It's been 35 years since he and Don Knotts worked together on "The Andy Griffith Show," but Griffith still recalls those days with more than a bit of fondness.
"The five years that Don and I worked together were the best five years I ever had in my life," he said. "Don's manager . . . says there are times when one and one make three, and that's what Don and I did."And the show lives on as an American institution of sorts -- one that cable-channel TV Land is saluting this coming week with Sheriff Andy Taylor's TV debut, the stars' favorite episodes and a behind-the-scenes special.
What makes "The Andy Griffith Show" timeless is its style. Rather than filming in front of a studio audience, the show about small-town sheriff Andy Taylor (Griffith); his son, Opie (Ron Howard); his deputy, Barney (Knotts); and a slew of other characters, was filmed on back-lot locations.
"I think (executive producer) Sheldon Leonard came up with that for one reason -- so that we could go outdoors," Griffith said. "These multi-camera shows have one or two sets. And we had a whole town that we could display and a forest. And I think it was Sheldon's idea not to have an audience. And I'm really glad we did that, because it takes a lot of pressure off."
"And it turns out to be better for the kind of show we did anyway," Knotts said, "because we were doing more character comedy than broad jokes, although occasionally we did some broad jokes for sure. But we didn't lean on that. The multi-camera shows done in front of an audience, they feel like they have to get a laugh every minute, so it's pretty jokey. And at least we avoided that.
"Andy used to say, 'If it sounds like a joke, throw it out.' "
Griffith agreed that his goal was to avoid being a "joke comedy."
"It was character comedy," he said. "With joke comedy, you don't want to watch it two times. But with character comedy -- and then the genius that Don brought to Barney Fife -- you can watch it over and over and over again because it's just funny in itself."
And some of the show's best moments involved nothing more than Andy and Barney sitting and talking to one another.
"We started something in the series I hadn't seen before," Knotts said. "We began to do little things, have little scenes where we just talked about things that had nothing to do with the plot. In fact, in the beginning, they didn't want us to do that. But as time went on, you see that so many shows picked up on that. I think we were the first to do that."
And Knotts gives much of the credit for the show's success to Griffith.
"Well, Andy had a lot to do with it," Knotts said. "In fact, he sat with the writers and figured out the storylines."
"At the end of each season, I think it was, we would meet with about 10 or 15 writers and pitch story ideas," Griffith said. "And I was always there. That's the only fight I ever had with Sheldon Leonard. He wanted to introduce the character of a mayor who would be my boss, and I told him it wasn't going to work. And it didn't.
"But I enjoyed that. Only the last few years I got my writer's card. Don's had a writer's card for a long time. But we both wrote on the show. I worked on that show seven days a week, and on 'Matlock' seven days a week, and I wrote on both shows. And Don is a great sketch writer."
And once the scripts were written, the show was locked in.
"No, we did not ad-lib," Griffith said. "We worked very hard on the script and we knew what we had when we went in. And we rehearsed it and we shot it. We knew when it was time to go ahead and shoot and not rehearse again, just go ahead and shoot."
FAVORITE EPISODES: TV Land kicks off its salute with a pair of back-to-back episodes on Monday at 8 and 8:30 p.m. -- shows that are among Griffith's favorites. First up is "Opie the Bird Man," followed by "Barney's First Car."
On Wednesday, it's Knotts' two favorites. "The Pickle Story"-- about Aunt Bee's (Frances Bavier) determination to win a pickling contest -- leads off at 8 p.m.
"It was a complicated story, but it was a sweet story about a woman who -- the pickle contest meant so much to her," Knotts said. "And in the meantime, we were having a lot of fun in between (those scenes). So it was one of those stories where it was sweet on one side and funny on the other."
The episode that follows at 8:30 p.m., "Barney and the Choir," is not only one of Knotts' favorites but one of Griffith's as well. He called it nothing short of "genius."
"Only Don Knotts could pull that off," he said.
The story was that the Mayberry choir lost its lead tenor and Barney wanted to be the replacement. "Well, it turns out that Barney was tone deaf, and now we started to try to get rid of him," Griffith said.
But Barney kept tracking down the rehearsals, even though he wasn't told where they'd be. And when Andy Taylor suggested that Barney narrate instead of sing, his deputy wouldn't go for it.
"And he couldn't stand that," Griffith said. "He said, 'Can you ask a bird not to fly?' "
Andy finally resolved the issue by giving Barney a microphone and telling him it was so sensitive he would have to sing as quietly as possible. "And finally I got him down to where he wasn't singing at all," Griffith said. "We had a contrabass behind another curtain with a live microphone and he did the singing and Don mouthed it. And when it was over, he bowed like he'd just been Frank Sinatra.
"That, I believe, is my all-time favorite."
SALUTING MAYBERRY: Other installments in TV Land's "Andy Griffith" salute include the 1960 episode of "Make Room for Daddy" (Thursday, 8 p.m.) in which Andy and Opie made their first appearance when Danny Thomas was stopped for speeding in Mayberry.
On Tuesday at 8 p.m., it's an installment of "Inside TV Land" that focuses on the show and includes interviews with Griffith, Knotts, Howard, Jim Nabors (Gomer Pyle) and other cast and crew members. For the stars, it's reminiscent of seeing themselves profiled on A&E's "Biography."
"Well, I think they did a pretty good job on mine," Knotts said. "I enjoyed it. It (made me) kind of self-conscious, though."
"I thought they did a good job on mine, too," Griffith said. "I enjoyed it."
But Knotts admitted he didn't enjoy all of his "Biography."
"Well, I got tired of hearing that I was a hypochondriac," he said, although he added, "I guess I am. On my gravestone it's going to say, 'I told you I was sick.' "
If all that isn't enough, TV Land will run a 48-hour "Andy Griffith Show" marathon beginning Saturday at 4 a.m.