Decades before Happy Days and his career as a film director, Ron Howard, age 5, was best known as Opie, the son of Andy Griffith, a sheriff in the sleepy burg of Mayberry, North Carolina. Griffith's comic foil was Don Knotts as bumbling deputy Barney Fife. The show ran from 1960 to 1968. Griffith died in 2012 at age 86 and Knotts passed in 2006 at 81. Now, in an Instagram post, Howard shared today a great revelation about his relationship with Knotts.
"It was recently confirmed that Don and I were actually distant cousins!" Howard wrote on Instagram along with a 1997 photo of the three.
That's it. No more details are available at press time, and Aunt Bee couldn't be reached for comment.
Illustration by the great Drew Friedman!
Previously:
• Drew Friedman print of Don Knotts as Barney Fife
• There were lyrics and Lorne Greene sang the theme to 'Bonanza'
• Andy Griffith: Before Mayberry, A Movie Monster
