Review: BBC America's 'Ripper Street' a fine dose of mystery

Well-written and acted, the Victorian-era crime drama 'Ripper Street' takes us back to the moment when the fascination with serial killers began.

By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
http://www.latimes.com
January 19, 2013

"Ripper Street," the Victorian-era police procedural debuting on BBC America on Saturday, opens with chilling promise and on a decidedly modern note.
It's 1889 in London's notorious East End and a man leads a group of middle class English citizens to the sites of the Jack the Ripper killings. Six months since the body of Mary Jane Kelly, the fifth victim, was found, and already murder tourism thrives in Whitechapel.
It is interrupted, in this case, by the discovery of another woman butchered, which leads the members of local H division, including Det. Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen), to fear that the Ripper has not died, emigrated or simply gone to ground as so many had hoped. Fending off the voracious press (some things really never change, do they?), Reid resists jumping to such headline-ready conclusions.

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With the reluctant aid of the suspiciously seedy U.S. Army surgeon/former Pinkerton agent/budding forensic examiner Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg), Reid quickly concludes that this bloody corpse is the work of another brutal murderer — a revelation oddly presented as a relief — and sets out to bring him to justice.
To do this he and his tough and ready detective sergeant (Jerome Flynn) must delve deep into the dim and slop-strewn East End, with its picaresque warrens of corruption and decay. If this sounds slightly familiar, it most certainly is — not only does "Ripper Street" faithfully follow BBC America's other period procedural "Copper" in form and function, it borrows scenes, music and even credit imagery so freely from Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes" series that you expect Robert Downey Jr., or at least Stephen Fry, to make a cameo.
This doesn't make "Ripper Street" a bad show, or even an overly derivative one. On the contrary, it is well-written and certainly well-acted, with plot and psychological twists as numerous and tantalizing as the streets on which they occur.
Macfadyen, known to BBC fans for "Spooks" and to film audiences as Keira Knightley's Mr. Darcy, instantly creates the sort of brilliant but haunted detective that drives most modern procedurals, and creator Richard Warlow mines place and period for all their era-turning worth.
In the premiere, the inevitably rhapsodized emergence of film is given a refreshingly disturbing back story in pornography, another nod to modern life in which that other new technology — the Internet — remains over-populated with the porn sites that helped establish it as a cultural force.

PHOTOS: Serial killers of the small screen

Beyond providing audiences the opportunity to consume a little history with their murder mystery, "Ripper Street" is a fortuitously timed origins story. Debuting days before Fox's much more heavily touted "The Following," "Ripper Street" may not draw the audience or the scrutiny of the Kevin Bacon vehicle, but it is most certainly a companion piece.
As that 1889 murder tour makes clear, this is where it all started, the fascination with serial killers, the need to make them more than a sum of their horrible actions. Others had murdered before Jack, but none captured the public's attention so intensely and with such longevity.
"Ripper Street" is every bit as violent and, at times, stomach-churning as "The Following," Reid every bit as damaged and obsessed as Bacon's FBI agent. It's just the hats and the walking sticks and the bodices (this being a period piece, prostitutes abound) make the crimes more "artistic" than "disturbing."
Warlow does not shy away from the general brutality of the times; indeed he wallows in it to the extent that every alley, every dwelling looks like a potential crime scene. But somehow "Ripper Street" seems less menacing than "The Following," steeped in sepia rather than blood.
Which is odd considering it deals with a much more dangerous and pervasive force: the rise of both the first rock-star murderer and, perhaps not coincidentally, the modern age.

From Al Gore to Al Jazeera

By Clifford D. May
http://www.nationalreview.com
January 10, 2012

A few years back I was interviewed about some development in the Middle East by a reporter from Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned television news channel. Afterwards, we sat for a while and talked journalism. He mentioned that he had previously worked for Al Jazeera. I asked why he had left. “Too many Islamists,” he said. “They made me uncomfortable.”

It’s bizarre: We used to know a lot about Al Jazeera. At what point did amnesia set in? The station was launched in November 1996. Two months after al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York and Washington, Fouad Ajami, the Lebanese-born American scholar, analyzed its product in the pages of The New York Times Magazine. Al Jazeera, he wrote, “may not officially be the Osama bin Laden Channel, but he is clearly its star . . . The channel’s graphics assign him a lead role: there is bin Laden seated on a mat, his submachine gun on his lap; there is bin Laden on horseback in Afghanistan, the brave knight of the Arab world. A huge, glamorous poster of bin Laden’s silhouette hangs in the background of the main studio set at Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha, the capital city of Qatar.”
Ajami added: “Although Al Jazeera has sometimes been hailed in the West for being an autonomous Arabic news outlet, it would be a mistake to call it a fair or responsible one. Day in and day out, Al Jazeera deliberately fans the flames of Muslim outrage.”
Five years later Al Jazeera launched an English-language version. To be fair, it is editorially distinct from AJ Arabic. But, also to be fair, two questions must be asked: Are there serious disagreements between these sister stations? Or do they have what Ayman Mohyeldin, once AJ English’s Cairo correspondent (and now a reporter at NBC), called a “shared vision,” with the Al Jazeera Network’s owners understanding their various audiences and what is required to influence each of them?
Al Jazeera English’s first Washington anchor was Dave Marash, a veteran reporter who had been a substitute host for Ted Koppel at ABC’s Nightline, for many years one of the best news programs on television. He quit after two years,explaining to the Columbia Journalism Review that as “the American face of the channel” he had, in effect, “vouched for its credibility and value,” and that he could not continue to do that because, while he considered much of AJ English’s reporting high-quality, its anti-American bias had become all too obvious.
The Al-Jazeera Network is owned and operated by the royal family of Qatar, an emirate rated by Freedom House as “not free.” Qatar’s Wahhabi religious establishment is hard-core but more indulgent of foreigners than are the clerics of Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabism also is the state religion. The sale of oil keeps Qatar’s rulers fabulously wealthy, so AJ will never need to turn a profit. If making money is not AJ’s purpose, what is?
Al Gore thinks he knows. As you have doubtless heard by now, the former vice president is selling the Current TV cable network he co-founded to AJ. Estimated price: $500 million. That will make what is to be known as Al Jazeera America available in more than 40 million homes across the country. In a statement issued last Wednesday, Current TV co-founder Joel Hyatt said that he and Gore were “thrilled and proud” that their project was being acquired by Al Jazeera, which “was founded with the same goals we had for Current: To give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling.”
If you don’t buy that explanation, Orville Schell thinks you’re an Islamophobe. The former dean of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Current TV board member, Schell was asked about Time Warner’s announcement that it will not carry AJ-America (thus depriving it of 15 percent of Current TV’s current total reach) unless it perceives a demand from its audience. Time Warner, he told the Associated Press, has “probably dropped the contract because they fear American prejudice.”
I’ve appeared on AJ English quite a few times. Like Current TV and MSNBC, it presents itself as a voice of the Left. AJ English does not overtly promote the ideology of Islamism, but it does present it as mainstream, suggesting an affinity between Islamist and leftist values. Whenever I’ve been on a program, I’ve had an opportunity to provide my analysis and opinions. But, invariably, I will be outnumbered: At least two other guests, as well as the interviewer, will vehemently disagree with me. Anyone versed in Strategic Communications 101 will recognize this as a technique designed to marginalize one set of views and promote another.
The Current/AJ deal brims with ironies: For one, Al Gore, Internet pioneer, paladin of the fight against global warming, and archenemy of carbon fuels, is about to have his bank account inflated by an estimated one hundred million petro-dollars, and he will “proudly” serve on the advisory board of a media outlet owned by a dictatorship that advocates government censorship of the Internet. In that role, he can be expected to use his political influence to ensure that cable executives continue to charge cable subscribers for a channel those subscribers haven’t asked for. Second, Gore had previously refused to sell Current TV to Glenn Beck because the conservative commentator — unlike Al Jazeera — is “not aligned with our point of view.” Third, according to the New York Times, “Mr. Gore and his partners were eager to complete the deal by Dec. 31, lest it be subject to higher tax rates that took effect on Jan. 1.” (Sadly, they missed that deadline.)
Quite a few of my learned journalistic colleagues have been cheerily asserting that Al Jazeera America will make a net contribution to the free market in ideas. At a time when American print journalism is hemorrhaging financially, a time when saying anything that might be interpreted as offensive to Muslims can be — quite literally — hazardous to one’s health, a time when American diplomats are actively negotiating international laws that would restrict freedom of speech regarding Islam and Islamism, I’m not confident they’re right.
One more reason to be less than optimistic: Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is the host of Al Jazeera Arabic’s most popular program, Sharia and Life. Qaradawi endorsed Ayatollah Khomeini’s call to execute novelist Salman Rushdie for blasphemy, called what Hitler did to Europe’s Jews “divine punishment” (adding that “Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers”). In 1991, one of his acolytes, Mohamed Akram, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, wrote a memorandum, later obtained by the FBI, asserting that Brothers “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and by the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
Is Al Gore really “thrilled and proud” to be associated with such “independent and diverse points of view”? Is this what he means by “speaking truth to power”? Might asking him these questions be a net contribution to the free market in ideas?
— Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism.

