How a Shakespearean Actor From the Bronx Became ‘The Andy Griffith Show’s Ernest T. Bass
Fans of The Andy Griffith Show first met wild-eyed mountain man Ernest T. Bass in the Season 3 episode “Mountain Wedding.” A neighbor of the musical hillbilly clan the Darlings, Bass, played by Howard Morris, figured that proximity would put him first in line to marry sole Darling daughter Charlene. When Charlene married soldier Dud Wash instead, Bass took noisy exception — and The Andy Griffith Show earned one its most memorable recurring characters.
Shakespeare, Caesar and Ernest T. Bass
A classically trained actor who performed Shakespeare while serving in the Army, Morris never intended to make physical comedy his calling card. He was also no fan of television, preferring to direct so he had a greater impact on what viewers could choose from when they turned on their sets. But some well-received appearances on Sid Caesar‘s Your Show of Show, often paired with a young Carl Reiner, cemented Morris as an in-demand comic performer for decades to come.
“I was a damned good actor, too, but I got detoured into sketch comedy,” the 5′ 6” Morris said. “And then, after all, my physique ruled out parts. Tony Quinn, I ain’t. Once in sketch comedy, I was typed. And it’s murder to get out of that rut.”
It’s me, it’s me … it’s Ernest T.
Morris’ time with Sid Caesar eventually led him to the mountains of Mayberry. On his official web site, now run by his son, Morris wrote that Aaron Ruben, a former writer from Your Show of Shows, had moved on to producing The Andy Griffith Show and was having trouble fleshing out a new character for an upcoming episode. He sent Morris a script to see if he had any insight, or interest in embodying Ernest T. Bass.
Morris admitted that, having been born in the Bronx, he had his work cut out for him to get into the skin of the cap-toothed homesteader with the corniest of cornpone accents.
“It was all purely experimental,” Morris wrote, of his rhyme-loving, rock-throwing bumpkin. “I had no idea what would, or would not work. … The first scene that was ever shot with Ernest T. was the scene in the woods with Andy and Don. I slowly ran up that hill, duckin’ in and out of trees, [and] Ernest had finally arrived.
“None of the scripts called for Ernest to jump around like a nut,” Morris continued. “That was just the result of my innards searching for ways that the character needed to move.”
Fans loved the quirky character, and Bass would appear in four more episodes. Season 4’s “Ernest T. Bass Joins the Army” sees Ernest try to enlist, figuring it might impress mountain gals like Charlene enough to fall for him too. Later that season, Andy and Barney try to polish some manners and class into the lovelorn Ernest in “My Fair Ernest T. Bass.”
Morris only appeared as Ernest in a single Season 5 episode, “The Education of Ernest T. Bass,” in which he tries furthering his education to get himself a girl. However, the actor did serve as director and provide voice talent for two additional episodes — “Barney’s Bloodhound” and “The Family Visit” — and appeared as a bespectacled TV repairman in “Andy and Helen Have Their Day,” which Morris also directed.
Ernest T. Bass made his Mayberry swan song in Season 6’s “Malcolm at the Crossroads,” which sees affable, bike-riding Englishman Malcolm Merriweather (Bernard Fox) return to Mayberry for good.
Everett Collection
Andy appoints him the new school crossing guard, having fired Ernest from the gig for hurling rocks at motorists who rubbed him the wrong way. Between that and Malcolm “ruining his matrimonial chances with his beloved Romeena,” Ernest challenges the “Englishster” to a fight. Andy prevents the fisticuffs by telling Irishman Ernest that Malcom’s part Irish, too, but when Malcolm inadvertently sets him straight, Ernest T. goes full-on Bass, fists and insults flying.
Goodbye to Ernest T.
In a 2001 interview, Morris told Scripps Howard News Service that, after that episode, producer Sheldon Leonard told him he was off the show. Not because he wasn’t good enough — in fact, just the opposite.
“‘You did too good,'” Morris said Leonard told him. “‘You overpower all the other characters.’”
Morris didn’t mind. By 1965, when he filmed his final Andy Griffith episode, Morris was thriving as a voice actor and TV and film director, including multiple episodes of Hogan’s Heroes. But he always spoke warmly of his time spent in Ernest’s newsboy cap, vest and self-inflicted predicaments.
Gene Trindl / TV Guide / courtesy Everett Collection
“Wonderful cast. Terrific people,” Morris said in a 2004 interview with The Television Academy Foundation, adding that the experience “filled me with joy.” He even reprised the character in the 1986 TV film, Return to Mayberry, cementing Ernest T’s status as one of Mayberry’s most memorable residents, even if he only appeared now and then.
“I’ve always loved him. He’s a wonderful guy,” Morris, who was married five times and died in 2005 at age 85, told Scripps. “He’s a mean little [S.O.B.] and that appeals to me. He gets away with all this stuff.”
Did you love Ernest T. Bass, too, or did his wild man ways drive you crazy? Let us know in the comments section below.
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