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The Howell brothers are working out the details for the film’s distribution. Until the specifics of any distribution deal are finalized, there won’t be any screenings that are open to the public. But there are some private premieres planned in September for donors and other participants.

The first premiere will be in Danville, Ind., during the weekend of Labor Day. It will be followed by a West Coast premiere in Los Angeles in mid-September and an East Coast premiere in Mount Airy, N.C., the week of Mayberry Days^® (September 22-26). There will also be a private VIP online screening in October. Stay tuned for updates on the movie’s progress as the production is now getting really close to the finish line!

Meanwhile, for those on Facebook, here’s a link to the official trailer for Mayberry Man.

And with that, that’s a wrap on our News of Cast & Crew for this issue..

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Mayberry In Memoriam

We’re very sad to report the passing of three actors who made significant contributions to Mayberry: Josie Lloyd, Gavin MacLeod and Arlene Golonka.

Memorial tributes to Josie Lloyd and Gavin MacLeod are below. In honor of Arlene Golonka and her two episodes of TAGS and 49 episodes of “Mayberry R.F.D.”,  we’ve created a Special Edition of The eBullet: Remembering Arlene Golonka.

Please click HERE for the link to that tribute.  (Or you can also always find it by clicking the Special Editions subhead in any edition of The eBullet.)

So, click the link above for the special tribute to Arlene, and continue to read below for our salutes to Josie Lloyd and Gavin MacLeod.

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But it is for her portrayal of Lydia Crosswaith in “Barney Mends a Broken Heart” in the third season and especially in the fifth season’s “Goober and the Art of Love” that Josie Lloyd is forever immortalized in Mayberry lore.

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Josie’s hilariously stoic demeanor and masterful monotone delivery of her brilliant “ordinary conversation” are permanently etched in the memory banks of Mayberry fans, just as her earlier rendition of “Sweet Afton” is, for better or worse, the only version of that standard that most of us usually hear in our mental soundtrack.

Records indicate that, during at least part of the era that she worked on TAGS,  Josie lived in an apartment in West Hollywood. Josie’s career in front of the camera apparently ended in 1967, and confirmed facts about her life after that time are elusive. There are references to her being a director, but we’ve not found any validated credits for either film or stage.

Josie married Michael Gruen at some point in the 1960s. Given the coincidence of timing, it’s possible that Josie’s marriage and her becoming a mother were connected to her retirement from performing. In 1967,  the couple had a daughter, Madeleine Michael Gruen, who was married in 2002, was a noted terrorism analyst (including a stint with the N.Y.P.D.), had a son, and, in September 2015, by then a single mother, sadly died of breast cancer.

After her marriage to Michael Gruen ended, Josie married legendary puppeteer Bil Baird (his fourth marriage) in 1974. It’s possible that at least a portion of Josie’s purported directing career had to do with some of his later puppeteering. At the very least, Josie worked as a puppeteer with her husband in  a 1975 production of Alice in Wonderland. The couple divorced in 1984.

About 25 to 30 years ago, TAGSRWC attempted to make contact with  Josie–just to let her know how much fans loved her Mayberry portrayals. We also hoped that she might be open to attending one of the Mayberry cast reunions that were entering their heyday around that time. The dream of getting Lydia and Goober together again was like Mayberry catnip for fans. (George Lindsey also agreed that a Goober-Lydia reunion would be a noteworthy achievement.)

We knew that Josie was extremely private and did not encourage contact with fans. She was even known to be somewhat distant from members of her own family. But through sources and methods that would make the CIA’s dead-drops look like child’s play, we secured her home phone number from a high-level contact.

When we called the number, we predictably got Josie’s answering machine (in the days before today’s style of remote voicemail became dominant). We left our phone number and an un-pushy message expressing our admiration for her Mayberry work and the keen interest by fans in having her attend an event sometime.

We were hopeful for a response, but we weren’t surprised when we received none. We later learned that Josie had received the message, was very much aware of TAGSRWC and had no interest in any additional contact. We respected her wishes and made no further official attempts to connect with her.

Josie’s reluctance to have unsolicited contact from strangers might have stemmed in part from Bil Baird and her receiving threatening phone calls in the late 1970s from callers who confused Bil Baird with William R. Baird, a noted abortion rights advocate who lived in their general vicinity. “We’ve lived with this for many years,” Josie told The New York Times at the time. That remark from November 1979 constitutes the last documented words from Josie that we have found so far.

