What Happened to Jack Burns After He Was Fired From ‘The Andy Griffith Show’?
What To Know
- Jack Burns played Deputy Warren on The Andy Griffith Show for just 11 episodes before being let go, a decision attributed to the show’s discomfort with replacing Don Knotts rather than Burns’ performance.
- After his brief television role, Burns found greater success in stand-up comedy, notably partnering with Avery Schreiber for the popular Burns and Schreiber comedy act and variety show.
- Burns later transitioned to writing and producing, contributing significantly to The Muppet Show, The Muppet Movie, Hee Haw, and hosting Saturday Night Live, cementing his legacy in comedy and television.
It’s about time for Mayberry fans, at long last, to stand up and defend a fallen soldier, a man who was cast in a role that no one could have found success in. I’m talking about the nephew of Floyd the Barber himself: poor Deputy Warren, played by Jack Burns. Burns was brought on to replace Don Knotts after he left The Andy Griffith Show in its fifth season; the show’s first reaction was to rewrite existing, yet-to-be-filmed scripts for the new actor. Burns was a talented and funny man, but there was no way things were going to turn out his way when fans of the show started debating which actor was a funnier deputy.
All told, Jack played Deputy Warren for just 11 episodes during season six. He showed up in October, and he was gone by January. In an interview for Richard Michael Kelly’s 1981 book The Andy Griffith Show, Griffith revealed that “I can’t begin to explain how uncomfortable we were. I get strung out pretty easily, and if I’m uncomfortable I’m hell to be around, and I was very uncomfortable. Just before Christmas, we decided we had to let him go and pay him off for the rest of the year … It wasn’t Jack’s fault, it was our fault.”
Maybe it was a rough holiday season for the lad; who knows? What we do know is that after those 11 episodes, everyone on the show, even Andy, did their very best to pretend that Warren had never even stepped foot in Mayberry. It’s hard to believe that a town as friendly as Mayberry would treat an eager and ambitious, albeit frequently bumbling, deputy that way.
TV Guide/Courtesy Everett Collection
After his brief stint on The Andy Griffith Show, Jack went back to doing what he did best: stand-up comedy. Before Andy, he had teamed up with the legendary George Carlin, and post-Andy, he found a new partner in the equally legendary and even zanier Avery Schreiber. Their comedy act, Burns and Schreiber, became so popular that they ended up having their own primetime variety show on a couple of different occasions.
I remember watching these guys host a Saturday morning cartoons preview show as a kid and never connecting Jack with Deputy Warren. He had reinvented himself and found success on his own terms. But truthfully, the best was yet to come.
After years in front of the screen, Jack made a conscious decision to step away, or better put, step behind the screen, and focus on writing. He was the head writer and producer for The Muppet Show when it debuted in 1977, and he co-wrote the screenplay for the movie based on that show, 1979’s The Muppet Movie.
Writing about that period in Jack’s life, blogger Mark Evanier said this, “He was a charming guy, even funnier off-stage than on … and he could be pretty darned funny on-stage.”
Around the same time, Jack also wrote for Hee Haw. I don’t think it was an accident that a recurring segment on Hee Haw featured George Lindsay reprising his role as Goober. Jack even showed up a couple of times as a city slicker looking to pull a fast one on old Goob.
In 1977, Jack had the honor of hosting Saturday Night Live, and then he jumped on over to ABC to collaborate with Larry David on a similar kind of show, Fridays. Not bad for a young buck who at one time was run out of Mayberry for not being able to fill Barney Fife’s bumbling shoes.
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When Jack passed on in 2020, comedian Melanie Chartoff, who he had worked with on Fridays, lamented the loss of her tenacious friend by saying this on Instagram, “Jack Burns has left the stage. And in his sweet hereafter I know he’ll dwell in the laughter. “
Let’s chalk up Jack’s early departure from The Andy Griffith Show to a perfect storm of circumstances that no one, not even the mighty Jack Burns, could overcome. His story, however, is one of resiliency and never giving up. And because of those traits, we were all blessed with some wonderful comedy, courtesy of the man who once aspired to hold up the law in a little town in North Carolina.
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