While the Andy Griffith most audiences know and love was a kindly character, most noted for his fatherly qualities and ability to hand down life lessons, A Face in the Crowd shows a different. Despite playing a goodhearted, folksy sheriff on the show, Griffith had a reputation as a mean drunk and had some costars shaking in their boots! “Friends winced at the thought of spending an. At the forefront of the show was series star Andy Griffith, who played Sheriff Andy Taylor. As calm and happy as Griffith seemed to be on the show, however, some reports claim that the star was. His character, portrayed by former-Southern-standup-comic-turned-actor Andy Griffith, was a treasure of small-town Americana where all the Anglo-Saxon citizens were protected by the good ol'. When The Andy Griffith Show premiered in 1960, it presented audiences with a version of Griffith that felt worlds away from Lonesome Rhodes. Gone was the manipulative firebrand and in his place was Sheriff Andy Taylor, who was patient, thoughtful and, most of all, grounded. For the 249 episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, Griffith portrayed the ever-patient straight man, Sheriff Andy Taylor. Off-screen, however, one of his co-stars tested the limits of his tolerance. Griffith sang in several episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, and during the show's run, he also recorded country and gospel music, including a vocal version of the show's theme song titled The Fishin' Hole. Although there are a handful of dissenters out there, most people readily acknowledge that Andy Griffith was a pretty easy-going guy. While playing Sheriff Andy Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show, Andy loved to have fun on the set with his fellow cast members. Despite the hometown simplicity Griffith showed as Andy and the good-guy lawyer he portrayed, as an actor he often performed darker roles, such as A Face in the Crowd in 1957, in which he played a megalomaniac TV star who succumbs to his dark side. Andy Griffith was not a terribly pleasant individual. This was well known to everyone with whom I attended classes in the theater department of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (his Alma Mater) back in the 1970s.