Current TV employees introduced to new owners, Al Gore conspicuously absent

**Written by Doug Powers
http://www,michellemalkin.com
January 8, 2012



Al Gore, a co-founder of Current TV, recently sold the network to oil-backed Al Jazeera. Gore was so proud of the sale that when the staff was introduced to the new owners he decided to share his glee with... nobody:

Yesterday morning, the still shell shocked staff at Current TV was called to an all hands staff meeting at its San Francisco headquarters, which was teleconferenced to their offices in LA and NYC, to meet their new bosses.

That would be two of Al Jazeera’s top guys: Ehab Al Shihabi, executive director of international operations, and Muftah AlSuwaidan, general manager of the London bureau.

Ominously missing was the creator of Current, the self proclaimed inventor of the Internet and savior of clean energy, Al Gore, although his partner, Joel Hyatt, stood proudly with the Al Jazeera honchos.

“Of course Al didn’t show up,” said one high placed Current staffer. “He has no credibility.

“He’s supposed to be the face of clean energy and just sold [the channel] to very big oil, the emir of Qatar! Current never even took big oil advertising — and Al Gore, that bulls***ter sells to the emir?”

The meeting, while not contentious, was, according to staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity, miserable.

Did Gore, who is by some accounts now richer than Mitt Romney, have some hypocrisy-induced shame or was his absence merely due to a previously scheduled engagement that required him to fire up the jet to fly halfway around the world to address an emergency strategy session about greenhouse gas reduction?

More:

"Al was always lecturing us about green. He kept his word about green all right — as in cold, hard cash!" the staffer added.

This can only come as a surprise to those who have been living in an eco-friendly bubble of denial for far too long.

(h/t JWF)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

'Justified' duo Raylan and Boyd are bound by history

By Bill Keveney
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com
January 7, 2013

The relationship between Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder has become the 'crux' of the FX series.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Thirty-year-old cold case will become central mystery of the fourth season
• Lead characters Raylan and Boyd will follow separate paths before their paths intersect
• Unlike their characters, actors Olyphant and Goggins enjoy light-hearted, friendly relationship

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. -- It always comes down to Raylan and Boyd.

The two Justified antagonists, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) and his opposite number, drug kingpin Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), are together in a scene, not so much at odds for a change as they try to figure a way out of captivity by dangerous Kentucky hill folk.

As crew members on this set, 40 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, prepare an explosion that could lead to the characters' escape from a rundown shack, Olyphant jokes, "Is this where we run out and get shot, and the season's over?"

Not likely. The relationship of the two characters, who have ties stretching back to their youth in Kentucky's coal-mining country, has become a linchpin of the acclaimed and award-winning FX series, which returns for Season 4 Tuesday (10 ET/PT). "It's critical," executive producer Graham Yost says. In fact, this season it takes center stage.

It also didn't necessarily have to happen. Boyd died in Fire in the Hole, the Elmore Leonard short story about a quick-drawing, Stetson-wearing deputy U.S. marshal that inspired the series. But on television, Boyd has become the yin to Raylan's yang, an irritant that keeps drawing the marshal, physically and psychologically, back home to the hills of Harlan County.

"We had our doubts about killing off Boyd, even as we were killing him off in the first go-round of the pilot. Walton's so wonderful, and Walton and Tim together are so wonderful," Yost says.

"Boyd's ability to hold up a dark mirror to Raylan was pretty invaluable," he says. "This show wouldn't be on the air without Tim playing Raylan, but I think right behind that, it would have a tough time if we didn't have Boyd."

The relationship between the two is "the crux of the show," Olyphant agrees. Justified is "about Raylan Givens. But Boyd is a large part of his history, and grounds him in this world, and is a witness to this journey that he's been on."

And a participant. Both know about life in the mines and each has been involved with Boyd's current love, Ava (Joelle Carter). And Raylan's estranged father, Arlo (Raymond Barry), is both a member of Boyd's criminal gang and a father figure to him, going so far as to confessing to a murder Boyd committed to spare him a prison term.

Boyd "may be a surrogate son, but there's nothing like blood. Boyd is the kind of blood one would establish in a gang," says Barry. As for Raylan, "regardless of what transpires, there's a primal love that a father would feel toward his son."

This season, there's no major outside threat as in the past, such as rural crime matriarch Mags Bennett (Margo Martindale) or Detroit mobster Robert Quarles (Neil McDonough). (Season 3 averaged a healthy 3.9 million viewers per episode, and the series has earned Emmys for Martindale and Jeremy Davies, who plays her son, Dickie.)

"This year, we've brought it back to the core group, which allows us to in some ways exercise what I think is our greatest strength -- longer scenes, not as complicated, and you get to hear this Elmore-speak," Goggins says. He's referring to the best-selling author's distinct way with wry personalities and dry humor. "In some ways, it's kind of coming back to the way we first started the show."

Opposites attract

On the set, the mood is light but professional. In this scene, Raylan and Boyd are imprisoned in a small, corrugated-metal container inside the shack, decorated rustically with animal pelts, leg traps and lanterns.

Between scenes, the actors, each a one-time Emmy nominee for his role, display separate styles. The thoughtful Goggins, 41, is coiled intensity, exhibiting a taut style he used to great effect on another lauded FX drama, The Shield. He psyches himself up for scenes with almost a growl: "Let's bring some energy into this!"

It was that previous FX experience that persuaded Goggins to take the role of Boyd, a philosophizing troublemaker with nine lives, in the Justified pilot, even knowing the fate of the then-white supremacist in Leonard's story. But the actor, who has recently appeared inLincoln and Django Unchained, is happy he survived.

"I'm surprised and very grateful (that) four years in, I still don't know exactly who Boyd Crowder is. I still don't know everything that makes the relationship between Boyd Crowder and Raylan Givens tick," says Goggins, who meticulously chooses his words. "I'm as curious today as I was the first day we started filming the pilot."

The lanky Olyphant, 44, is just as serious about the scene, but with a relaxed confidence that probably served him well as a competitive swimmer in college. It fits his character, an old-school, slightly world-weary lawman whose belief in his own abilities gets him out of scrapes that his at-times impulsive, even reckless, behavior causes.

During a break, the Deadwood veteran walks around with hands bound by leather straps, not bothering to have an assistant undo them. At one point, he skillfully manages to pick up a paper cup and take a sip. At another, he narrates his co-star's energizing, pre-scene ritual: "Walton Goggins. On the set. Doing his thing."

But Olyphant's easy air shouldn't be mistaken for nonchalance. During one break, the actor, now a co-executive producer, approaches the episode's writer with an idea. He delights in the producing role. "This is the best part of the job. They've given me a lot of room and I've taken full advantage of it," he says."Someone cracked the door open and I knocked it down and backed up the truck and moved in."

