The Mystery of Al Becker

The Andy Griffith Show premiered before I was two years old. While the first new episodes I would have been old enough to remember were color ones, I also remember seeing the black and white episodes in reruns.

Another series I remember through reruns is The Real McCoys, though I was so young my strongest memories are really just the dinner bell being rung at the beginning of the show and the way Grandpappy Amos walked.

I know that the shows shared a huge number of guest stars. Mayberry’s Mayor Pike was also the veterinarian Doc Thornton on The Real McCoys. Frank Myers who had a Confederate bond in Mayberry was the McCoy’s neighbor, George MacMichael. There are many more examples. Not to mention that Dick Crenna who played Luke McCoy went on to direct eight episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, including the classics “A Date for Gomer,” “Citizen’s Arrest,” and “Opie the Birdman.” When you saw a barn in the early Mayberry episodes, it was the McCoys’ barn since The Real McCoys was filmed on the 40 Acres Backlot just like The Andy Griffith Show.

As a result, I have been gradually working my way through the run of The Real McCoys. I recently watched a third season episode titled “Grandpa Fights the Air Force” in which Grandpappy Amos sneaked onto an Air Force base because he was upset about the planes that kept flying over his farm creating sonic booms.

In the episode which aired on September 15, 1959, Amos’s grandson, Luke, and his wife, Kate, went to the Air Force base to try to find Grandpa but were immediately held for questioning. The dialogue of note was:

KATE: You see, our grandpa ain’t the type of person that goes around lookin’ for trouble, but, well, he always seems to find it. Like that time back home in Smokey Corners, he…

PROVOST MARSHALL: Back home where?

LUKE: Smokey Corners, West Virginia. (proudly) Population 307. Queen City of the Moccasin Creek.

KATE: You know your snakeskin bookmarks?

PROVOST MARSHALL: No, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.

KATE: Well, they’re all made right there.

LUKE: Why, it’s knowed as one of Smokey Corners’ biggest success stories. This fella Al Becker started that whole industry with one old snake and a big idea.

Al Becker! Hey, I recognized that name! Later in the episode, Amos was caught and questioned in an interrogation room by an Air Force officer. When Amos was asked where he was from and answered Smokey Corners, the officer couldn’t find it on the map. Amos said it was about 57 miles south of Wheeling, then added:

AMOS: You turn left where Moccasin Creek empties into Tadpole Swamp. That’s our resort area. Tadpole Swamp’s famous for mud baths. Cures just about anything that ails ya’.

OFFICER: (still having trouble finding it on the map) Maybe I better start back at Wheeling again.

AMOS: Ya’ wanna’ watch out for snakes if you’re muddin’, though. But if you do catch one, Al Becker will give you 10 cents for it.

Mayberry fans will remember that in “A Date for Gomer,” which was first broadcast on December 9, 1963, Andy was trying to make small talk before the group, which included Gomer and Thelma Lou’s cousin, Mary Grace, left for the Chamber of Commerce dance. Chuckling throughout, Andy was telling a story about a collie dog that had just been shaved for the summer who came into Norman’s Groceteria.

ANDY: Well, Al Becker happened to be standin’ there right at that minute… Y’all know Al Becker.

HELEN: I don’t.

THELMA LOU: I don’t know him either.

ANDY:: (to Barney) Well, I know you know ‘im.

BARNEY: Al Becker? No, I can’t say I do. But that ain’t important, Ange. You go right ahead.

Andy then stopped, explaining the story wouldn’t mean anything if they didn’t know him. Barney then kept the awkward situation going another moment, saying aloud, “Al Becker… Nah, I can’t place him.”

A quick check of the credits revealed that both “Grandpa Fights the Air Force” and “A Date for Gomer” which aired more than three years later had both been written by the writing team of Everett Greenbaum and Jim Fritzell. This convinced me that the use of the name Al Becker must have had some significance to one of them since they bothered to use it in two different series. I could not recall ever seeing any reference to it in any of my books on The Andy Griffith Show and a Google search was unfruitful, so I reached out to someone I knew had an actual relationship with Greenbaum. Jim Clark is a noted author of several fine books about The Andy Griffith Show and is the founder of The Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club.

I asked Jim if he knew whether Al Becker was a real person and if so, who he was. Jim confirmed Al Becker was an across-the-street neighbor of Greenbaum’s when he was growing up in Buffalo, New York! Jim also mentioned that he never asked Greenbaum about whether Al may have contributed his last name to Sam and Lily Becker in “Quiet Sam,” but it seems a safe bet that was also the origin of the last name.

After I made the original blog post, I learned that I had read about Al Becker somewhere before. I obviously don’t have total recall and I am surprised a Google search for the names “Greenbaum” and “Al Becker” did not yield this, but Professor Neal Brower had revealed the connection with the Mayberry part of the equation in his excellent book, Mayberry 101. In the book, Greenbaum said he did not recall where he got the humorous idea of a shaved collie but that Al Becker had lived across the street from him in Buffalo. Neal corresponded with Greenbaum and other writers of The Andy Griffith Show extensively in writing his book. Mayberry fans are grateful to have resources like Neal and Jim Clark available.

By the way, as I mentioned earlier, there were many character actors who appeared in both series. In the fifth season episode “Banjo-Playing Deputy” on The Andy Griffith Show, one of the workers who was stealing purses at the carnival where Jerry Miller had worked was played by Lee Van Cleef. And one of the sentries who Grandpappy Amos sneaked by to get on the Air Force base and then searched for him? Played by Lee Van Cleef, of course! When Van Cleef appeared in The Andy Griffith Show in 1965, he later said that year he was on the verge of giving up his acting career. But he was then cast that same year in Clint Eastwood’s For a Few Dollars More directed by Sergio Leone. Van Cleef’s anti-hero role made him an international star.

One other last point. A groceteria is an obsolete term for a self-serve grocery store, meaning Mayberry had, at least for a time, another store other than Foley’s down the street from the courthouse.