Jim Nabors, who soared to fame in the 1960’s portraying lovable bumpkin Gomer Pyle on “The Andy Griffith Show” and a spinoff series, “Gomer Pyle, USMC,” died Thursday in his Hawaii home at age 87, according to Variety.
Nabors’ husband, Stan Cadwallader, reported the news to the Associated Press.
His most famous role was a loving caricature of a Southern rube. A longtime regular on “The Andy Griffith Show,” Nabors’ Gomer Pyle character to a spinoff series that lasted four seasons.
He later moved into singing, where he was a popular headliner in at nightclubs in Las Vegas and Reno.
In addition to playing Gomer Pyle, Nabors hosted a variety program, “The Jim Nabors Hour,” for two seasons on CBS and, in the late ’70s, tried it again in syndication, though “The Jim Nabors Show” was more of a combination comedy/talk program.
Film roles were few, Variety says, mostly cameo and supporting appearances in three Burt Reynolds vehicles, “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” “Stroker Ace” and “Cannonball Run II.”
Nabors recorded more than two dozen albums. At least four were certified gold by the RIAA, the most recent of which was “Jim Nabors Christmas Album” in 1990.
James Thurston Nabors was born in Sylacauga, Ala. Chronic asthma resulted in a childhood of forced seclusion, and after graduation from the U. of Alabama, he lived for a time in New York, working as a typist at the United Nations. The recurring asthma problems forced him to return home, where he worked as an assistant film editor for a television station in Chattanooga, Tenn., and also sang occasionally on the station’s daytime shows.
After moving to Los Angeles, he continued to work as an editor and entertained for free in the evenings — performing operatic arias interspersed with monologues — until his discovery and subsequent work in television.
Nabors converted to Catholicism in the mid-’60s.
He married his partner of 38 years, Stan Cadwallader, in Washington in 2013 a month after gay marriage became legal in that state.
In addition to Cadwallader, he is survived by two sisters, Freddie and Ruth.