Olyphant and Goggins are on friendly terms: a joke here, a quick shoulder squeeze there. After the scene, as they pose for a photo in the shack, Goggins suggests to Olyphant: "Why don't you wear this raccoon hat?"

His colleague demurs, preferring the character's signature headwear. "You didn't know Raylan and Boyd were vegans, did you?" Goggins says.

"We really do have a good time," Goggins says later. "I respect him as an actor and I love him as a person. There's no ego. I so enjoy figuring out the truth with Tim. He's my buddy. Boyd Crowder may not always think the world of Raylan Givens, but Walton Goggins thinks the world of Tim Olyphant."

And their styles complement each other. "Tim is very good at bringing humor," Goggins says. "He's always looking for the humor, and I'm always looking for the heart. ... It's a real nice combination."

Cold case heats up

This season, a 30-year-old cold case, reignited when something is found in the wall of Raylan's childhood home, serves as the core mystery, eventually bringing the two together in the same pursuit, if not with the same motivation.

"It was this huge federal investigation of a guy who was presumed dead and could potentially, if still alive, bring down some very powerful people in crime," Olyphant says. "When word gets out that he might be alive and well, everybody's looking for him for different reasons."

It "causes this tremendous upheaval in all these people's lives and there's a lot at stake for everybody involved," he says. "While some smaller chapters are going on through the season, this larger story is brewing and pulling everybody in. I find the whole thing to be very compelling."

Before their reunion in the shack, Raylan and Boyd spend early episodes apart. As a soon-to-be father, Raylan takes on some private fugitive apprehension work that would be frowned upon by his superiors. Winona, the mother of his unborn child, has left him, but her presence is still felt.

"He's got a kid coming. He's trying to make a little extra cash," Olyphant says. "I don't think he's got a clue of what he's gotten himself into" regarding the baby. As for the marshal's office, Raylan "still has his job, and he's managing. He's the kind of guy who causes a lot of problems but seems to get the job done."

Boyd, managing business as the drug kingpin of Harlan County, must deal with a snake-handling, Pentecostal preacher who is weaning valued customers from their addiction.

"One of the decisions we made going in (to Season 4) is we wanted to hold off on Raylan and Boyd actually seeing each other," Yost says. "To protect that relationship, we want to take a breather from it."

Olyphant likes the season's mix — new mystery, old adversary — and says the show can go in many directions, as long as it remains true to one core principle. "It's always good when it feels different yet familiar," he says. "One of the things that's so appealing about this show and the stories we tell is we don't have to be beholden to anything — as long as it feels like Elmore."

The Soundtrack as Co-Star

By Jon Caramanica
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
December 17, 2012

“Nashville,” the salacious drama about the country-music business that had its premiere on ABC in October, has been fastidious in capturing the city’s details: the petty and shortsighted intergenerational squabbling, the paunchy managers with sport coats the color of drywall, the awful fonts on the album covers. This Nashville is a city of flash, which valorizes fame and arena-size ambitions and the machines at work to make those things happen.

But the real showstoppers on “Nashville” have been something else: small songs, sung closely, in intimate rooms. There was “If I Didn’t Know Better,” the breathy, naughty duet sung by Gunnar Scott (Sam Palladio) and Scarlett O’Connor (Clare Bowen) at the Bluebird Cafe that kicked off their songwriting partnership. Later in the season came the tragic “No One Will Ever Love You,” sung by the superstar Rayna James (Connie Britton) and her bandleader-guitarist-ex-boyfriend Deacon Claybourne (Charles Esten), also at the Bluebird, in what was presented as a return-to-form moment for artists who’d been through the pop wringer.

Those songs are among the standouts on the official “Nashville” soundtrack album (on Big Machine), which was released last week. (Songs have also been released to iTunes each week over the course of the season.) And in the show these performances were shot lovingly, and delicately, an implicit argument for the city’s small-batch, handmade traditions, and a counterweight to the drama that inevitably comes with scale. Or maybe it’s just an old-fashioned argument about authenticity, skillfully executed.

For a show that features two rival country superstars as centers of gravity — Rayna James and the teenage phenom Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere) — “Nashville” certainly privileges the small. A look at the credits explains why: The soundtrack producer is T Bone Burnett, one of the most dedicated roots-oriented producers in the country, and one of the executive soundtrack producers is Buddy Miller, one of Nashville’s many great left-of-center singer-songwriters. They also produced several of the songs on the show.

Given the influence of Mr. Miller and Mr. Burnett it’s no surprise that “Nashville” is a sneaky front for traditionalist values. (It may also be an unspoken rejoinder to the reality docudrama of the same name that was broadcast on Fox for two episodes in 2007 before being canceled.) Nashville is a city that resists modernizing except when its arm is twisted; that’s captured in the story line about Juliette, which borrows bits of Taylor Swift’s biography (pink cowboy boots make an appearance) but also some things from Miranda Lambert. That also serves as the shadow narrative of Rayna, a Faith Hill-like superstar in search of new mojo who chooses to work with a heavy-drinking rock producer on new music, much to her label’s chagrin. It’s also a blow against the soap-opera-handsome Deacon, who’s been sober for years, and who serves as this show’s moral and musical center.

Even Juliette is revealed to be a traditionalist in one of the early episodes in which she courts Deacon, both musically and sexually, in part by presenting him with a rare 1938 Martin 00-42 guitar. She also dreams of playing at the Ryman Auditorium, Nashville’s hallowed stage, though in the real world there’s no way a singer of her success wouldn’t have already done so.

That’s the Nashville this show privileges, though — tradition-minded and suspicious of outsiders. The soundtrack goes out of its way to ground the show in the city’s un-flashy side. The alt-country Allison Moorer sings background vocals on one song, and the perennially almost-made-it Sarah Buxton on another. The recordings feature well-regarded Nashville musicians like the mandolinist Sam Bush, the fiddler Casey Driessen and the guitarist Ilya Toshinsky. In one episode the local roots rocker Lindi Ortega appears to spoil Avery Barkley’s (Jonathan Jackson) dreams of opening for the Lumineers.

But these are insider references on a show that is more “Desperate Housewives” than “Austin City Limits.” When Mr. Miller and Mr. Burnett make music for Rayna and Juliette, they rely on musical density and heavy Auto-Tuning, which falls somewhere between a true-to-life representation of pop-country and a critique of Nashville’s center, a not-so-subtle assault on the town’s mystique. If a bunch of actors (some with formal musical backgrounds, some without) can come along and, in the right hands, make music as credible as the people who get paid to do it as a career, then has the music been devalued? That’s a case only an outsider would make.

With that in mind, one of the slickest choices on this soundtrack is the inclusion of “Telescope,” which on the show is one of Juliette’s big hits; she’s shown filming a big-budget video for it that brings traffic to a standstill, including a car Rayna is driving. Metaphor much?

But that song is also sung by Rayna’s two daughters at a school talent show, the original’s dense pop arrangement forsworn for an acoustic treatment with a lone guitar and handclap percussion. (Seemingly everyone on the show has a daughter or a young sister who’s a fan of Juliette, one of this show’s smart twists.)

Rayna’s daughters are played by Lennon and Maisy Stella, Canadian sisters whose parents perform as the Stellas (they appeared on the CMT reality competition “Can You Duet”); the sisters have a YouTube channel of their own in which they cover songs by moody female singers, including a cover of a Robyn song that verges on a Tune-Yards performance.

Their version of “Telescope” is striking — one of the great performances on the show, and also on the soundtrack. The album also includes the original version sung by Ms. Panettiere, at the end, under the name “Telescope (Radio Mix),” those final two words like a graffitied-on insult. But even though it’s rowdy and sassy and polished — or maybe because of that — it’s great. Not even “Nashville” can derail Nashville.

Small-town America and the modern world: Andy Griffith showed one to the other

By Ted Anthony
The Associated Press
The Province
http://www.theprovince.com/
July 4, 2012

Close your eyes and picture it: small-town America.

