Gomer Pyle star Jim Nabors dies at 87
HONOLULU — Jim Nabors, the shy Alabaman whose down- home comedy made him a TV star as Gomer Pyle and whose surprisingly operatic voice kept him a favourite in Las Vegas and other showplaces, died Thursday. He was 87.
Nabors, who underwent a liver transplant in 1994 after contracting hepatitis B, died peacefully at his home in Hawaii after his health had declined for the past year, said his husband, Stan Cadwallader, who was by his side.
“Everybody knows he was a wonderful man. And that’s all we can say about him. He’s going to be dearly missed,” Cadwallader said.
The couple married in early 2013 in Washington state, where gay marriage had recently been made legal. Nabors’ friends had known for years that he was gay, but he had never said anything to the media.
Nabors became an instant success when he joined The Andy Griffith Show in the early 1960s. The character of Gomer Pyle, the unworldly, lovable gas pumper who would exclaim “Gollllll- ly!” proved so popular that in 1964 CBS starred him in Gomer Pyle, U. S. M. C. The spinoff lasted five seasons.
For two seasons beginning in 1969, CBS presented The Jim Nabors Hour, on which he joshed with guest stars, did sketches with fellow Gomer veterans and sang country and opera.
Offstage, Nabors retained some of the awed innocence of Gomer. At the height of his fame in 1969, he admitted, “For the first four years of the series, I didn’t trust my success. Every weekend and on every vacation, I would take off to play nightclubs and concerts, figuring the whole thing would blow over some day.”
After the end of his variety show, Nabors continued earning high salaries in Las Vegas showrooms and in concert theatres across the country. He recorded more than two dozen albums.
During the 1970s he moved to Hawaii, buying a 200- hectare macadamia ranch.
Among Nabor’s regular gigs was singing Back Home Again in Indiana at the Indianapolis 500 each year, which he first did in 1972. The first time, he wrote the lyrics on his hand so he wouldn’t forget.
Nabors was an authentic smalltown Southern boy, born James Thurston Nabors in Sylacauga, Ala., in 1930, the son of a police officer. Boyhood attacks of asthma required long periods of rest, during which he learned to entertain his playmates with vocal tricks.
After graduating from the University of Alabama, he worked in New York City for a time, and later, in Chattanooga, Tenn., where he was an assistant film editor and occasional singer at a TV station.
In 1991, Nabors got a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in ceremonies attended by pals Carol Burnett, Loni Anderson, Phyllis Diller and Florence Henderson. His reaction? “Gollll- ly!”