Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show by Daniel de Vise Page A

speak as good English as we do. . . .”
    One by one, actors, executives, and secretaries filed into the room to hear Andy’s monologue. “It sounds like a bad B movie, but it happened,” Andy recalled. “As I went along, each of them would go out and get somebody else.”
    The random woman was Armina Marshall, a director of both the Theatre Guild and the Steel Hour . When Andy had finished, she took him by the hand and led him to Alex Segal, the director. She told him, “I have Will Stockdale.”
    The United States Steel Hour broadcast was nothing more than a televised play, filmed on a stage with theatrical sets before a live audience. When it commenced, Andy was terrified, just like on Ed Sullivan’s stage and at the Blue Angel. But when Andy began to speak, the audience responded, first with smiles, then with chuckles, then with laughter. Andy fed on the reaction. His terror fell away and his frozen body thawed.
    The teleplay opens with Andy seated alone on a chair. “Howdy, I’m Will Stockdale,” he says, his intense gaze and broad smile warming the camera. “I’m fixin’ to tell you some of the things that happened to me in the draft.” He produces a Jew’s harp and commences to play, then to sing: “Whoa, mule, you kicking mule / Whoa, mule, I say / Well, I ain’t got time to kiss you now / My mule’s run away. . . .”
    The viewing audience that night included Maurice Evans, who was to direct the play on Broadway. Maurice had found his Will Stockdale.
    That September, inside the Alvin Theatre, Andy and Don sat down at a table together for the first time for the inaugural script read-through. They had yet to meet. Don was “as nervous as a cat,” he recalled, “but I couldn’t get over how good Andy Griffith was. . . . When we finished, I was certain of two things: this play was going to be a hit, and a lot of people were going to know who Andy Griffith was.”
    On the first day of rehearsals, Andy stood in the wings and watched as “this thin little man came out.” It was Don. “He was a young fella then, but he put on an old voice and introduced Will Stockdale.” Andy couldn’t place the man, but he recognized the voice.
    On the second day of rehearsals, Don wandered out the stage door and found Andy sitting on a fire hydrant. Andy was whittling. Don didn’t think he had ever seen an actor whittle.
    â€œExcuse me,” Andy said. “Are you Windy Wales?”

4.
    Nervous Men
    I T WAS a miracle Andy and Don met at all.
    Both men had wound up among the rejects in the waiting rooms of their respective No Time for Sergeants auditions. And at the decisive moment, each had refused to concede defeat. Their improbable comebacks were a testament to their ambitions.
    Yes, Don confessed, he was Windy Wales. He was frankly stunned that Andy—or anyone else past adolescence—had even heard of Windy Wales.
    â€œSheee-it, yes!” Andy cried, breaking into a broad grin. “I knew I recognized that voice!”
    They talked for a few minutes. Andy explained that he had listened to Bobby Benson on the radio to pass the long hours on the road between shows. Each man was surprised to learn the other actually hailed from the South. Though Sergeants was a quintessentially Southern production, most of the cast and crew seemed to come either from New York or Great Britain. There weren’t many Southerners on Broadway. Finding a kindred spirit gave each man a measure of comfort.
    â€œBoth of us were inherently shy people, but now the ice was broken,” Don recalled. “. . . Our friendship had begun.”
    Backstage, Andy and Don spent their spare moments playing mumblety-peg, a school-yard game from the Mark Twain era that involves throwing a pocketknife at one’s foot. This shared heritage bolstered their friendship immeasurably.
    The producers could cut