It has a little post office, of course. A general store, too, and a fishing hole. There's a barber who knows everyone — and knows about everyone. There's a friendly auto mechanic. The picture wouldn't be complete without several women who could be anyone's favourite older sister or aunt.

Kids scurry around at reasonable paces, making low-grade mischief while dirtying their short-sleeve plaid shirts or striped T-shirts. Quirky characters wander about in a landscape of picket fences and healthy storefronts. And the police officer in charge? He's tough but fair, community minded, the Solomon of his entire, geographically limited jurisdiction. He's Atticus Finch without any of the racial tension.

This is, today, the comforting script America often reaches for when it summons the vanished rural nation that so many say they long for. Not coincidentally, it is also the state of mind given to us by Andy Griffith and his long-running TV show.

More than anyone except perhaps Walt Disney, Griffith was the entertainment-world emblem of the 20th-century values Americans often like to say they prize most. He spread the notion, begun by no less a figure than Thomas Jefferson, that somehow the very best of us was contained in the rural life — in this case, the fictional tales of Mayberry that "The Andy Griffith Show" delivered for almost a decade.

"The show is kind of like a step back in time, especially for my generation," Molly Jones 24, of Raleigh, N.C., said after learning of Griffith's death Tuesday. "It's kind of like, 'Oh, this is how it used to be,' and 'Why isn't it this way still?' Things were so much simpler back then."

They certainly were in Mayberry, N.C. When Deputy Barney Fife wasn't arresting someone for jaywalking, little Opie was accidentally killing a bird with his slingshot and earnestly dealing with the moral fallout. Aunt Bee was usually either offering affection, feeling underappreciated or cooking ham. Goober and Gomer were causing disarray, and Floyd Lawson or Howard Sprague was dispensing quirky wisdom. (Come to think of it, that was true of everyone on the program.)

The reality of the age was somewhat different. Griffith's show, in a way, defied its times rather than captured them.

Though it felt like the 1950s in many ways, it was actually a product of the roller-coaster decade that followed. It debuted in 1960, four weeks before John F. Kennedy was elected, and ended its run on a spring evening in 1968 three nights before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in Memphis. While the country was tearing itself apart, Mayberry quietly endured, a Dick-and-Jane primer for an America yanked in every direction — a vision, during the Cold War, of friendly, unintruded-upon isolationism.

At the centre of it all was Griffith himself, a product of Mount Airy, N.C., who began his career doing comedic interpretations of yokels years before he honed his persona into the Sheriff Andy Taylor combination of avuncular community figure, doting father and common-sense Southerner. Though Griffith would later say the sheriff was the better angel of his nature, the perception was otherwise. "Andy was Mayberry, and Mayberry was Andy," Don Knotts, who played Barney Fife, said in 1999.

Griffith was a far more complicated figure than he appeared. As Sheriff Taylor, he effectively acted as a cultural interpreter for a fast-urbanizing nation reared on, and comforted by, Norman Rockwell imagery. Griffith's take on a post-Eisenhower "Our Town" made him, to television, what Woody Guthrie had been to music two decades earlier — a popularizer who came from authentic country roots, polished it all up, then fed Americans back a more digestible version of rural culture. It was an approach that coincided with a musical folk revival in which rural songs were being popularized by mainstream musicians like never before.

During the run of "The Andy Griffith Show," more rural and rural-urban sitcoms had emerged — broader, city-mouse-country-mouse affairs such as "The Beverly Hillbillies," ''Petticoat Junction" and "Green Acres." The market for rural-themed comedy in America had grown so glutted by the dawn of the 1970s that there was actually a "rural purge" in which the networks scrapped most of their country comedies as irrelevant and out of sync with the more urgent times. The Griffith show's sequel, "Mayberry R.F.D.," was one victim, cancelled after three years.

Four decades later, the spirit of Mayberry lives on in the town that claims to be its muse. While it's widely believed that Griffith's childhood in Mount Airy inspired Mayberry, it's absolutely certain that Mayberry has inspired Mount Airy. Tourism has made the marketing of small-town flavour good business, and Griffith's hometown has taken the ball and run with it.

Everywhere you turn in the community, there is a Mayberry reference, explicit or otherwise. The names of businesses downtown — Mayberry Trading Post. Mayberry's Music Center. Mayberry Memories, Barney's Cafe — are testament to the exuberant opportunism Griffith made possible. An annual fall festival, Mayberry Days, draws tens of thousands of people to Mount Airy.

And at 129 North Main St., the owner of the six-decade-old City Barber Shop even added the word "Floyd's" at the front of its name two decades ago to evoke the TV show's Calvin Coolidge-loving tonsorial expert.

Melvin Miles, 69, of Mount Airy, has an idea why people are so attracted to this stuff. Miles works for Squad Car Tours, which owns five Ford Galaxys, replicas of the cars used on the show. He remembers a town where people gathered on porches and — lacking Facebook or 300 channels — just visited.

"The people long for the simple way of life," Miles says. "And that does not exist in too many areas anymore."

Mayberry today is shorthand for a shiny America that may or may not have existed at all, yet endures. Just whistle the theme from the show and Griffith's vision is summoned. Listen to politicians talking about traditional values, and Mayberry is there. Eat at a Cracker Barrel restaurant anywhere in the republic and walk through its "general store," replete with striped candy sticks, jars of apple butter and rocking chairs priced to move, and Andy Taylor is lurking. Try and watch the movie "Pleasantville" without thinking of Mayberry.

Like the folks in "Pleasantville," ''The Andy Griffith Show" eventually moved from black and white to colour. Its final episode in 1968 begins at Mayberry's bucolic railroad depot. But the arriving train brings a chaotic, voluble Italian family to town — or, if you're looking for symbolism, the larger world arrives. There is no going back.

Americans loved, and still love, the notion of the small town as a manageable, nonthreatening, friendly, finite community — an idea all but upended in the 21st century, where the truly isolated town is, for all practical purposes, no more. The black-and-white world that Andy Griffith shaped so masterfully is there for our perusal from a distance, but it is not coming back — either on television or anywhere else.

EDITOR'S NOTE — AP writers Martha Waggoner and Allen G. Breed contributed to this report. Ted Anthony, who writes about American culture for The Associated Press, can be followed at www.twitter.com/anthonyted .

Today's Laugh Track: SCTV Andy Griffith Merv Griffin spoof

Andy Griffith, A Champion of Bluegrass

By Randy Lewis
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/
July 3, 2012

Andy Griffith’s background as a singer and guitarist were obvious during the long run of “The Andy Griffith Show,” in which he would periodically pull out a guitar to strum and sing a bit. He also welcomed the opportunity to incorporate other bona-fide musicians onto the set when producers invited the Dillards bluegrass group from the Ozark Mountains to portray a family band called the Darlings.

The Dillards -- fronted by brothers Douglas and Rodney Dillard -- had moved to Los Angeles from Missouri in the early '60s looking to broaden their audience. Rodney Dillard recently told The Times that they chose Los Angeles over Nashville because “we felt people were more open-minded, creative-wise. Nashville was formula cut-and-dried at the time.”

After signing with Elektra Records in 1962, they were hired to perform on “The Andy Griffith Show,” which was filmed in Hollywood.

“Andy Griffith became more than an icon,” Dillard said in a statement issued Tuesday. “He represented American family values and has given comfort and hope in these uncertain times. He gave The Dillards [The Darlings] an opportunity to be part of this. Andy was kind, generous and patient with an inexperienced group of pickers from the Ozark Mountains.”

Here’s a video of Griffith and actor Denver Pyle, who played the patriarch of the Darling clan, singing the gospel song “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”:



“Because of 'The Andy Griffith Show' and the exposure that music brought, it gave an introduction to bluegrass to a lot of people who never, ever would have gotten to it," Rodney said. "They found others like Flatt & Scruggs and the Osborne Brothers, and found this whole world of the classic form of traditional music.”

