The Clever Way ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ Hid a Star’s Stroke
Everyone loved Floyd the Barber. In fact, the resident mop-chopper of The Andy Griffith Show was so popular that, to this day, it’s customary for TV shows to name their minor hair-cutting characters Floyd. Sure, he couldn’t see three inches in front of his face, and he never managed to learn to trim sideburns evenly, but he was a pillar of Mayberry, dammit.
Nobody messes with Floyd.
Except messes come for us all. In 1963, during the show’s third season, Howard McNear, the actor who played Floyd Lawson, suffered a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body and left him effectively unable to stand. The show had to go on, but McNear’s absence was palpable; while brainstorming some comic relief for one “particularly tense scene,” one producer remarked, “Boy, do I wish we had Howard.” McNear was frustrated himself, to the point that his wife called producers to tell them that they needed to figure out a way for him to return to set, as he was becoming increasingly likely to die from boredom as complications from his stroke.
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It might have seemed like an impossible dilemma to a less determined crew, but those on The Andy Griffith Show answered the call. They built a special stool that made McNear appear to the cameras as if he was standing, because people would probably start asking a lot of questions if Floyd was suddenly working from a desk. Still, as often as they could, they filmed him sitting. To disguise the paralysis of his left hand, he was often filmed holding a newspaper, or just resting his hand in his lap. It’s not like most people use their left hands a lot anyway. Yours is probably in your pants right now.
It was a solution that worked for a good three years until McNear’s health unfortunately began to decline once more following the end of the seventh season, and he soon passed away. In Mayberry, however, fix-it man Emmett Clark simply moved his shop into Floyd’s old location. The show’s explanation for the barber’s retirement was simple: He’d just made enough money.
It’s a lesson we could all take to heart, especially modern Hollywood. How Mr. Griffith gained the ability to stop the growth of his hair is a question left unanswered, but that’s a matter for another time. Maybe someone in Mount Pilot figured out sideburns.
