Goober.
Goober.
He was Gomer Pyle's less successful cousin on The Andy Griffith Show. Later appeared on Mayberry RFD and something I don't remember called The New Andy Griffith Show. He raised money for Special Olympics and held a celebrity golf tournament to help developmentally disabled children.
He played a racist deputy on an episode of The Twilight Zone, "I am the Night - Color Me Black" (1964), appeared on Hee Haw, several episodes of Gunsmoke, an episode of M*A*S*H*, some episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. He was in Ensign Pulver, several episodes of Love American Style, and was in a few Disney movies including Snowball Express and Charley and the Angel. He was in Canonball Run II along with his former TV cousin, Jim Nabors.
My mother disliked George Lindsay. She seemed convinced that he really was just like Goober.
"He didn't write the script," I told her. "His character was stupid. It doesn't mean he is. What was he supposed to do?"
He did have an idiotic screen persona, but that wasn't his fault. He reached his zenith on The Andy Griffith Show after it had gone into decline, after Mayberry became a town full of childlike simpletons. Goober was a simpleton among simpletons.
In one episode, Opie and his friend had concealed a walkie talkie on a dog's collar. They convinced Goober that the dog could talk. Andy tells them how terribly cruel it was to trick Goober in this way. Goober tried to conceal the depth of his humiliation when the truth is revealed.
I watched him on two episodes of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour. In one, he plays a chauffeur for a local political boss. He beats up a man whose brother is plotting to kill his boss.
In another episode, he plays a man whose mother was just told by a doctor that he had the mind of a 10-year-old. He has an emotional scene. There's a long close-up of him telling the story about the time his father forced him to drown a kitten. It ends with him in tears.
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