Actress Maggie Peterson, who played Charlene Darling from 1963 to 1968, said in a statement issued Tuesday: “The Darling family was treated with such respect on the show. These could have been ridiculous characters without Andy’s respectful reaction to us. Everyone will truly miss him. Thank God we have those beautiful episodes to keep us company.”

Others guested on the show as well, including Roland and Clarence White as “The Country Boys,” with a performance of “Whoa Mule” for which Andy joined in when an Alan Lomax-like character showed up to record some backwoods music:

It was also Griffith’s persona as an unflappable source of common sense and gentle wisdom that prompted country singer Brad Paisley to seek him out when he made the music video for his 2008 single “Waitin’ on a Woman,” Griffith taking the role of Paisley’s mentor in the ways of male-female relationships. The song starts whimsically, examining a man’s frustration with his partner’s tardiness, then segues into a sweetly philosophical take on the subject.

Here’s the video for “Waitin’ on a Woman”:



“Few people in this world will ever have more influence on our lives than Andy Griffith,” Paisley said in a statement issued Tuesday. “An actor who never looked like he was acting, a moral compass who saved as many souls as most preachers, and an entertainer who put smiles on more faces than almost anyone; this was as successful a life as is pretty much possible. Andy Griffith made the world a better place, and I was so proud to call him a friend.”

RELATED:

Photos: Andy Griffith, 1926-2012

Obit: TV Sherrif Andy Griffith dies at 86

Andy Griffith: Iconic actor carried a musical spirit

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

 

 

North Carolina legend Andy Griffith dies at 86

By Dennis Rogers
The News & Observer
http://www.newsobserver.com/
July 4, 2012

Andy Griffith greets Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison after the unveiling of a statue of Griffith and Ron Howard as their characters, Andy and Opie Taylor, from Griffith's television show in Raleigh's Pullen Park. The statue, taken from the show's opening sequence, shows Andy and Opie walking to their fishing hole. (Scott Lewis - newsobserver.com)

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2012/07/03/2340745/andy-griffith-070312.html#storylink=cpy

Andy Griffith’s broad shoulders carried a heavy load for more than 50 years. In 1960, he created an iconic fictional character so noble that today, church groups still seek moral guidance in Sheriff Andy Taylor’s every televised word, deed and gesture.

And over the years, when Griffith insisted that Mayberry, the perfect little town he invented, was absolutely not based on his hometown of Mount Airy, N.C., fans nodded, winked, said “Sure, Andy, whatever you say,” and went right on believing what they wanted to believe.

What they wanted to believe was that around the next bend or over the next hill was a place like Mayberry and a man as fair, wise and decent as Sheriff Andy.
   
Griffith died Tuesday at 86 at his home on Roanoke Island. The Dare County sheriff said Griffith was laid to rest later Tuesday.

“Andy was a person of incredibly strong Christian faith and was prepared for the day he would be called home to his lord,” his wife, Cindi Griffith, said in a statement. “He is the love of my life, my constant companion, my partner, and my best friend. I cannot imagine life without Andy, but I take comfort and strength in God’s Grace and in the knowledge that Andy is at peace and with God.”
Bill Friday, former UNC system president and a longtime friend, said: “Andy Griffith was uniquely an American institution, all by himself. He made you and me want to be the very best we could be, and he never ceased in telling us really how fortunate we were as Americans.”

‘White trash’

There is no tougher role in show business than living up to the persona you created. Those who live in the public’s adoring and unrelenting gaze quickly learn they are expected to always be the character the public loves. Woe unto the one who deviates from that script. Andy Griffith found that lovable Andy Taylor was a tough act to follow.

Andrew (or Andy, as some of the reference sources insist) Samuel Griffith was born the son of a furniture factory worker, Carl Lee Griffith, and his wife, Geneva Nunn Griffith, on June 1, 1926, the same day as Marilyn Monroe. He grew up with other hardscrabble mill kids on the wrong side of the tracks at 711 Haymore St. in Mount Airy.

While he enjoyed the usual small-town summer delights of rock-kicking, cloud-counting and such, there were enough hard times and spirit-crushing prejudice in that blue-collar Surry County town that once he left, his return visits were few.

He once told show-business biographer Lee Pfeiffer, author of “The Official Andy Griffith Show Scrapbook,” “I cannot deny that the person I am was born and raised in Mount Airy, and I was influenced in many ways by that town. I will tell you that it was not all positive. I was actually called ‘white trash’ at one point. That was said by a young girl I was stuck on and she probably wasn’t thinking. And we did come from the wrong side of the tracks. But when she said ‘Get away from me, white trash,’ I did.

“I was only in the fourth grade, and that remark has stuck with me my entire life.”

Boost from a pastor

Not all of his Mount Airy memories were that painful. The Rev. Ed Mickey was pastor of the local Moravian church. One day the gawky kid with the heart-melting grin showed up wanting to learn to play a trombone he’d bought with $6 he had earned from a part-time job with the Depression-era National Youth Administration. Moravians were known for their brass bands. In two months, the youngster was good enough to play “Moonlight Sonata” in church.

Mickey, recognizing he had a talent on his hands, taught the boy to sing. Soon he was singing all over town, sometimes picking up $5 a show. Mickey went on to recommend him for a scholarship to UNC-Chapel Hill.

No one, at least to his face, would call Andy Griffith “white trash” again.

Griffith, like Thomas Wolfe and legions of other talented small-town kids from this state, invented himself at Carolina. He put aside intentions to become a Moravian minister like his mentor and changed his major to music. He was elected president of his fraternity and met Barbara Bray Edwards, from Troy.

They graduated and were married in 1949 and settled down as teachers in Goldsboro. The couple spent summers performing in “The Lost Colony” outdoor drama on Roanoke Island, in which Griffith was a popular Sir Walter Raleigh. He loved the island so much he bought land and would later build a 63-acre estate there.

Whether they needed the money or just needed to perform, the Griffiths created a musical act and traveled the area, playing any small-town civic club that would spring for dinner and a few bucks for gas money. As Andy later told the story, one night Barbara booked them to play a civic club where they had already performed. Problem was, they only had one routine.

“On the way over to the job, I made up a monologue about a country fellow’s first experience seeing a football game and not knowing what was going on,” Griffith said. “And it scored – heavy. So I kept doing it.”

Did he ever. What it was, was “What It Was, Was Football,” a now-classic comedy monologue that ranks with the nonsense of the Marx Brothers and the witty wordplay of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First.” Orville Campbell, publisher of The Chapel Hill Weekly, heard Griffith do his hilarious cornpone routine and offered to have it recorded.

It was the break Griffith needed. He was ready to shake the sandy loam of Eastern North Carolina off his country brogans and head for the bright lights of New York City. Capitol Records bought out his contract with Campbell, and he and Barbara worked up new material for the nightclub circuit, including his follow-up record, a hillbilly retelling of “Romeo and Juliet.”

A taste of early Andy: “If you’ve got a boy that courts a gal you don’t like or the other way around, and if you don’t want the expense of a funeral on you, the best thing to do is let ’em have a cheap wedding.”

‘First TV job’

Then came the chance a new comic in town could only dream about: an offer to appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” For those born since the invention of Velcro, imagine the clout of Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and David Letterman all rolled into one. The Sullivan show was that important in its day. There was a lot riding on the country boy’s first shot on national television.

“It was the first TV job I ever had,” Griffith later told Pfeiffer. “When Ed Sullivan first heard of my record, he wanted to tie me up for 18 guest shots. William Morris (his agent) would only give him four. After my first appearance, he called and wanted out of the next three.

“I never got a single laugh. I just died that night. I absolutely died. I can still go in that theater now and get an upset stomach.”

The Sullivan show was not Griffith’s only disappointment. The hayseed act that wowed ’em back at the Rotary Clubs didn’t exactly catch fire in the nightclubs of New York, New Jersey and Long Island. The couple headed back home to regroup. That’s when Griffith saw a notice that “No Time for Sergeants,” a popular book by author Mac Hyman, was being turned into a television show for the United States Steel Hour. He just knew he was right for the part and headed back to Manhattan to try out.

