We've talked before
about the odd juxtapositions that fate sometimes brings, but in researching
topics for today's post, we came across one that struck us as so odd that we were
compelled to note it: On June 1, 1926, both Marilyn Monroe
and Andy Griffith
were born.
The two would seem to have little
in common,
but both were born into poverty (Monroe was a ward
of the state, and Griffith slept
in dresser drawers until his parents were able to afford a bed for him). And
after a period of struggle, each achieved show business immortality -- she as
a sex symbol
and he as a down-home sheriff/philosopher.
Obviously, Monroe had the tougher time. She battled personal demons
while juggling three marriages
(and who knows how many affairs) with an acting career that pigeonholed her
as an empty-headed blonde bombshell. Griffith's career had its own bumps. Despite his dramatic performance in A Face in the Crowd, he was typecast as the folksy Andy Taylor,
and his film career never really took off. He failed in four other television series before hitting big in Matlock
-- as, yes, a folksy lawyer.
While there's no indication that the two ever met, there are enough
intersections in their lives -- two examples: composer Earle
Hagen wrote the whistling theme to The Andy Griffith
Show and was also nominated for an
Oscar on one of Monroe's last films,
and Monroe had an affair with Elia Kazan,
who directed Griffith in Crowd
-- to make the idea of a meeting of these two icons of the 1950s just
plausible enough. One can only speculate what their conversation might have
consisted of, but we'd bet it wouldn't have been about football.
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