Where to Watch
A determined fan used his wedding to break through Frances Bavier's wall of silence
You could say he was the last fan to get advice from Aunt Bee.
Read to Me
Take a minute and think about Aunt Bee on The Andy Griffith Show. What comes to mind?
Is it her excellent cooking? Her maternal instinct to care for everyone? Maybe her colorful housedresses and aprons? Or, if you're feeling a little nitpicky, is it her yucky pickles?
Now, let's put Aunt Bee aside. Take this next minute to think about the actor Frances Bavier. What do you know of her?
Don't feel bad if you can't distinguish between the two. Bavier has said that she got lost in the character of Aunt Bee, not just in wrapping her head around how other people thought of her, but in how she thought of herself.
"You can't be an actress for 40 years, living in a world of make-believe, and not be affected," Bavier said in one of her rare interviews when The Andy Griffith Show was still on air.
Other actors who played famous housekeepers in the Sixties like Ann B. Davis (The Brady Bunch) have said that they experienced the opposite. The longer that Davis played Alice, the more the producers started injecting her real personality into the character. For Bavier, it happened the other way around.
"Sooner or later, your mind begins to click, and in my case, you are wise to seek professional help, to help stop being Aunt Bee after work," she told the Star-Gazette in 1966.
To save her sanity and separate herself from her iconic TV character, most fans know that Bavier went into hiding later in her life, retiring to Siler City, North Carolina, where she mostly kept to herself (ironically the only people she kept close were her own house staff) and stopped answering fan letters.
Many fans tried to reach Bavier over the years, writing letters and hoping for a note back, but Bavier had disconnected from Aunt Bee. She had to because being Aunt Bee just wasn't as easy as it looks.
"It's terribly difficult because Aunt Bee is so much nicer than the real me," Bavier said, echoing a similar sentiment Griffith has expressed about his iconic character.
But then along came a big fan who broke through this wall of silence.
Scott Reboul was a radiochemist living in North Carolina, about to marry Debbi, the love of his life. The year was 1988, and the couple planned their wedding in Charlotte.
About 100 miles away, Bavier lived in Siler City. Like many adoring fans, Scott thought he'd send her a letter. He'd heard from others that Bavier was a famous recluse, but he figured he'd give it a shot anyway. In an interview with fellow retro pop culture fan Jeremy Roberts, Scott said, "Not surprisingly, she didn't respond to my note."
Scott and Debbi had no hard feelings. They stopped by the local florist and left flowers for the TV matriarch on her front porch (a very Mayberry image), then resumed their wedding planning. It wasn't until they were putting together the wedding invitations when Scott got an idea.
"Anyway, in April 1988, Debbi and I were preparing for our wedding on May 7 by sending out early RSVPs so we could figure out who was the best caterer for our number of guests," Scott said. "I figured this was my last chance to get a potential response from Bavier, so I sent her an invitation. Everything I had heard about her was that she was a very formal person, so maybe she'd feel a desire to send back the wedding invitation card."
This was a clever scheme indeed, and perhaps Bavier was still a little more like her character than she thought, because Scott's trick worked. He became one of the last fans to break through Bavier’s wall of silence when she actually sent her RSVP back, and wouldn't you know, scrawled on the RSVP card was the perfect polite advice to decline a wedding invitation:
“Miss Bavier regrets she will be unable to attend, but wishes you and yours happiness in your coming years.”
Scott's pretty sure it's her handwriting on the RSVP card.
"From what I can tell, Bavier wrote the note herself about a year and a half before her death at age 86, as the handwriting appears the same as that found on her checks and letters," he explained. He also said he sometimes started borrowing this exact wording when he had to decline to attend weddings, so in a way, he became the last fan to take some good polite advice from Aunt Bee.
A year later, Bavier passed away on a December day in 1989. Before she did, Andy Griffith and Ron Howard visited her Siler City home, and with the two boys she raised on TV by her side, she made peace with her difficult feelings regarding Aunt Bee, a character for which her most loyal fans maintain eternal fondness.
56 Comments
Cranky, ungrateful, and defiant old biddy right up until to the end. Bet she gave Leona Helmsley a run for her money.
Rest in peace Frances, most of us loved you!
Also her later persona may have matched her character in a Lone Ranger episode as the leader of a group of outlaws.
Scifi show. I was surprised that only about 60 people went to the stage area when the LIS
cast appeared after the Trek people, I was up by the stage.
Only me and maybe 5 other people asked questions so I got to talk with them a bit.
At one point when I was chatting to the stranger next to me "Judy"/Marta came out in
go go like boots and a slit skirt and she was even more of a knockout than she had been
20 years before on the series. I said something like "wow how'd you like
to be greeted by her every morning" when the stranger laughed and said "I have".
I gave him a "yeah sure" look, he said he was her hubby, I then rolled my eyes.
He then waved at her and she smiled and air kissed him.
I was just glad he took my comment in stride, I shook his hand and told him he was one lucky man. By the way, Jonathon Harris wasn't gay, it was just an affectation to get attention and
snag all the "sissy" roles, casting directors remembered him as he stood out from the pack.
He got very angry when I asked about how wealthy he must have got from the residuals,
letting loose a string of curses in his native Bronx tongue that even the Bleacher Bums
in the right field section at Yankee Stadium would blush at.
Billy Mumy, after first laughing at Harris, then stepped in to divert attention from Harris and interjected "everyone knows how unfair we were treated and there's no point dwelling on it"
and changed the subject. I have to say, the biggest kick I got that day was standing next
to the robot and getting my picture took. It is very impressive in person, not just a prop
that looks good on film.
Thanks a lot Denny, I had to wade thu old boxes for a photo album from then. :)
It was at The Atlantic City Convention Center, Nov. 21-22, 1992. The entire cast except for
Guy Williams was present. Harris looking very dapper. I got the biggest kick out of
standing next to the robot for a photo, it cost nothing as after all he's just a prop,
but to my inner kid self he was one of my favorite stars ever.
"spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam !!!!!! wonderful spam"
Flash forward fifty years, and Mom's in the hospital again, recuperating from a stroke, when I manage to dig up a copy of the very episode she missed that weekend, which guest-starred Frances Bavier as a kooky small-town eccentric who likes to shoplift (from her own family's department store) to make her life more exciting, and gets mixed up with a gang of serious crooks who want her to join them for a big bank heist.
I took my laptop and the show to Mom and we watched it together in her hospital room. (Sorry to say, Mom later decided it wasn't one of the better episodes.)
When Griffith was interviewed on Larry King Live in 1998, he admitted that Bavier phoned him four months before her death, and apologized for being difficult on the set.