“No Time for Sergeants,” starring Andy Griffith as the innocently goofy Will Stockdale, aired in March 1955. It was on Broadway by October of that year. It featured an unknown actor named Don Knotts as a character named Manual Dexterity.

The show ran on Broadway for 796 performances and earned Griffith a Tony nomination as Best Featured Actor. Most of the Broadway cast followed the show to Hollywood, where it was reborn as a movie in 1958.

It was not Griffith’s first movie role, however. In 1957, director Elia Kazan had tapped the unknown and unpolished Griffith to play a country singer and egomaniacal psychopath named Lonesome Rhodes in the gut-wrenching drama, “A Face in the Crowd.” It is the story of a wildly popular entertainer who becomes too big too fast and is corrupted beyond salvation. His fall from grace is even faster than his sudden rise from anonymity.

Griffith nailed it. He was dead-on brilliant. His demonic anger and barely controlled energy were difficult to watch, however, and the public stayed away in droves. Today, film buffs consider it a classic. But when it was released, only critics seemed to approve.

Nightclub comedian Danny Thomas had a popular television sitcom in the late 1950s. In 1959, he hit on an idea for an episode that seemed amusing: The fast-talking and often abrasive New York comic he portrayed would be driving his family through the rural South. They’d get pulled over in some hick town by a redneck cop. Hilarity, and a healthy dose of offensive regional stereotyping, would ensue.

“Name ain’t Clem. It’s Andy, Andy Taylor” were the first words spoken by the character who was on the verge of an eight-year reign in television’s Top Ten.

Griffith may have perfected the bumpkin bit, but when it came time to negotiate a contract for a spinoff series based on the country lawman he’d created, he and agent Richard O. Linke played big-city tough. They held out for a deal that gave a rookie series actor 50 percent of what became “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Good, popular, wholesome

Through 249 episodes, from the Oct. 3, 1960, black-and-white debut, when Aunt Bee replaced Rose as the family’s housekeeper, to the color finale on Sept. 22, 1968, when an Italian family moved to Mayberry to help town councilman Sam Jones work his farm, “The Andy Griffith Show” was about as good, popular and wholesome as television ever got.

The show ripened smoothly from its early days, when the ah-shucks, hee-haw Griffith tried too hard to be funny with his over-the-top Southern shtick. It was in the second year when he became the straight man and turned the day-to-day comedy labors over to his band of merry madcaps like rock-chunkin’ Ernest T. Bass, town drunk Otis Campbell, the weirdly Zen-like barber Floyd Lawson and sweet Aunt Bee.

Griffith was a stickler for authenticity. The North Carolina he created on the show would be the North Carolina he knew and the one he wanted the world to see. A typical Griffith decision: The occasional state highway patrolman who stopped by the Mayberry jail wore authentic North Carolina Highway Patrol insignia.

Oh, and there was a deputy named Barney. Don Knotts won the Emmy award as best supporting actor for five straight years for his hijinks. No one ever did that before.

But you already know all there is to know about North Carolina’s all-time most favorite show, don’t you? And if you don’t, it’s still on television every day, 52 years after its debut.

“The Andy Griffith Show” set a standard for excellence that would prove difficult for Griffith to equal. It was so popular – it was No. 1 the day it left the air – that anything that came after it had to be a disappointment. And so it was with Griffith’s career. It would be charitable to say the ’70s were not his favorite decade.

He tried with three series in the 1970s: “The Headmaster,” “The New Andy Griffith Show” and “Salvage One.” Each had its moments but no audience.

And then there were the awful made-for television movies with titles like “Winter Kill,” “Street Killing,” “Deadly Game” and the one that was so bad it is almost funny, “Pray for the Wildcats.” The former sheriff of Mayberry was now a motorcycle-riding psychopath in Baja, Calif.

In 1972, Andy Griffith and Barbara Edwards were divorced. He married Solica Cassuto in 1973 and divorced her 1981. In 1983, with his career going nowhere and his personal life in shambles, Griffith was stricken with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological disorder.

The disease paralyzed him, and for a time it seemed he would never walk again. But the bad career choices, the failed marriages, the illness and even the drug-related death of his son Sam at age 36 would soon be put behind him.

In 1983 he married Cindi Knight. In 1984, he was given the role that would lead to his redemption.

Ben Matlock

Griffith was cast as federal prosecutor Victor Worheide in the made-for-television blockbuster, “Fatal Vision.” It was the story of the famous Jeffrey MacDonald/Green Beret murders at Fort Bragg, and those who knew the real-life principals knew how on-target Griffith’s meaty portrayal of Worheide was. It was the best straight acting he’d done since Lonesome Rhodes almost 30 years earlier.

That role led to his rebirth as a television icon, this time as a Southern lawyer in a rumpled seersucker suit named Ben Matlock. Off and on from 1986 to 1995, Griffith’s Matlock was wise, cranky, stubborn, funny and 100 percent Andy. Those who knew the actor said he was much closer to Matlock’s persona than he ever was to TV’s beloved sheriff.

It was also a favorite of fans of the old show who tuned in to catch the sly Mayberry-related asides Griffith would slip into the dialogue. Don Knotts was also a frequent guest, playing Matlock’s neighbor.

Griffith came home to North Carolina in the 1980s, at peace with his life and career. He moved “Matlock” production to Wilmington and still took a few outside acting jobs when they suited him.

He also became heavily involved in recording gospel music. He won a Grammy Award in 1997 for “I Love to Tell the Story: 25 Timeless Hymns.” Political observers even give him a share of the credit for the 2000 election of former Attorney General Mike Easley as governor. They say the commercials Griffith made for the low-profile Easley gave him the credibility needed to win. If Andy was for him, the thinking went, that was good enough for the rest of us.

Griffith mellowed in his later years. His reputation for a hot temper faded with his youth. He quietly and without fanfare seemed to forgive Mount Airy for its slights by showing up for the dedication of U.S. 52 as the Andy Griffith Parkway in 2002. It was the first time he had returned to his hometown in 45 years. He and Cindi even spent the night in his boyhood home.

During the dedication ceremony, Griffith, then 76, said, “I’m proud to be from the great state of North Carolina. I’m proud to be from Mount Airy. I think of you often, and I won’t be such a stranger from here on out.”

Then he said what the home folks had wanted to hear for a long time. “People started saying that Mayberry was based on Mount Airy,” he said with a smile. “It sure sounds like it, doesn’t it?”
Also in 2002, a statue of Sheriff Andy Taylor and son Opie was erected in Raleigh’s Pullen Park. The inscription is the perfect summation of the show they made famous and, in many ways, the role the public demanded Andy Griffith play for the rest of his life: “The Andy Griffith Show – A simpler time, a sweeter place, a lesson, a laugh, a father and a son.”

In 2005, President George W. Bush awarded Griffith the Presidential Medal of Freedom for, well, just being Andy.

That same year, Griffith was interviewed by Beverly Keel for the online magazine American Profile. In the interview, he talked about the difficulty of life in the shadow of Sheriff Andy Taylor:
“Don’t pay any attention to that, that is a persona,” he said. “I am not any favorite dad; I am not any kind of all-American person. I am just a 79-year-old person. I worship, and I am kind of private.
“I have many failings. My son died of an overdose when he was 36. I was not a good father to him. So I have failed in many ways. I am a man, like any other man.”

Andy Griffith never won an Oscar, an Emmy or a Tony for his acting. But then, around here we never thought of him as an actor. He was just our friend and neighbor, and we were so proud of him we couldn’t hardly stand it.

And if the rest of the world happened to tune in to his popular shows and just happened to assume folks in North Carolina were anywhere near as good-hearted as Andy Taylor, Ben Matlock or the good people of Mayberry, well, that was OK with us, too.

