Andy Griffith, “an entertainer whose stories about small town life were a source of cheerful recognition and nostalgic pleasure for generations of Americans,” died Tuesday morning at age 86 at his home on Roanoke Island, N.C.

He was best known for playing the sheriff on “The Andy Griffith Show,” which offered a picture of life in fictional Mayberry that stuck in the hearts of American television viewers from the early 1960s on.

The cause of Griffith’s death was not immediately announced. He had undergone quadruple-bypass heart surgery more than a decade ago.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly. Follow him on Twitter: @areedkelly.

The Guardian:

Griffith’s shows combined the nostalgic appeal of Norman Rockwell with the moral clarity of his southern contemporary Harper Lee. The Andy Griffith Show, which chronicled adventures in Mayberry for 249 episodes from 1960 to 1968, created a stylized time capsule of innocent rural life at the crossroads of folk and cornpone.

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