Why Aunt Bee became the CRAZY CAT LADY!

Frances ba VA was an award-winning actress that would it we all came to know his aunt be on The Andy Griffith Show by most accounts of her life she was the absolute opposite of the way she was on the show she was not a domesticated lady that loved housework and cooking she was more a sophisticated lady that had resided in in New York and Los Angeles her entire life and had worked with some really esteemed actors like Betty Davis and Henry Fonda her her most of her career was spent on Broadway until she became famous with her role as aunt beam and then she went on after the aunt B role and was on Mayberry RFD and then in 1970 she abruptly walked away from it at age 70 she moved all the way across the United States to Siler City North Carolina she did this in hopes of discovering a small-town goodness that she herself had become the person that represented that in the minds of Middle America naturally she was warmly received by the county of Chatham and it's 3,700 residents in in the town of Siler City and these plain folks gave her a role to play there as soon as she arrived she was grand a grand marshal in in a lot of parades she was honored at different civics functions and she was often seen driving her greens two-door Studebaker around the town and this is a same one that that was in the show Mayberry RFD she moved into her house at 503 West Elk Street in Siler City but it wasn't long after she moved to this this location that she realized that her Mayberry didn't quite exist the way she thought it would and this turned into more of a Twilight Zone episode she had people gawking at her house stopping peeking through the windows she couldn't go out to dinner or to the grocery store without being constantly harassed in her mind by her adoring fans people were constantly making jokes relating to Aunt Bea and she actually didn't have her own personality anymore she lived through everybody's eyes of seeing her as Aunt Bea a visit to Downton would have all the eyes staring at her she couldn't go to the beauty parlor without everybody inviting her to church trying to coax her interaction in with the community week after week this continued and it it just wore Frances down and her only solace was her house and to retreat into there and have everything delivered to her it's a small wonder that by the 80s the former television star was living out of her back bedroom her curtains were pulled tight and she lived there with her 14 cats she loved the companionship of them and she actually converted a 250 foot square bathroom into a crawling litter box that was inches deep in and cat litter it's been said that when visitors and and people would come to the door to deliver food or store clerks would come that the inside of the house the paint was peeling you tell it was filthy conditions and the atmosphere that you that you ran into as soon as the door was open was the smell of ammonia which was all the cat here and quite the change for the sophisticated New Yorker and Hollywood actress in 1986 after she had started stopped going out in public Andy Griffith and Ron Howard actually made a valiant attempt to get her to sign up for the Andy Griffith reunion movie the Mayberry reunion movie that was they were producing and coming up with and she met them at the door and would not let them in and and actually talked to him through the door something I think that she regretted later on and she actually called Andy a few a few months before she died and apologized for that and for being such a hard-ass on on the actual Andy Griffith Show and and she felt bad about about being a person that was hard to work with during that time in the 60s when aunt bee died in 1989 her estate was worth about seven hundred thousand dollars and this was put into some type of annuity that that gave bonuses and still to this day gives bonuses to Sadr City police officers but the big thing the big remembrance that that is still running around Chatham County is a lot of our cats had had gotten loose and so it's theorized that a lot of the feral cats that are running around Siler City are actually the offspring of aunt Bea's cats so if you're ever inside our city and you see a cat run across the street it could very well be one of the children of of aunt Bea's cats also her her home was donated to a local hospital and I don't know it looks like somebody you know lives in it now I'm assuming they probably sold it and used the money for some other purpose but Aunt Bea was was a person that a lot of people connected with everybody wanted to have the domesticated caretaker like I can't be was and she she brought us many fond memories through this show thanks a lot Frances ba VA or aunt bee thank you so much for watching

Channel: LandumC goes there

Views: 813,547

Rating: 4.6998553 out of 5

Keywords: Frances bavier, aunt bee, andy griffith, the andy griffith show, mayberry, mayberry RFD, what happened to aunt bee, siler city NC, ron howard, landumc goes there, cat lady

Id: IVtRGy5yiPk

Length: 8min 27sec (507 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 29 2018