Andy Griffith certainly knew how to have fun between filming. He and his Mayberry co-star Ken Berry would hit the trails. The two would ride dirt bikes together.
Berry appeared as his character Sam Jones during the final season of “The Andy Griffith Show” before that show spun-off into “Mayberry R.F.D.”
During that time, Berry and Griffith became good friends on-set. Griffith often returned to make guest appearances on the spin-off as his character Sheriff Andy Taylor. Berry joined Griffith’s unofficial inner circle of friends. Griffith even invited the actor to join him, Jack Dodson, who played Howard Sprague, and makeup artist Lee Greenway on an outdoors trip.
“I don’t hunt, so I just sat in the motor home and waited for them to be done and then we went and played with the motorcycles,” Berry told the Archive of American Television. “There was acre upon acre of open territory and roads and trails and stuff. We spent a lot of time together. I had a lot of fun.”
Andy Griffith and Ken Berry Became Friends
“We really hit it off right away and we got to be good friends,” Berry said.
Griffith often valued hitting the outdoors. Whenever he returned to film episodes for the spinoff, he invited Berry along as well. Griffith loved hunting, and Berry, as mentioned, didn’t. But they found a compromise with their love of dirt bikes.
Griffith was part of a local hunting club. He also had an RV and would invite his fellow actors along for the ride. Together, they would take the RV camper up to the woods. Griffith planned these hunting trips as often as he could.
“He and Lee Greenway … would get in the motor home and … drive out to a hunting club that Andy belonged to and Jack Dodson and Andy and Lee would shoot. They would shoot skeet or whatever, or they’d actually hunt,” Berry said. “I had a motor home, too, but [Andy] had a great big one and a rack on the back for trail bikes.”
So Griffith would go hunting and then riding dirt bikes with Berry as well. It’s a little hard to imagine Griffith flying down trails on a dirt bike. But it sounds like the cast of “The Andy Griffith Show” knew how to have a good time both on and off-screen.
