The Enduring Mystery of the Unidentified ‘Andy Griffith Show’ Extra Known As ‘Mr. Schwamp’

Mayberry, North Carolina was full of colorful characters. Aside from the core four of Sheriff Andy Taylor, his son Opie, his Aunt Bee and his deputy Barney Fife, viewers were charmed by the antics of absentminded Floyd the Barber, local idiots Gomer and Goober and Otis Campbell, whose primary personality trait was being drunk.

And those are just the ones we got to know. Like any small-town setting, the same faces pop up again and again in the background of The Andy Griffith Show, and one in particular has vexed fans over the decades. He’s greeted by other characters, often sitting outside the barber shop, as “Mr. Schwamp,” though he never speaks himself, and he’s described rather unfairly by one Belleville, Illinois journalist as “a somewhat portly middle-aged man with a slumped demeanor, dark hair that may have been a toupee and perhaps dentures.” 

To be fair, the citizens of Mayberry seem to agree with this evaluation. Andy once told Barney, “I’m not going to a dance and stand in a stag line with Old Man Schwamp," indicating chronic bachelor status, maybe because he has low self-esteem from his friends constantly insulting him, Andy.

What’s notable about this specific background player, aside from his apparent role as the town punching bag, is that nobody seems to know who he is. Several members of the cast and crew have been asked over the years, and everybody remembers interacting with him, but none of them ever got his name. If you’re like us, that immediately indicates to you that Mr. Schwamp was clearly a ghost haunting the Andy Griffith Show set, but he does show up elsewhere, on the spin-offs Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C and Mayberry R.F.D. as well as the ‘40s films Christmas in Connecticut and Swing Parade of 1946. This means Mr. Schwamp probably met the Three Stooges, making him actually the coolest person in town.

Rumors of Mr. Schwamp’s whole deal have flourished, from a case of mistaken identity with producer Danny Thomas’ brother (who was also an Andy Griffith Show extra but a visibly different man) to theories that he was a friend of Griffith who needed work but couldn’t read lines. In 2012, a Facebook page belonging to The Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club announced they’d cracked the case, identifying Mr. Schwamp allegedly from The Danny Thomas Show credits and Screen Actors Guild records as one Patch S. Wimmers, an actor whose military family brought him to Hollywood in the ‘20s. 

The fact that Patch S. Wimmers is an anagram of Mr. Schwamp, however, as well as the post date of April 1st suggested that those paragons of virtue at The Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club were pulling a fast one on us, a fact confirmed if you clicked a link in the post. 

Alas, Mr. Schwamp remains unidentified but hopefully happier now that he’s left those Mayberry jerks behind.