Aunt Bee - Color Seasons (1965-1968)

Color Seasons (1965-1968)

Bee undergoes some changes during the final three color years of The Andy Griffith Show. In the early years, she gives her heart to scalawags of all sorts and sometimes needs Andy's help in extricating herself from unpleasant romantic situations. In the color years, however, Bee's suitors are respectable gentlemen and include a retired congressman, a clergyman, and a distinguished professor. Bee's evolution in personality is reflected in her dress. In the show's early years, she is given to wearing comically dowdy house dresses, fruit- and flower-decorated hats, and ladylike white gloves for venturing outside the house. In the color episodes, she discards her frumpy wardrobe and steps into more stylish attire.

More drastic in the evolution of the character than her taste-shift in men and her wardrobe about-face is her liberation from her homemaker role in Andy's house. In the later episodes, Bee leaves the Taylor kitchen to open her own restaurant, to host a television cooking show, to run for office, to buy a car, and to take flying lessons. Andy and Opie are sometimes left at home to prepare their own meals. In spite of her sudden spirit of independence, Bee never quite makes a complete break and continues to rely on Andy to direct the course of her life and make the difficult decisions.

Aunt Bee sees Opie grow from age 6 to 14. When Andy marries his longtime girlfriend Helen Crump on the spinoff Mayberry R.F.D., she opts to give the newlyweds their own space and becomes housekeeper for farmer Sam Jones (another widowed father) and his young son Mike. Residing at the Joness' farm, Aunt Bee feeds the livestock and gathers eggs. The following year Andy and Helen move to Raleigh.

In 1986, a made-for-television reunion movie called Return to Mayberry was broadcast on NBC. Although many original cast members reprised their roles, Aunt Bee's portrayer, film veteran character actress and 1967 Emmy winner Frances Bavier, had retired to Siler City, North Carolina (where she died in 1989 and is buried), was in ill health, and declined to participate. In the television movie, Andy Taylor is seen reverentially visiting Aunt Bee's grave.