and Frances Bavier (Bee Taylor).

In real life, Griffith, who died at 86 in 2012, “probably got elements of that Lonesome Rhodes character — and there are wonderful elements of him that are elements of the Andy Taylor sheriff character,” said de Vise.

“I don’t think either Lonesome Rhodes or Andy Taylor is all Andy,” he added. “I think there’s bits of both those characters in the real guy.”

Griffith went on to have another TV hit, playing the titular character in legal drama Matlock from 1986 to 1995.