Customer Reviews

No Time for Sergeants [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I got this VCR thinking that it was the movie with Don Knotts and Myron McCormic. It was not. It was the stage play with different support actors and recorded on video tape. I enjoyed it and it is a good companion to the movie version with Myron McCormic and Don Knotts

If this is the product that I think it is; there is an opening monologue by Roddy McDowell explaining the origins of this television stage play version of No Time For Sargents. There is also an interview with Andy Griffith explaining how as a night club talking comic he auditioned for the Broadway stage play production and almost failed. The auditioners thought that his appearance and accent were acceptable but then, well, they just didn't know.... so they asked Andy to wait in the office while a few other applicants were evaluated. In the office a secretary asked Andy what he did so in explaination he went into one of his night club monologues for her. Passers by heard the goings on and stopped their activities to watch also. Shortly the passageway was blocked with an impromptu audience. This so impressed the auditioner that Andy got the part.
The broadway play was seen by another talent scout that decided to put the play on tv resulting in THIS presentation. I don't think anyone from the stage play but Andy is seen here but I do remember that Andy brought with him several folks from the stage play to the movie including Don Knotts.

Here is the FIRST Visual introduction of Andy Griffith to the screen... be it big or little. You have heard of pilot episodes launching a series. This was the Launching of Andy Griffith into FAME.

Our whole family of teen and grown children love this film with Griffith as the backwoods boy taken to town as a draft-dodger. Nick Adams becomes his buddy as both are society rejects but Griffith continues on blissfully unconcerned with much except helping his little buddy into the infantry ("that's where the REAL soldiers are") as his "daddy before him..." What follows are predicaments and adventure as the two make their way onward dragging the unwilling and worse-for-the-wear sargeant with them. The scene in the psychiatrist's office is hilarious. And we all find out what a "P.L.O." is.....

This is one funny movie!! Yes, Andy Griffith is a little how can a put it...? Dumb! For those who may be wonder this is the Live version of "No Time for Sargents" yet I do not remember where this was taped...

For people who did not have the good fortune to see this when it first came out you are in for an unexpected treat. I first saw this movie in 1958, 11 years old, and I still remember writhing in laughter. Andy Griffiths performance is pitch perfect. What is truly astounding is it follows prehaps the greatest, and most underated, dramatic performances in movie history...not hyperbole. "A Face in the Crowd", made some three years prior to this movie, and the only dark role Griffiths ever played, is cinema at it's peak. The sleeper movie of the 20th Century. You put these two movies together and you simply have to be awed at the breadth of this man's talents. Mayberry RFD had a genious as a sheriff.