Opie Taylor

Opie Taylor
Opie's first series appearance, "The New Housekeeper" (1960).
First appearance	"Danny Meets Andy Griffith" (1960), backdoor pilot
Last appearance	Return to Mayberry (1986)
Created by	Sheldon Leonard
Portrayed by	Ron Howard
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Newspaperman in Return to Mayberry
Family	Andy Taylor (father) Beatrice Taylor (great aunt) Nora (great aunt) Bradford J. Taylor (great aunt's cousin) 2 cousins (the sons of Nora) Helen Taylor nee Crump (step mother) Andrew Samuel Taylor, Jr. (half brother) wife child According to season 3, episode 19, "Class reunion" aired on Feb 4, 1963, Andy's full name is Andrew Jackson Taylor, not Andrew Samuel Taylor.

Opie Taylor is a fictional character played by Ron Howard in the American television program The Andy Griffith Show, which was televised on CBS from October 3, 1960 to April 1, 1968. Opie Taylor appeared in 209 of the 249 episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, and appeared in 2 spin-off shows and a TV Movie.

Opie is a 6-year-old when the series opens, who lives in the fictional and idealized small, sleepy southern community of Mayberry, North Carolina with his widowed father, Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith), the sheriff of Mayberry County, and his father's spinster aunt, Beatrice "Aunt Bee" Taylor (Frances Bavier). Opie appears once in The Andy Griffith Show spinoff Mayberry R.F.D., twice in the spinoff Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and also in the 1986 reunion telemovie Return to Mayberry.

There are two explanations of the origin of the character's name. One is that Opie was named after bandleader and radio actor Opie Cates; the other is that he was named for Opie Shelton (1915–1999), a childhood friend of Griffith, who went on to become president of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.

Opie makes a brief first appearance in the February 1960 backdoor pilot, "Danny Meets Andy Griffith", an episode from The Danny Thomas Show. Ron Howard was 5 years old at the time.

In the first episode of The Andy Griffith Show (October 1960), Andy's Aunt Bee returns to Mayberry via Morgantown, West Virginia at her nephew's invitation in order to manage the Taylor household after Andy's housekeeper Rose marries and departs. Opie, 6, takes an instant dislike to Aunt Bee based upon his grief at losing his beloved Rose, although he does secretly enjoy her cooking. After discovering that she can neither play baseball nor fish, Opie declares that he will never love her. The final straw comes when she accidentally lets his pet bird escape, though it reappears at the end of the episode (the bird is never again mentioned). A disheartened Aunt Bee chooses to leave. However, in a surge of empathy, Opie begs his father to let her stay, as she doesn't know how to do anything on her own.