Though best known for his portrayal of Gomer Pyle, Nabors became a popular guest on variety shows in the 1960s and 1970s (including two specials of his own in 1969 and 1974) after revealing a rich baritone voice. He subsequently recorded numerous albums and singles, most of them containing romantic ballads.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and career
Nabors was born to Mavis and Fred Nabors in Sylacauga, Alabama, where he sang for his high school and church. He attended the University of Alabama, where he began acting in skits. After graduating, he moved to New York, where he worked as a typist for the United Nations;[1][2] after a year, he moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he got his first job in the television industry as a film cutter. Due to his asthma, he moved to Los Angeles and worked as a film cutter for NBC. He moonlighted at a Santa Monica tavern, The Horn, singing and acting in cabaret theater.[3][4] His act featured him as a character similar to the Gomer Pyle character he would later portray: he would sing in a baritone and sometimes his higher-pitched voices and speak in a higher-pitched voice.[5] At the club, comedian Bill Dana saw Nabors' act and invited him to appear on The Steve Allen Show. Nabors signed on to the show, but it was soon canceled.[6][edit] Breakthrough and popularity
It was at The Horn where Nabors was discovered by Andy Griffith and was hired to play a one-shot role of Gomer Pyle, an "addlebrained" gas station attendant, on The Andy Griffith Show.[7] Nabors's character (based on his act at The Horn) became so popular that he was made a regular on the show and was later given his own show, the spin-off Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., in which his character joined the United States Marine Corps. The show, which placed Nabors's "bumbling" and "naive" character opposite Sergeant Vince Carter (Frank Sutton), also proved popular. Despite its airing during the Vietnam War, a time of "profound disillusionment with war and the military", Gomer Pyle remained popular because it avoided war-related themes and instead focused on the show's rural roots and the relationship between Pyle and Sgt. Carter.[8][9][10] Eventually, however, CBS decided that rural comedies were not well-received by their target demographic and canceled the show after five seasons.[8]Nabors revealed his rich baritone voice on a 1964 episode of The Danny Kaye Show and subsequently capitalized on it with numerous successful records and live performances.[11][12] Most of the songs were romantic ballads, though he also sang pop, gospel, and country songs.[13][14][15][16] He also hosted his own variety show, The Jim Nabors Hour (1969–1971), which also featured his Gomer Pyle co-stars Ronnie Schell and Frank Sutton.[17] Despite poor critical reception, the show proved popular.[18][19] After the cancellation of The Jim Nabors Hour, Nabors embarked on a nation-wide roadshow.[20]
[edit] Later career
"Locked into" his role as Gomer Pyle, Nabors found his subsequent roles mostly comedic.[13] In the 1970s, he appeared in the children's television programs Krofft Supershow and Buford and the Galloping Ghost. He also appeared in every season premiere of The Carol Burnett Show because Burnett considered him a "good-luck charm".[21] However, on a 1973 episode of The Rookies, he played his first "serious" role, a man called on to be an assassin after the death of his sister.[22][23] From 1977 to 1978, Nabors hosted another variety show, The Jim Nabors Show. Though the show only lasted one season, Nabors was nominated for a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Host or Hostess in a Talk, Service or Variety Series.[24] Nabors eventually grew tired of the "prime-time TV grind" and abandoned television jobs for nightclub and concert gigs and a role in a touring production of Man of La Mancha.[16] However, Sid and Marty Krofft persuaded Nabors to star in the television show The Lost Saucer, a show about two bumbling androids, Fi (Ruth Buzzi) and Fum (Nabors), who travel through time with two children. Nabors, whose character was described as a "Gomer Pyle in outer space", sang in a few of the episodes.[25]In the 1980s, at the request of his friend Burt Reynolds, Nabors appeared in three feature-length films which starred Reynolds. In The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), about a sheriff (Reynolds) who falls in love with a brothel madam (Dolly Parton), Nabors played Deputy Fred, a character similar to Gomer Pyle.[26][27] Though the film was given mostly unfavorable reviews, Nabors garnered some praise for his performance.[28] However, not only was 1983's Stroker Ace (about a race car driver [Reynolds] who fights a fried-chicken chain entrepreneur) panned, Nabors earned a Golden Raspberry Award for his performance as the title character's mechanic.[29] In Reynold's "star-studded" Cannonball Run II (1984), about a cross-country car chase, Nabors made a cameo appearance alongside such celebrities as Dom DeLuise, Jackie Chan, Shirley MacLaine, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Andy Griffith Show co-stars Don Knotts and George Lindsey.[30] Like Reynolds's previous two films, Cannonball received mostly negative reviews.[31] In 1986, Nabors returned to television, reprising his role as Gomer Pyle in the television movie Return to Mayberry, in which the cast of The Andy Griffith Show reunited.[32] In 1986, Nabors starred in the half-hour comedy pilot "Sylvan in Paradise" as the title character, Sylvan Sprayberry, an accident-prone bell captain at a Hawaiian hotel. The series was not picked up by NBC.[33]
After moving to Hawaii from Bel Air, California in 1976, he launched a show, "The Jim Nabors Polynesian Extravaganza", at the Hilton Hawaiian Village; it ran for two years. Nabors eventually experienced "bright light burnout" and disappeared from the stage save for an occasional performance. In 1984, after a five-year hiatus, Nabors returned to performing, starring in the "Moulin Rouge" show at the Las Vegas Hilton and other shows in Reno and Las Vegas.[34] He made his theatrical debut as Harold Hill in The Music Man with Florence Henderson at the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre.[35]
[edit] Personal life
Nabors's successes have earned him accolades. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1991.[43] "Gomer Pyle" received an honorary promotion to Lance Corporal from the Commandant of the Marine Corps James L. Jones in 2001, and on September 25, 2007, he was promoted from Lance Corporal to Corporal by Lt. General John F. Goodman.[44][45] The Hawaii Pacific University awarded Nabors the Fellow of the Pacific Award for his "outstanding leadership, service, and dedication to the community".[41] In 2006, he was inducted into the Alabama Stage and Screen Hall of Fame.[46] He received honors from the University of Alabama on September 2, 2006, before a football game against the University of Hawaii. Nabors, along with U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, was honored on January 19, 2007, at "A Night of American Heroes," a yearly dinner held in benefit of the Battleship Missouri Memorial at Pearl Harbor.[47] U.S. Highway 280 in Talladega County, Alabama, was named "Jim Nabors Highway" in honor of the Sylacauga native.[41]As he was "never without a job" for four decades, Nabors has never married: according to him, he was "really more married to his career".[37] Consequently, he has been the target of rumors alleging he is gay.[48][49] In the 1970s, a rumor began circulating that Nabors and then-closeted actor Rock Hudson were to marry. Though supposedly intended as a joke (with the punchline being that Hudson would then be known as "Rock Pyle"), the rumor was picked up by media and spread across the country.[50] Nabors was "horrified" by the rumor, as he felt that it hindered his ability to portray himself as something other than a comedic character.[51]
Nabors began vacationing in Hawaii in the 1960s, and in 1976, moved from Bel Air, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. For twenty-five years, he owned a macadamia nut plantation on Maui before selling it to the National Tropical Botanical Gardens, a conservationist organization (he still retains farming rights to the land and owns a second home on the property).[52]
