ANDY GRIFFITH DOUBLE FEATURE
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Before Andy Griffith starred as Sheriff Andy Taylor on CBS’s The Andy Griffith Show in 1960, he had starred in two very popular, extremely different movies. One was 1957’s A Face in the Crowd, in which he showed he could play a character much darker and more manipulative than his merry Mayberry persona. The other was 1958’s No Time for Sergeants, the movie version of the 1955 U.S. Steel Hour live Golden Age telecast of the same name, also starring Griffith. That comedy also, in essence, provided the blueprint for a similar comedy about a country bumpkin new to the military – CBS’s Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., which featured Jim Nabors as a character who was, indeed, spun off from Mayberry and The Andy Griffith Show. Both movies, No Time for Sergeants at 8 p.m. ET (pictured) and A Face in the Crowd at 10:15 p.m. ET, are shown tonight by TCM.