Andy Griffith - Telegraph In 1949 he married Barbara Edwards, whom he had met at college, and with whom he developed a travelling musical act, touring the Carolinas in a station-wagon. One of Griffith's most popular turns was as a simple rustic in a comic monologue called What It Was, Was Football, about a bumpkin attending a college football game. This led to his first network television appearance, on The Ed Sullivan Show, in 1954. The following year he starred as another hillbilly figure in a stage adaptation of a bestselling novel, No Time For Sergeants, which transferred to Broadway; he reprised the role in a film version in 1958. In 1957, directed by Elia Kazan, Griffith starred in the feature film drama A Face in the Crowd as Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, a jailbird and amateur singer who becomes a philosopher on national television. Griffith turned to musical comedy in 1959 in a Broadway version of Destry Rides Again, taking on a role played in various film versions by Tom Mix, James Stewart, Joel McCrea and Audie Murphy. When the run ended in July 1960 he was cast in his own television programme. Although The Andy Griffith Show initially ran until 1968, repeats continued for decades thereafter. A committed Christian, Griffith won a Grammy in 1997 for his album of gospel music I Love to Tell the Story - 25 Timeless Hymns. In 2007 he appeared in a critically-acclaimed independent film, Waitress, playing Joe, the boss at an American diner. The following year he was in the awarding-winning music video Waitin" on a Woman. Griffith suffered from Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that can cause sudden paralysis. In 2000 he suffered a heart attack and underwent quadruple bypass surgery. He also dabbled in Democratic politics, appearing in 2008 in an Obama campaign video, and two years later made a commercial praising the President's health care legislation. He was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts Hall of Fame in 1992. In 2005 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the country's two highest civilian honours. With his first wife, Barbara Edwards, Andy Griffith adopted two children, one of whom predeceased him in 1996. This marriage and his second, to Solica Cassuto, ended in divorce. He married his third wife, Cindi Knight, in 1983. Andy Griffith, born June 1 1926, died July 3 2012