Brooke Cain of The News & Observer and Mark Washburn of The Charlotte Observer contributed to this report.

Hatfield-McCoy feud reignited by new book, TV miniseries

By Cheryl Truman
Lexington Herald-Leader
http://www.kentucky.com/
May 25, 2012

The Hatfield-McCoy feud has been over since the 1890s, but the hills are still alive with talk about it. And not just the hills: cable television and publishing also have taken an interest.

The History channel has been heavily promoting its three-night miniseries Hatfields & McCoys, about the legendary Kentucky-West Virginia feuding families. The miniseries stars Kevin Costner as William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield and Bill Paxton as Randolph "Ole Ran'l" McCoy. It premieres Monday.

Writer Lisa Alther's book Blood Feud: The Hatfields and the McCoys: The Epic Story of Murder and Vengeance (Lyons Press, $24.95) went on sale Tuesday. Alther will sign the book June 5 at The Morris Book Shop in Lexington.

The miniseries goes for the standard feel of a television epic, taking a handful of poetic liberties. Alther's book is well researched, if more tongue-in-cheek. At one point, she refers to "Devil Anse" Hatfield as a padrone, rather like a mountain Tony Soprano.

"It was actually my editor's idea to write it," Alther said of Blood Feud. "He said there hadn't been a book about the feud in about 30 years. There are so many versions to every episode that happened, depending on whether the teller sympathized with the Hatfields or the McCoys. I realized I was going to have to pick my way through it, picking my path as to what seemed plausible to me."

Kentucky ancestry

For some Kentuckians, the feud is not a 150-year-old tale to be parsed out. It's part of their family history.

Patty Hatfield is a Floyd County real estate agent who often draws attention because of her last name. How often do people comment on her Hatfield moniker, which she kept after her 32-year marriage ended amicably?

"All the time," Hatfield said. "And that's when I say I'm not a Hatfield at all, I'm a McCoy. My mom's a McCoy, and I married a Hatfield."

In the 19th-century feud, the McCoys generally hailed from Kentucky and the Hatfields mainly from West Virginia.

Patty Hatfield said she and her mother used to draw attention when they visited clothing shows for a shop they owned wearing their "Hatfield" and "McCoy" name tags.

Benita McCoy-Lyons, a Lexington cookbook author behind the Web site Kentuckyscratchcooking.com, said she owns the gun that is said to have fired the final shot in the feud. Mainly, her battles these days have to do with keeping up with how many meals to fix for her catering business, The Real McCoy Catering.

David McCoy of Lexington is confident that the History miniseries will get the flavor of the feud right.

"I'm just interested to see some of the big-name actors and see how it's portrayed," said David McCoy, who even named one of his sons Mark Randolph after the McCoy clan's founding father. "It really means a lot to our family."

Still, the differences might be startling to those who don't have roots in Eastern Kentucky or Western Virginia — Costner, for one.

In Entertainment Weekly, he said the feud wasn't all that different from property-rights issues in more modern, affluent areas.

"It's very easy to make fun of these people and call them hillbillies," Costner said. "But if somebody builds something that takes away your view in Malibu, you're in court for 15 years. It's not so different today."

'A voice of clarity'

Actress Mare Winningham, who plays matriarch Sarah McCoy in the miniseries, said the part is a great role, a devoted wife and mother who loses almost everything. In her climactic scene, with her house on fire behind her and two of her children dead, Sarah comes striding out of the blaze with a gun in each hand.

"When I read that scene, I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, it's got to be the most cinematic, wonderful scene," Winningham said. "It's the beginning of her madness. She has nowhere to go with all the madness and horror and terror."

Winningham's character "is a voice of clarity throughout the piece ... and in a sense, (she has) some sort of prescience — when they're going to come, how they will come, how bad it's going to get."
"She's the only one in the piece who reacts to the deaths the way she should," Winningham said.

Sarah McCoy is horrified by the deaths and heartbroken when she has to tell three of her sons goodbye before they are shot by the Hatfields. The remaining McCoys are fixed on revenge, obliteration of the other family's partisans.

The miniseries was not filmed on location, but rather in Romania. Winningham said that shooting in Eastern Europe instead of Kentucky and West Virginia wound up being inspiring.

"At first I found that amusing, going all the way to Romania to shoot Kentucky and West Virginia," she said. "To be in a location that was so remote. In some ways it was very isolating, ... but it took us back to another time and place."

Ugly in many ways

The ugliness of the story of the Hatfields and McCoys extended beyond the actual feud.
The original feuding Hatfields are often portrayed as holding an edge in holler social circles, but you wouldn't have wanted to hire them as catalog models.

Alther's book describes a reporter's reaction on seeing Cap Hatfield (portrayed in the miniseries by Prestonsburg native Boyd Holbrook): "I do not think that I ever saw a more hideously repulsive face in all my life. ... Simply a bad young man, without a single redeeming point."

Alther goes on to describe Cap Hatfield's colon deformity, which made dining with him something of an adventure in discovering close up how digestive processes work.

Holbrook, who has had a successful career as a model and is decidedly not like his character in the looks department, said he tried to add some dramatic shading to the brutish character "rather than being evil for evil's sake. ... Cap is kind of like a shadow character."

Brutality and banality

For the nation, the Hatfield-McCoy feud symbolized some dark backwoods intrigue that the media has played up into a fever dream of bloody revenge and forbidden romance deep in the mountains.

It was indeed bloody, and there was some forbidden romance, but the real Hatfield-McCoy feud was a bit more about the banality of backwoods war: cowering in a cave, bickering over a pig, knocking a mother senseless as her home burned and her children died nearby.

David McCoy said, "Young kids in my children's generation on down, ... it's been lost because it's not taught in history classes any more."

Despite the popular idea that the Hatfields were villains and the McCoys were less-successful villains, not all Hatfields took up the family side. Members of both families sided with their friends and neighbors.

And as Winningham and Alther point out, women on both sides of the divide got short shrift. In the midst of a bloody feud, they were expected to raise gardens; preserve food; sew; cook; and raise, slaughter and butcher animals — often while pregnant.

"The women were giving birth every one or two years and doing all the farm work while their husbands were out creating havoc," said Alther, a native of East Tennessee who lives in Vermont, Tennessee and New York.

At the time, The Courier-Journal of Louisville once suggested that the Hatfields move to what was then the Dakota Territory and the McCoys to Venezuela to end the feud, according to Alther's book.

A complicated narrative
"When I started off, all I thought I knew was that it was a struggle over who owned some hogs," Alther said.

It was far more complicated than that, with influences from the Civil War, clashes over the ownership of timber land and "that whole hillbilly stereotype that I think the feud is responsible for, of the dullard with the jug of moonshine and the overalls," she said.

According to Alther's book, the feud finally waned when the Kentucky state government pressured the families to back off so the state could attract outside investment.

The "investment" that the governments wanted was coal mining, which required a docile work force and decimated the influence of farming, hunting and herding.

"It kind of summed up what had been evolving in my mind about how the feuds fit into their era," Alther said. "They weren't just isolated atrocities in Appalachia — how all that led up to the powerful male that deserves to survive when the rest of us don't."

The feud allowed the coal industry to get a toehold in Appalachia, where it has been responsible for environmental destruction and enduring poverty, she said.

"I lay a lot of the responsibility for it at the foot of the feud," she said, "that allowed the corporations to come in without anyone else in America objecting."

ctruman@herald-leader.com

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/05/25/2201014/new-book-new-film-reignite-hatfield.html#storylink=cpy

Tom Selleck is an enduring star beyond any 'Doubt'

By Olivia Barker, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/
May 18, 2012

NEW YORK – After eight movies, including this Sunday's Benefit of the Doubt (CBS, 9 p.m. ET/PT), there's no doubt that Jesse Stone "has legs" like Magnum, says the man behind both characters, Tom Selleck.

It's just that Jesse's are jean-encased — unlike Magnum's short-shorts-exposed gams. (That dubious fashion statement is the only part of the seminal '80s series that's dated, Selleck jokes.)

