I heard this years ago from a group of lesbians who knew her. She became a crazy cat lady in her dotage, and never married. I wonder if she was friendly with Spring Bynington, Marjorie Main, Agnes Moorehead and other members of the Hollwood sewing circle.
If the show had stayed on the air a bit longer and times had been a little less restrictive, Mayberry would have acquired a reputation like Northampton, Massachusetts- a place "where the girls are".
He was (Jim Nabors married his long time lover a few years before he died). There was that rumor about his marriage to Rock Hudson in the early 1970s, and it was seriously reported that Hudson was adopting the name "Rock Pyle".
That's the first I've heard of any marriage. Every biography I've read stated she never married. Not that a marriage means all that much- Barbara Stanwyck, Marjorie Main, Agnes Moorehead were all married.
Despite her good-hearted image on screen, cast members of The Andy Griffith Show (1960) often remember her as difficult, temperamental and somewhat cold. Griffith himself said "There was just something about me she did not like."
Sadly, when Bavier retired in 1972, she quickly became a recluse in her two-story Siler City, North Carolina home. She rarely left the house. She left most of her $700,000 estate to a hospital foundation. The home in which she lived in for 17 years was poorly upheld upon her death, nearly irreparable from the damage caused by her 14 house cats.
In an interview, when director Ron Howard was pressed as to the stories of discord with her on the set of The Andy Griffith Show (1960), all he would say was, "I just don't think she enjoyed being around children that much.".
Her ex-husband Russell Carpenter was in the military. They divorced after five years due to conflicting career ambitions.
You know, Raymond Burr (who was briefly married in the late 1940s, in a marriage that was possibly never consummated ) created another, fake marriage and even a son who supposedly died of leukemia to discourage questions about his personal life.