Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show Audiobook (Free)

A lively and revealing biography of Andy Griffith and Don Knotts, this “humorous, informative, and poignant book” celebrates the powerful real-life a friendly relationship behind among America’s most iconic television applications and “shows how the magic was made” (Library Journal).

Andy Griffith and Don Knotts initial met on Broadway in the 1950s. When Andy relocated to Hollywood to film a Television pilot for a comedy about a small-town sheriff, Don called to request if Andy’s sheriff could use a deputy. The friendship about Andy and Don: The Making of the Friendship and a Classic American TELEVISION SHOW and comedy relationship between Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife ignited The Andy Griffith Present, elevating the folksy television sitcom right into a classic study of human friendship. Together, they developed a program using a uniquely small-town dynamic that captured the hearts of Americans across the country who watched both of these males rocking on leading porch, meditating about the enjoyment of a bottle of pop.

But behind this sleepy appeal, de Visé’s special reporting “catches the complexity of both men and the intimacy of their a friendly relationship with extreme detail and level of sensitivity” (Publishers Weekly), from unspoken rivalries, passionate affairs, unrequited loves, struggles with the temptations of popularity, and friendships lost and regained. Although Andy and Don ended their Mayberry relationship in 1965, they continued to be best friends for the next half-century.

Written by Don Knotts’s brother-in-law, Andy and Don is normally “a satisfying dual biography that’s also a lively look in the entertainment industry in the last mentioned half from the twentieth century” (Information & Observer). Entertaining and provocative, it “captures a golden second in modern Americana. You’ll not only return again to Mayberry, you’ll feel as if you’ve never remaining” (Tom Shales, Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic).