The Andy Griffith/Hawaii Five-O/007 mashup

Andy Griffith died this week at 86 and, naturally, obituaries detailed his work on the highly successful The Andy Griffith Show. He had one television guest appearance we’d like to note, one that had connections to James Bond movies as well as Griffith’s 1960-68 television series.

Andy Griffith as con man Arnold Lovejoy

That would be the fifth-season Hawaii Five-O episode I’m a Family Crook — Don’t Shoot! The episode, which first aired Dec. 19, 1972, is one of Five-O’s best and one of its most unusual.

Griffith played Arnold Lovejoy, patriarch of a family of grifters. The Lovejoys have arrived in Hawaii to ply their trade. Things go awry when they steal a briefcase belonging to a bag man for an island hood, Charlie Walters. It contains almost $100,000 and Charlies isn’t happy it’s missing.

Now this sounds like standard 1970s police television stuff. But the script by Jerome Coopersmith includes some dark humor mixed with sudden, brutal violence. For example, the hood abruptly shoots his bag man to death while the latter desperately tries to explain how the Lovejoys ripped him off. A thug asks Walters, “Hey Charlie, what if he was tellin’ the truth?…Supposin’ he was?” Charlie’s response? Without a hint of remorse he says, “Then I just made a terrible mistake.”

The score by Morton Stevens reflects the changing mood of the story. He has a “Lovejoys theme” that sounds very light but the music turns frantic as both crooks and the law (led by Five-O’s Steve McGarrett, of course) get closer to the family.

Griffith plays Lovejoy as a sort of darker, amoral Andy Taylor. He evokes his famous role without copying it. He may have gotten some help from director Bob Sweeney, who had helmed 80 episodes of The Andy Griffith Show from 1960 to 1963. Sweeney was supervising producer on Five-O during seasons four through seven and directed several episodes during that time.

The Lovejoys attempt to pull another con.

The 007 connections? With Five-O you start out with Jack Lord the first screen Felix Leiter in Dr. No. But another familiar face briefly shows up: Harold Sakata (sans his Oddjob hat), who plays a thug for another hood who’s a rival of Charlie’s. Sakata gets a couple of lines. Nothing memorable but more than, “Ah ah!” as he got to say in Goldfinger.