{"id":3006,"date":"2012-07-05T15:49:36","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T15:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=3006"},"modified":"2015-03-31T11:40:51","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T11:40:51","slug":"andy-griffith-regrets-a-change-in-no-time-for-sergeants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=3006","title":{"rendered":"Andy Griffith on why ‘No Time for Sergeants’ cheated"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Nick Adams and Andy Griffith salute a WAC in the movie ‘No Time For Sergeants’<\/p><\/div>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

Andy Griffith didn\u2019t do a great many interviews but I spent most of the afternoon of March 18, 1986 with him, just the two of us in an otherwise empty dining room at what I seem to recall was the Lakeside Golf Club in Burbank.<\/p>\n

Griffith had joined me to talk about \u2018Return to Mayberry\u201d, a TV movie with most of the old cast from \u201cThe Andy Griffith Show\u201d, but we had lots of time so we spoke of many things. This is the first in a series of excerpts from that interview.<\/p>\n

ANDY GRIFFITH<\/strong>:\u00a0\u201cMy first experience with people talking about something before it happened was a good one. It was a play called \u2018No Time For Sergeants\u2019. We were rehearsing at the Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon) there on 52nd Street, and they were telling about how we were a hit already. I recall that Morton Da Costa, he was the director, said, \u201cI wish they wouldn\u2019t do that.\u201d But then we went to New Haven and then Boston and then back to New York and we were an absolute smash. Standing room only for two years.<\/p>\n

The [1958] movie was in no way as good as the play. The movie was, as far as I\u2019m concerned, OK. Not to step on anyone\u2019s toes, but a play doesn\u2019t necessarily translate to screen. If you\u2019re gonna put a play on the screen you need to give it a screen treatment, and that\u2019s not what happened with that, pretty well.<\/p>\n

The only thing that changed \u2026 and it\u2019s a shame \u2026 was a scene in the play that came from the book. You know, it was a bestselling book first, and the man who wrote it, his name was Mac Hyman. He only wrote two books and he died at 42. Anyway, there are two central characters, Will Stockdale, that\u2019s the part I play, and Ben Whitledge, his friend [Roddy McDowell in the play, Nick Adams in the movie]. They were going through testing to see if they could make it to Air Force gunnery school, which is not what Will wanted and not what Ben wanted.<\/p>\n

At a certain point, the two of them are standing and Ben becomes very angry and throws his cap down and stomps on it. A lieutenant comes by and he\u2019s black. The man who played him originally was Earle Hyman, a fine, fine actor, Shakespearean actor. I think his line was \u2018Is that any way to treat government property, private?\u2019 Ben Whitledge snaps to a salute and Will is just staring at this man. There was a little more dialogue, mostly from the lieutenant. Finally Ben elbows Will and Will salutes in a kind of limp way. The lieutenant leaves and Ben says, I think the line was, \u2018Don\u2019t you know enough to salute an officer when you see one?\u2019 And Will says, \u201cYou know, that man talks whiter \u2018n I do\u2019, and it always got this gigantic, huge, wonderful laugh.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what made the sergeant and the rest of \u2018em think that Will was colour blind. In the movie, they made the lieutenant a woman. To put a WAC in instead, as if he couldn\u2019t tell the difference between a man and a woman, was a real cheat. I was always, always sorry about that. Even in those days, I said, \u201cGee, isn\u2019t there some way we can go ahead and do this?\u2019 But they were afraid. But it was in the play. What a scream that got every night. Still, it\u2019s a pretty good show. It made a fortune for Warner Bros.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett Andy Griffith didn\u2019t do a great many interviews but I spent most of the afternoon of March 18, 1986 with him, just the two of us in an otherwise empty dining room at what I seem to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1263,15],"tags":[3224,3222,3223,1701,3226,3225],"class_list":["post-3006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-television","tag-no-time-for-sergeants","tag-return-to-mayberry","tag-the-andy-griffith-show","tag-andy-griffith","tag-earle-hyman","tag-morton-da-costa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3006"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6735,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3006\/revisions\/6735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}