Return to Mayberry

Return to Mayberry (1986)

After being away for awhile, Andy Taylor returns home to Mayberry to visit Opie, now an expectant father. While there he ends up helping Barney Fife mount a campaign for sheriff.

Date of release
1986-04-13
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (71)
Runtime
1h 35m
Genres
TV Movie, Comedy
Director
Bob Sweeney

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: California

Return to Mayberry is a 1986 American made-for-television romantic comedy film based on the 1960s sitcoms The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry R.F.D.. The film premiered on April 13, 1986, on NBC, and was the highest-rated television film of 1986. Sixteen of the original cast members reunited and reprised their roles for the film and its success could have led to additional Mayberry programs, but Griffith was committed to Matlock for the 1986–87 season.

Production

Most of the surviving cast members of The Andy Griffith Show reprised their roles in the reunion movie. One notable exception was Frances Bavier, who played Aunt Bee for all eight seasons as well as two seasons of Mayberry R.F.D. Bavier had retired shortly after leaving R.F.D. in 1970. Her absence was explained by a scene in which Andy visits the cemetery where Aunt Bee is buried, confirming that Aunt Bee is deceased.

Rance Howard, Ron Howard's father, played the Preacher, and Karen Knotts, Don Knotts' daughter, played a receptionist.

Ron Howard, playing an adult Opie, had quit his acting career by this point to focus on being a film director, and had already directed the hit movies Night Shift (1982), Splash (1984) and Cocoon (1985). Return to Mayberry was the last significant acting role for Howard.

The Forty Acres backlot in Culver City, California, where most of the Mayberry exteriors were filmed in the original series, had been razed in 1976. For this movie, the town of Los Olivos, California doubled for Mayberry, with a stretch of Grand Avenue being used for the town square. A reconstruction of the original courthouse set was built in a small park at the corner of Grand and Alamo Pintado Avenues.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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