Classic TV Rewind · Episode 3
Pa and Aunt Bee
Season 2, The Andy Griffith Show. The Taylor family: a widowed father raising his boy, Ron Howard as Opie, Opie the Birdman, Frances Bavier as Aunt Bee, and the famous kerosene cucumbers.
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Shannon Supper time in the Taylor house. Aunt Bee is at the stove. Andy's washing up. And Opie comes in, very quiet, with something on his mind.
Carol And you just know Pa is about to sit him down for a talk.
Shannon Week after week, that's what millions of families watched. A father, gently teaching his boy right from wrong.
Carol Welcome to Classic TV Rewind, where we go back to the shows we grew up with, and find out what made them work.
Shannon This season, it's The Andy Griffith Show. And this time, the heart of the whole thing. The Taylor family.
Carol Episode three. Pa and Aunt Bee.
Carol So, let's start with the family itself.
Shannon Andy Taylor is a widower. We never meet Opie's mother, and the show hardly ever talks about her. It's just Andy and his boy, and then Aunt Bee, who comes to help raise him.
Carol And that was unusual for a sitcom back then.
Shannon It was. Most family sitcoms had a mother and a father in a nice house in the suburbs. Here, it's a single dad, in a small town, doing his best. And Andy plays him with so much patience.
Carol He never yells.
Shannon Almost never. When Opie does something wrong, Andy doesn't lecture. He asks questions. He lets Opie figure it out. And then he lets him make it right.
Carol And Opie was played by Ron Howard.
Shannon Little Ronny Howard, as the credits called him back then. He was about six when the show started, and he grew up right in front of us, for eight seasons.
Carol And he was a natural.
Shannon He really was. And his father, Rance Howard, was an actor too. He was on the set with Ron a lot, helping him with his lines and making sure he stayed a normal kid. And it was a set where even a little boy could speak up. When Ron was about seven, he said a line didn't sound like how a kid would talk, and they let him say it his way.
Carol And look at him now.
Shannon Happy Days as a teenager, and then a director. He won the Academy Award for directing A Beautiful Mind. Not bad for a boy from Mayberry.
Carol So, what's the most famous Opie episode?
Shannon For a lot of people, it's Opie the Birdman. Opie is playing with his new slingshot, and he shoots at a bird without thinking. And he kills a mother bird.
Carol Oh, that one breaks my heart.
Shannon Andy doesn't yell, and he doesn't punish him. He just opens the window, so Opie can hear the baby birds in the nest, crying for their mother. And Opie understands what he's done.
Carol And he raises them.
Shannon All three. Feeds them, names them, keeps them in a cage on the porch. And when they're big enough, he has to let them go.
Carol And then the cage is empty.
Shannon Right. And Opie says the cage looks awfully empty. And Andy says, gently, that the trees look nice and full. It's one of the most beautiful moments in all of television.
Carol Now, Aunt Bee.
Shannon Aunt Bee, played by Frances Bavier. She's warm, she's fussy, she worries about everybody. She feeds the whole town, and she's always ready with a pie.
Carol But the actress wasn't really like that, was she?
Shannon Not exactly. Frances Bavier was a trained New York stage actress, and she took her craft very seriously. She was more reserved than Aunt Bee, and by most accounts she wasn't especially close to the rest of the cast. But on screen, she was everyone's favorite aunt.
Carol And she won an Emmy.
Shannon She did, in 1967, for playing Aunt Bee. And after her Mayberry years were over, she did something lovely. She moved to North Carolina for real. She retired to Siler City, and lived there for the rest of her life.
Carol And we have to talk about the pickles.
Shannon We do. The Pickle Story. Aunt Bee makes a batch of homemade pickles, and they are terrible. Andy calls them kerosene cucumbers.
Carol (laughs) Kerosene cucumbers.
Shannon But nobody wants to hurt her feelings. So Andy and Barney secretly swap her pickles for store-bought ones. And Aunt Bee is so proud of how good they've turned out that she decides to enter them in the county fair.
Carol Oh, no.
Shannon Oh, yes. Against her friend Clara, who's won the pickle prize eleven years running. So Andy and Barney do the kind thing. They eat every one of those store-bought pickles, so Aunt Bee has to make a fresh batch of her own. Clara wins again, and Aunt Bee's feelings are spared.
Carol And then what?
Shannon Aunt Bee figures they love her pickles so much, she makes them a whole new batch. Jars and jars of kerosene cucumbers.
Carol And Andy had a sweetheart, too.
Shannon He did. After a couple of early girlfriends, Andy met Helen Crump, Opie's schoolteacher, played by Aneta Corsaut. She came in around the third season, and stayed till the end.
Carol And did they ever get married?
Shannon They did, but not on The Andy Griffith Show. They got married in the very first episode of the show that followed it, Mayberry R.F.D. We'll get to that at the end of the season.
Carol So, what's your pick?
Shannon It has to be Opie the Birdman. It's the best thing the show ever did about growing up. Andy teaches without preaching, and Opie learns something he'll never forget.
Carol And mine is The Pickle Story. It's a comedy about manners. Everyone's being kind, and it just keeps making things worse.
Shannon And our ratings, out of five fishing poles.
Carol For Pa and Aunt Bee? Five fishing poles. This is the heart of the show.
Shannon Five from me too. Plus a jar of pickles. Store-bought.
Carol That's the Taylor family. A patient father, a boy growing up, and an aunt with a pie for everybody, and a pickle for nobody.
Shannon Next time, the rest of Mayberry. Gomer and Goober, Floyd the barber, the Darlings, and a man who throws rocks through windows.
Carol That's next time, on Classic TV Rewind.