Question: Were black actors ever shown in the black and white versions of the Andy Griffith show?
Bishop73
2nd Feb 2020
The Andy Griffith Show (1960)
28th Mar 2016
The Andy Griffith Show (1960)
Question: When Peggy is mad at Andy and storms away she gets into a car with the steering wheel on the right side. I'm just curious as to why?
Answer: Steering wheel looked like it was on the right hand side. Maybe the car was an import from England.
Answer: From what I see, the steering wheel is on the left hand side. She just happens to get in on the passenger side, to avoid going around the car into the street or the bushes were blocking her way.
Answer: Although I'm not sure, I always thought that it had to do with not showing production lights' reflection off the car door.
Answer: I answered a similar question about this show, and I'll repost what was from the Internet as a possible reason: This could be production-related in setting up the shot. For example, getting in on the passenger side can be shot as a locked-down tripod shot. Getting in on the driver side means the character has to walk around the car, requiring at minimum a pan/tilt/zoom and probably a dolly shot to make it look good (they didn't have Steadicams back then, so any time the camera had to move, a dolly track had to built for it to roll on). That would add expense and time to what was really just an establishing shot. This was a low-budget, weekly TV show, and scenes would shot in the easiest, fastest, and most economical way possible, even if it seems somewhat illogical.
Except the way the shot was set up, the camera wouldn't have had to follow her walking around the car. Being equipment-related is the least likely reason.
Answer: I believe Rockne Tarkington (from season 7) was the only black person with a speaking line in the entire show, which is what I'd say qualifies someone to be an actor in the show. That being said, there were at least a handful of black and white episodes (season 1-5) where black extras were used and seen on screen. For example, "Barney Gets His Man" (season 1) and "Opie and the Carnival" (season 5). But none of them had any lines and weren't credited for their appearance.
Bishop73