When people think of The Andy Griffith Show, certain names immediately spring to mind — Andy, Opie, Aunt Bee, and Barney. But if you dig just a little deeper, there’s another name that keeps popping up, one wrapped in fondness and affection: Floyd the Barber. Portrayed by the gifted character actor Howard McNear, Floyd was part of what let Mayberry live and breathe. And while McNear’s name may not have been above the title, his performance earned him a permanent place in television history.
That’s no accident. As pop culture historian and performer Geoffrey Mark, author of The Lucy Book: A Complete Guide to Her Five Decades on Television, explains, “What I’ve been hearing for many, many years is that Floyd the Barber was the most beloved character of the show after Andy and Opie and Aunt Bee and Barney. If you watch all the episodes like I have hundreds of times, Floyd the Barber really permeates Mayberry.”
McNear provided not only comic relief but a kind of homespun commentary. “A lot of Mayberry’s attitudes get revealed through him,” Mark continues, “because that barbershop was kind of the center of town for the men to gossip in. And there were almost as many scenes in the barbershop as there were in Andy’s office. People just hung out there, so whenever anything happened in town, any storyline where something was going on, there was always a scene at Floyd’s where they discussed it.”
Howard Terbell McNear was born on January 27, 1905, in Los Angeles. He studied drama at the Oatman School of Theater and got his professional start with the Savoy Players Stock Company in San Diego. One of his earliest influences came from Patia Power, mother of Tyrone Power, who offered him his first real instruction in stagecraft. Yet the future Floyd was, at first, nearly paralyzed by shyness.
“My mother agreed to let me go to the school,” he recalled to The Progress-Bulletin, “but I was so shy I walked up and down in front of it for three days before I had the courage to go inside.” Years later, he told The Los Angeles Times, “As a young fellow, I was painfully shy. I’m still shy. I really feel perfectly at home only when I’m on stage. Meeting people is far harder for me than being behind the footlights; perhaps that’s because I can feel I’m someone else when I’m acting.”
Radio turned out to be the perfect medium for someone like McNear — inventive, versatile, and brilliant with character voice work. In 1937, he gave voice to Samuel the Seal on the beloved children’s serial The Cinnamon Bear. A year later, he was Clint Barlow on Speed Gibson of the International Secret Police, an action-packed adventure series that captured young imaginations coast to coast. Throughout the 1940s, he showcased his range in productions like The Count of Monte Cristo (alongside Parley Baer and William Conrad), and worked across genres on The Lux Radio Theatre, The Shadow of Fu Manchu, The Cavalcade of America and dozens more.
He tackled crime shows (Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, The Line-Up), comedies (Our Miss Brooks, Burns and Allen) and westerns (Fort Laramie, The Six Shooter), but his most famous radio role was that of “Doc” on Gunsmoke, the hard-edged frontier physician whose dry wit and gallows humor often stole the scene.
Radiospirits.info later credited McNear for establishing Doc’s iconic edge: “[He] brought the character of ‘Doc’ to life from the very first episode as a man delighted by the thought of all of the money he stood to collect from the number of men Marshal Matt Dillon sent to Boot Hill.” William Conrad, who played Dillon, loved McNear’s take so much that he suggested naming the character “Dr. Charles Adams” — a tongue-in-cheek nod to cartoonist Charles Addams.
The life of a character actor
After World War II service in the Army Air Corps, McNear returned to radio before gradually transitioning to film and television. He broke into the movies with uncredited roles in 1953’s Escape from Fort Bravo and The Long, Long Trailer (starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz), and went on to rack up appearances in over two dozen films through the 1950s and ‘60s.
“Howard McNear probably played more roles than anyone else on The Andy Griffith Show,” suggests Daniel de Vise, author of Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show. “He himself is a little bit of an archetype, if you think about what he looks like with the stern 1960s glasses and little mustache—it’s kind of an archetypal 1950s, 1960s character.”
Among McNear’s film credits were Drums Across the River (1954), Blue Hawaii (1961), Follow That Dream (1962) and Fun in Acapulco (1963) — all three with Elvis Presley.
In fact, one story from McNear’s son, Kit, tells you all you need to know about the kind of respect he earned. Allan Newsome, a longtime Floyd tribute performer and host of the Two Chairs, No Waiting podcast, recalls, “Kit was home by himself. The phone rings and he picked it up and the voice on the other line said, ‘Hello, this is Elvis Presley. I’d like to speak to Howard…’ Kit said, ‘Knock it off, Johnny,’ and hung up on him. Elvis had to call back twice, and the reason he persisted is that he really liked Howard and just wanted to call and talk to him.”
