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Andy Griffith disputed the ties between Mayberry and his hometown of Mount Airy
Maybe there's not a connection after all!
For years, people have made good money by insisting that The Andy Griffith Show's Mayberry is based on the real-life town of Mount Airy. The small Surry County city sits up near the northern border of North Carolina, right on the edge of Virginia, and has served as a tourist destination for fans of the classic sitcom. Mount Airy's visitor center website, www.visitmayberry.com, proudly boasts that the town is, in fact, "the real-life Mayberry and inspiration for The Andy Griffith Show."
There are barbershops and diners in Mount Airy that happily capitalize on a perceived connection between their location and one of the most famous shows in a bygone television golden era.
However, before he passed away, Andy Griffith went on the record to determine whether his hometown was as crucial to the show's creation as its residents may claim.
“They think that I based the show on Mount Airy. I’ve argued about this too long. I don’t care. Let them think what they want to think,” said Griffith in a 1998 interview with the Archives of American Television.
“A barber up there says he cut my hair when I was a child, hell, he’ll have to be 115 years old,” said Griffith.
Instead, Griffith claimed that was invented by the show's producers. While he drew from his upbringing to create his character, Andy Griffith insisted that the town had very little to do with him.
“At first Sheldon [Leonard] didn’t want it to be in North Carolina, he just wanted it to be somewhere in the South. And I hate these made up names. So, we did have Mount Pilot which there’s a place called Pilot Mountain up near Mount Airy. But, I gradually started slipping in real towns in North Carolina like Asheville, and Raleigh and Siler City. And so it became, during that first year, it became a town in North Carolina,” said Griffith.
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