And if Magnum flew around in a Ferrari, Jesse — the Scotch-swilling, sarcasm-spewing, brow-furrowing sometimes-police chief of picturesque but puny Paradise, Mass. — lumbers along.

"Our shows have pace, but it's a different pace," says Selleck, 67, who calls Doubt the best Jesse movie yet. "It's very deliberate."

After the new Paradise chief dies in a mysterious car explosion, Jesse gets his old job — and PPD hat — back and sets out to solve the crime.

But the plot is sort of beside the point. "The actual mystery of the show is Jesse," says Selleck, an executive producer with a big hand in the shaping the scripts. "Because the story is told through Jesse's eyes, the audience has to walk in his shoes."

Selleck has been walking in Jesse's sturdy lace-ups since 2005, and over time, the two have meshed. There's the appreciation for dogs and Scotch. There's the Luddite leanings: Jesse relies on an ancient-looking answering machine; Selleck says he's "so computer-illiterate I sometimes say 'information superhighway.' "

They even dress the same: dark collared shirt, corduroy blazer (though Selleck's is from Armani — probably not a place most people on a cop's salary would shop) and those jeans.

Nearly as much as Magnum, Jesse is a part of Selleck's career legacy now, "I'm very, very happy to say."

Not that he resents his indelible association with aloha shirts and Detroit Tigers caps. Indeed, he seems tickled to hear that across the way in Brooklyn, hipsters have lovingly appropriated Magnum's iconic aviators-and-mustache look.

But "I also didn't trade off" of Magnum mania.

"I tried to stretch as much as I thought I should. And I don't think you should do something just to prove you can be different. But I think you should keep trying different parts that scare you."

Selleck has broken a number of Hollywood rules, including his staying star power. Encroaching on Magnum and Jesse is NYPD Commissioner Frank Reagan, Selleck's rave-worthy role on Blue Bloods. The CBS cop show will return for a third season in the fall.

He attributes his longevity to "a lot of luck," the ability to age gracefully — "you can't be who you were 20 years ago" — and "hopefully you have talent."

And then there's his nearly 25-year Hollywood marriage to actress Jillie Mack. Although he says they don't ponder that feat much, the secret is "making the right choice, and I certainly did with Jillie," whom he describes "as very independent. She has her life, I've got my life. We see each other all the time, except when I'm working."

Jesse typically shoots over three weeks in Halifax, Nova Scotia. There's no word yet on a ninth chapter.

"I'm always prepared to hear this will be the last one," Selleck says. Still, "I refuse to wrap up and resolve everything and do some feel-good show. If it had to end here, it's not a bad way to go."

That said, Jesse — like Magnum, in a way — is "never finished."

George Lindsey dies at 83; 'The Andy Griffith Show's' Goober Pyle

The character actor played Mayberry's genial auto mechanic, the cousin of naive gas station attendant Gomer Pyle. He also was a regular on 'Hee Haw.'

By Dennis McLellan
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/
May 7, 2012

George Lindsey, the Southern-born character actor who played dim hayseed Goober Pyle, the genial gas station auto mechanic on "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Mayberry R.F.D.," died early Sunday morning. He was 83.

Lindsey, who later was a regular on the long-running country music comedy show "Hee Haw," died at a healthcare center in Nashville after a brief illness, said his manager and booking agent, Carrie Moore-Reed.

"George Lindsey was my friend," Andy Griffith said in a statement. "I had great respect for his talent and his human spirit."

Noting that he had his last conversation with Lindsey a few days ago, Griffith said: "I am happy to say that as we found ourselves in our 80s, we were not afraid to say, 'I love you.' That was the last thing George and I had to say to each other. 'I love you.' "

"The Andy Griffith Show," the classic 1960s situation comedy starring Griffith as the kindly sheriff of Mayberry, N.C., was in its fourth season in 1964 when Lindsey first appeared as the cousin of naive gas station attendant Gomer Pyle, played by Jim Nabors.

Lindsey's character became more prominent after Nabors left the show to star in the spin-off series "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." in 1964.

As Goober, Lindsey wore a brown felt beanie with turned-up scalloped edges and had a tire gauge, pens and pencils stuffed into the pocket of his work shirt and a rag hanging out of the back pocket of his high-wasted pants.

"I had a lot of trouble with that part," he said in a 2005 interview with Alabama's Montgomery Advertiser newspaper. "I'd been playing a lot of heavy character roles. I'd done them on 'Alfred Hitchcock,' and 'Twilight Zone' and some others, and at first I found myself just doing an impersonation of Jim Nabors doing Gomer. I finally said, 'Look, tell me about this guy and who he is.' "

Lindsey often recalled that Griffith told him, "Goober's the kind of guy that would go into a restaurant and say, 'This is great salt.' "

"Andy Griffith turned out to be the greatest teacher I've ever had," Lindsey, an Alabama native, told The Times in 1968. "He kept tellin' me to play myself, to let it happen to me, instead of trying to be funny."

Over the years, fans of the show often would ask Lindsey to repeat a line he said during his first appearance on the series: a scene in Sheriff Andy Taylor's office in which Gomer asks Goober to do his "take-off on Cary Grant" for Andy.

The bashful Goober quickly gives in and delivers a humorously terrible: "Judy, Judy, Judy, Judy, Judy."

"Couldn't you just swear Cary Grant was right here in this room?" an impressed Gomer says.

"Yeah, that was good, Goober," says Andy.

One of Lindsey's favorite episodes was the one in which, as a practical joke, young Ron Howard's Opie and a friend hide a miniature walkie-talkie under the collar of the stray dog Goober has adopted.

"Goober thought he had a talking dog," Lindsey said in a 1985 Associated Press interview. "It revealed Goober's childlike qualities; it made you laugh and cry."

Lindsey believed "The Andy Griffith Show," which earned Don Knotts five Emmy Awards as Deputy Barney Fife, was popular because "it was honest and simple."

"At that time, we were the best acting ensemble on TV," he said. "The scripts were terrific."

After Griffith left the high-rated CBS series in 1968, Lindsey continued to play Goober on the sequel series, "Mayberry R.F.D.," starring Ken Berry. It was canceled in 1971.

An only child in a poor family, he was born in Fairfield, Ala., on Dec. 17, 1928, and grew up in Jasper, Ala. He majored in biological science and physical education at what is now the University of North Alabama.

After graduating in 1952, he spent four years in the Air Force and another year as a history teacher and head basketball coach at Hazel Green High School in Alabama before moving to New York City, where he studied acting on the GI Bill at the American Theatre Wing.

One of his first jobs on TV was as one of the liars on the quiz panel show "To Tell the Truth." He did a stand-up comedy act to make ends meet and later played opposite Ray Bolger in the 1962 Broadway musical comedy "All American."

After landing in Hollywood that same year, Lindsey actually auditioned for the role of Gomer Pyle — and, he later said, was told he had the part — before it went to Nabors, a fellow Alabama native.

Lindsey's later credits included providing voices for characters in the Disney animated features "The Aristocats," "The Rescuers" and "Robin Hood." He also had a long run on the syndicated "Hee Haw."

"I really don't do Goober on 'Hee Haw.' I do George Lindsey," he told the Associated Press in 1982. "Maybe I don't know where George Lindsey stops and Goober begins. If you're in a series, as I was for seven and a half years, you draw on every personal experience for that character."

Although he once resented being typecast as Goober, Lindsey learned to embrace the role that brought him fame and provided the title for the 1995 book "Goober in a Nutshell," which he wrote with Ken Beck and Jim Clark.

As Lindsey said in the 1985 AP interview, "Goober is Everyman. Everyone finds something to like about ol' Goober."

Lindsey, who was divorced, is survived by his son, George Lindsey Jr.; his daughter, Camden Jo Lindsey Gardner; two grandsons; and his longtime companion, Anne Wilson.

dennis.mclellan@latimes.com