McNear was equally prolific on the small screen, appearing in multiple episodes of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, The Real McCoys, Gunsmoke (in different roles) and The Jack Benny Program, along with one-offs on I Love Lucy, The Ann Sothern Show and more. He was a favorite among comedians. As columnist Hedda Hopper wrote in 1960, “When top comedians chew the fat about their craft, Howard McNear’s name is bound to come up. He’s played with all of them, bringing a unique type of characterization to their shows which no one has succeeded in imitating.”
Howard himself had no illusions about his niche. “I don’t like to play straight [dramatic] parts anymore,” he told Hopper. “Just last week I turned one down. My agent could have killed me and so could my wife. But it was a serious thing; they wanted me for a judge who was committing a girl to a mental institution. I didn’t think it was right for me. I prefer specialized bits.”
He also described his signature style with remarkable insight: “He’s a sort of nervous wreck and you can’t be on too much with it. I fitted him into the part of an absent-minded lawyer for a Jack Benny show… Jack said he thought I was a master of this peculiar thing and he couldn’t remember anyone doing a character like it.” As to where it came from? “I think perhaps it’s my own mannerisms—exaggerated, of course. I’ve often wondered if such portrayals aren’t built up from the subconscious.”
Mayberry’s most unlikely scene-stealer
Andy Griffith as Sheriff Andy Taylor and Howard McNear as barber Floyd Lawson in a scene from the te…
Andy Griffith as Sheriff Andy Taylor and Howard McNear as barber Floyd Lawson in a scene from the television series ‘The Andy Griffith Show’, circa 1965.
When The Andy Griffith Show debuted in 1960, McNear was already a seasoned pro—a veteran of stage, radio, film, and television. But even he couldn’t have predicted the cultural phenomenon he was about to join. As the kindly and slightly off-kilter Floyd Lawson, the town’s resident barber, McNear found himself at the center of Mayberry’s social life.
Floyd was quirky but never cruel—a man whose absent-minded nature and halting speech patterns made him unforgettable. And McNear knew exactly how to mine those moments. “The more I have portrayed him and studied what he does on the show and how he behaves,” says Newsome, “the more impressed I am with the way he was able to take those sometimes minimal lines and make them very entertaining.”
George Lindsey, who played Goober, once told Newsome that even on his days off, he would come to the set just to watch McNear work. “He was just so much like the actual character he was portraying that it was a joy to watch,” Newsome adds. “People who don’t act probably think actors just get in front of the camera and ‘do things.’ But that obviously isn’t the case. They actually spend time, if they’re good, making those lines their own and turning them into something that maybe the writers didn’t even originally realize were going to be humorous. Howard did that again and again.”
Notes de Vise, “I’m going to read a paragraph from my book: ‘His delivery was quirky and unpredictable. Howard would mumble and stammer and mutter before fixing his eyes on a co-star and uttering some comedic proclamation.’ Don said, ‘You never knew which gesture or reading you were going to get from Howard, and he usually caught you completely off-guard. I can’t tell you how many takes I ruined breaking up at Howard.’ And Andy remarked years later that Howard McNear never said a line the same way twice.
“The other thing is,” he adds, “he was kind of the older generation in Mayberry. He represented the older generation. I’m guessing he himself was maybe 15 years older than Don. It was understood that he kind of remembered Barney and Ange when they were children.”
Elaborates Geoffrey Mark, “He gave another perspective as an elder of the town. Sometimes close-minded, sometimes judgmental, sometimes jumping to conclusions and sometimes giving them some wisdom—he gave the show a needed voice. He wasn’t always involved in the high jinks… more often he was almost like a Greek chorus, commenting on the high jinks.”
A stroke and an extraordinary comeback
In 1963, midway through the show’s run, tragedy struck. Howard McNear suffered a debilitating stroke that left the entire left side of his body paralyzed. For most performers, that might have spelled the end of a career. And at first, it seemed like it might for McNear. He disappeared from the series, though his character was never written off. Floyd’s barbershop remained. His name was still mentioned. But the man himself was missing—for over a year.
“So, he’s absent from the show for 15 months,” says de Vise, “and his absence is the reason they hired Jim Nabors. If you think about it, they needed characters to kind of anchor funny scenes. They had Don and Howard was hugely important just as a character to be in the center of these scenes and just do goofy whimsy that would make it funny. And once he was gone, there was panic, because they needed at least one more really funny dude to make up for his absence.”
Then, in one of the most quietly compassionate moments in television history, the cast and crew of The Andy Griffith Show made a decision: they would bring him back.
“The very nice people at The Andy Griffith Show chose to do something that was very rare, I think, in television,” Geoffrey Mark explains. “They did not write the character out nor did they replace Howard with another actor. They gave him the space to get better and when he got better enough that he could deliver lines reasonably well and be funny, they brought him back on the show.”
