Fans of “The Andy Griffith Show” know that Andy Taylor had no shortage of romantic interests throughout the eight seasons of the show.
From Ellie Walker to Helen Crump to Peggy McMillan, the sheriff was quite the romantic soul. Fans of the show would pick their favorites, but Andy Taylor had eventually picked his own favorite.
Eventually, Taylor would marry the love of his life, which was Helen Crump. She was a schoolteacher on the show. During the episode “Andy Discovers America,” Andy gets Opie and his friends to start a rebellion against Helen during class.
Peggy McMillan and Andy Taylor
Despite the rocky start to their relationship, the two worked everything out in the end. He walks her home and the two begin one of TV’s favorite relationships. While Helen Crump holds a special place in the show’s history, so does the actress who portrayed Peggy McMillan.
Joanna Moore plays Peggy. She played Taylor’s girlfriend for four episodes of “The Andy Griffith Show.” She holds a special place in fan’s hearts and even holds a record on the show.
According to MeTV, she was the very first woman to wear pants on the show. Although this may not seem like anything major, it was at the time in which “The Andy Griffith Show” was released. Most women appearing on the show wore long skirts or dresses, but Joanna Moore brought a much-needed change when she appeared wearing ordinary pants.
Mary Tyler Moore would break through the stereotypes when she became the first woman to wear pants on a sitcom consistently. She told TV Guide in 2004, “I had Laura wear pants, because I said, ‘Women don’t wear full-skirted dresses to vacuum in’ … Women kind of breathed a sigh of relief, too, and said, ‘Hey, that’s right. That’s what we wear.'”
The first episode the pants appear in is “Opie’s Rival.” Peggy was a nurse that Andy dated during the third season of the show. The two first appeared together in the episode “Andy’s Rich Girlfriend.” Andy and Peggy go on an absolutely hilarious double date alongside Barney and Thelma Lou.
Joanna Moore and ‘The Andy Griffith Show’
Another interesting fact about Joanna Moore is that she actually lost her hearing before becoming Andy’s girlfriend on the show. According to the Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram written at the time, she had trouble even hearing a phone ring or a radio turned all the way up. Moore had to have a director tap on her shoulder to signal the start of the scene. She was also good at reading lips, which got her through all of her dialogue.
She had a hereditary disease called otosclerosis. Luckily, a surgery was able to correct her hearing loss and she went about her normal life in 1962.
While she may be one of the forgotten girlfriends of Andy Taylor, Joanna Moore was a love interest of Andy Griffith off the screen. According to Daniel de Visé’s 2015 novel, Griffith told Don Knotts that he was romantically involved with Aneta Corsaut and Joanna Moore, both from “The Andy Griffith Show,” at different points in time.