The story I've heard is that Jack Burns was fired from TAGS on Christmas Day,
and to this day he's still very bitter about it, to the point that he refuses
to take part in any sort of Mayberry events. It's a real shame too, because he
was and still is a terrific comic actor. The trouble with Warren Ferguson as a
character was that the writers kept writing as if they were writing scenes
for Barney Fife, and there's just no way any other actor could fill those shoes
(not that Don Knotts had big feet -- just big shoes).
Jack did do one commercial with a Mayberry tie-in, though. For many years, he
and Lorenzo Music were the voices of Vince and Larry, the two crash-test
dummies in a long-running series of public safety commercials. One of these
ads featured footage of Barney Fife taken from the episode "Lawman Barney,"
intercut with scenes of the dummies seated in their car, as if Barney were
lecturing them, saying "You two must be strangers around here, I'd better
straighten you out!" The spot conlcuded with Barney barking, "Let's get that
vehicle outta here!" and the narrator's closing line "You could learn a lot
from a dummy."
Paul Mulik
>>> Jack Burns was no Don Knotts....Has anyone ever dwelled into how
his exit as Warren came about and what if its known is his personal views on
his role as Warren Ferguson.
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