According to Allan Newsome, Andy Griffith himself took the initiative, contacting McNear’s wife to see if he might be ready to return. “She said, ‘That would be amazing. That would be great.’ And they made accommodations for him. He was always leaning on something or sitting down. She credited that with keeping him alive for a few extra years.”
Reflects de Vise, “Howard McNear’s son told me, and I quote again, ‘Andy Griffith had a big heart and knew that my mom had never really worked and that I had gone to school and we didn’t really have a lot of money. Kit McNear recalled that he brought my dad back when he didn’t have to. That kind of compassion and heart for a fellow cast member and actor is unheard of in Hollywood.’”
A different kind of performance
When McNear rejoined the show, his appearance had changed—noticeably thinner, his speech slightly slower. But instead of hiding it, he incorporated those changes into his character. “If one was looking carefully it’s obvious that he had been ill,” Mark points out. “His speech had become a little stammered and as a good actor—because he was a good actor—he used it in the character. His disability informed who Floyd became. They never said that Floyd had a stroke or anything, but he used his stammer to the character’s advantage.”
The show’s writers and directors adjusted scenes to make things easier. Floyd would be seated or propped up behind a barber’s chair. The camera rarely showed his left side. But McNear’s performance—warm, funny, slightly scattered—remained as sharp as ever. In today’s world, the stroke might have been written into the storyline. Back then, it was simply absorbed into the performance, unspoken but deeply felt.
Eventually, though, the physical toll became too great. “It reached the point,” Mark explains, “where it became obvious to people watching that the actor was not able to do his best work anymore.” His final appearance came in a 1967 episode that required him to drive a car and film on location. “In the last shot he did, the twitching of the face and his having trouble getting the lines out is really obvious. After that he had more mini-strokes and it was mutually decided that he just couldn’t do the work anymore.”
“I’m sure they didn’t want to let him go,” muses de Vise, “but he wasn’t remembering his lines anymore. So he left the show and died not long after.”
Rather than recast or ignore the character, the writers sent Floyd off to a bigger city to run a new barbershop. And just like that, Howard McNear’s time on The Andy Griffith Show came to a close—but not before leaving a lasting impression on his co-stars, his audience and, of course, television history.
A quiet goodbye
Howard McNear was married to Helen Spats from 1926 until the end of his life. They remained devoted to each other through the highs of his career and the health challenges of his later years. Following his final appearances on The Andy Griffith Show, his health continued to decline. He suffered additional strokes, and on January 3, 1969—just weeks before his 64th birthday—he passed away from complications of pneumonia.
He left quietly, but his legacy has never faded. Even today, those who knew him or admired his work share memories that feel as vivid as any scripted line. Allan Newsome treasures one particular story passed down from Howard’s son, Kit—a story that perfectly captures the man behind Floyd.
“Howard had been at work and he was basically telling them that he’d gotten run out of his house by his wife with a broom, because he’d gotten paint on the wall,” Newsome recounts, laughing. “His son was making dumbbells and needed to paint them black. They had a can of paint, but it stopped working. Howard comes up with the idea of using a can opener.”
The result? “Howard put this can of spray paint under the electric can opener, and it just sprayed a line of paint around the entire kitchen and right across Howard’s glasses. Kit said that when he took the glasses off, he looked like a raccoon. So his wife ran him out of the house with a broom and Howard said, ‘I had to stay in the guest room. But it has curtains.’ Apparently it was really important that it had curtains; he just threw that in, because that’s the kind of thing that Floyd would tend to do.”
An iconic character actor
In looking back at McNear’s life and career, Geoffrey Mark offers a thoughtful summary. “He was one of those character actors who did a lot of one-shots, or they’d bring him back to the same show playing a different character, because he could. But getting cast on The Andy Griffith Show cemented him, almost like William Frawley on I Love Lucy, where he had done all of these films and all of this radio stuff. But if you mention William Frawley, the only thing that comes out of people’s mouths is Fred Mertz. Howard broke out of that character-actor-we-can-count-on mold.”
He continues, “Why is something iconic? It’s that combination of actors who bring something to their roles that make us love them, incredible casting, incredible writing, incredible direction. And the premise of the show has to be good and open enough that all kinds of things can happen. It’s that wonderful recipe; a wonderful stew of different details coming together that makes it so delicious.”
Says De Vise, “I don’t think the barber character was in [producer] Sheldon Leonard’s mind at the outset of The Andy Griffith Show. But he’s reflective of the experience of Andy and especially Don, who had two relatives who were barbers. I will say about Howard that if you were to rank the order of different performers as far as how much Andy and Don revered their abilities, I think Howard’s right near the top.”
