Most of us know Andy Griffith from his time spent preserving the peace in Mayberry, or looking for justice within the courtroom on Matlock. However earlier than he was Sheriff Andy Taylor or Ben Matlock, Griffith logged another roles that weren’t fairly as iconic, however nonetheless fascinating — together with the function of Lonesome Rhodes in his first movie, 1957’s A Face within the Crowd, which airs tonight at 8pm EST on TCM.
Griffith had his first profession breakthrough a number of years prior, in 1953, when he recorded a comic book monologue known as “What It Was, Was Soccer,” the place he performed a wide-eyed nation preacher attempting to make sense of a soccer sport. The file climbed the charts and all of the sudden, Griffith was being invited to carry out on selection exhibits, telling his soccer story or doing a model the place he defined Romeo and Juliet in that very same rural drawl. Audiences discovered him charming, and producers took discover.