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If we confirm more information about Josie Lloyd’s career and life, we’ll update this story. (We have sent queries to some folks who might be able to shed further light.) With luck, we may even be able to expand this modest tribute into a fuller feature about this beguiling enigma whose performances in Mayberry and elsewhere continue to delight viewers.

At the time of her passing in 2020, Josie Lloyd was survived by her father Lloyd (now deceased), brother Mike and her grandson.

Echoing Juanita Pike (and with apologies to poet Robert Burns), we say a fond farewell to Josie Lloyd with these sentiments…

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among the green braes,
Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise;

Our Josie’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

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Remembering Gavin MacLeod

Gavin MacLeod
1931-1921

Gavin MacLeod, who played two memorable roles in TAGS, died at his home in Palm Desert, Calif., on May 29, at age 90.

Gavin played the bank robber (alias Gilbert Jamel) posing as a film director in “TV or Not TV” in the fifth season. A few episodes later, early in the sixth season, he then played actor Bryan Bender in “The Taylors in Hollywood.”

Because Bryan Bender was playing Andy Taylor in the Sheriff Without a Gun movie, Gavin has the distinction of being the only actor besides Andy Griffith to play Andy Taylor on TAGS.

Just prior to his first appearance on TAGS, Gavin played conman Fred Fay in “Dance, Marine, Dance,” a first-season episode of “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.”

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Gavin MacLeod was born Allan George See, the first child of parents Margaret (who had worked for Reader’s Digest and at a bank) and George (an electrician and gas station owner) in Mount Kisco, N.Y., on February 28, 1931. The birth of brother Ron three years later would complete the young family. Sadly, George See, who struggled with alcoholism, died of cancer in 1945, at age 39, when Gavin was only 14.

Gavin was raised in nearby Pleasantville, about an hour’s drive north of New York City. Gavin attended Pleasantville High School, where he played football and performed in plays. He was graduated in 1947 and received a scholarship to Ithaca College in upstate New York. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts in 1952.

Gavin had started acting when he was four years old. He was smitten by the audience’s positive reaction to his performance in a play. While at Ithaca, he studied drama with Beatrice MacLeod, whose last name he later borrowed for part of his stage name. (His first name was taken from someone he had seen on television.) He later said that he felt that the name Allan didn’t sound strong enough and that See was too confusing for a last name.

Following his graduation from college, Gavin joined the Air Force, for which he helped put on plays and other entertainment. After the Air Force, he worked odd jobs, including as a janitor and as both an elevator operator (for $36 a week) and an usher at Radio City Music Hall, where he met first wife Joan “Rootie” Rootvik, a Rockette. They married in 1955 and had four children (Keith, Julie, David and Meghan).

Gavin’s talent and perhaps his elevator and usher connections paid off when, in 1956, he made his first appearance on Broadway in A Hatful of Rain at the Lyceum Theatre. Both he and Steve McQueen were replacements for original cast members.

Encouraged by his success on Broadway, Gavin decided to join the waves of actors who had been heading to Hollywood. Though he returned to Broadway for a short stint in The Captains and the Kings in 1962 (the show had toured the country but, despite a top-notch cast, closed after its first week on Broadway), Gavin generally stayed focused on his film career and doing California-based theater.

As a stout man in his twenties, Gavin, who also had become largely bald while still in college and therefore looked years older than his actual age, was almost always cast as a heavy. To try to get additional and more diverse parts, Gavin started wearing toupées, the first of which he bought secondhand, because he couldn’t afford a brand new one.

The hairpiece seemed to help. Gavin worked in a few films and many top television shows in the late 1950s and into the early 1960s. His first credited movie role was as a bully detective in the prison film I Want to Live! in 1958. (Susan Hayward won an Oscar for her starring role.)

Among the TV shows were “The Thin Man,” “Peter Gunn,” “Mr. Lucky,” “Dr. Kildare,” “Death Valley Days,” “Perry Mason,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (his first time working with Mary Tyler Moore) and several episodes of “The Untouchables.” His biggest movie of that era was 1959’s Operation Petticoat, starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis. Gavin played Ernest Hunkle.

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