Otis Campbell
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Otis Campbell was the fictional "town drunk" in Mayberry on the American TV sitcom The Andy Griffith Show. Otis was played by Hal Smith and made frequent appearances on the show from 1960 to 1967.
As Andy Taylor told his deputee Warren, Otis worked in a factory by day and drank at night. After his regular drinking binges, he would lock himself in the town jail until he sobered up. He had a key to the front door of the courthouse and could easily let himself in and out of jail as he pleased, due to the fact that the cell-door keys were hung on the wall outside the cells (presumably, to accommodate Otis). Whether he did this because his wife would not let him come home drunk, or because the penalty for public intoxication in Mayberry was a night in jail (and it was expected that Otis would drink) was not specified. But the lack of crime in Mayberry, and the laid-back attitude of the Sheriff's department easily accommodated Otis's drinking habit. Otis would often let himself in jail on the same day a state inspector or other important visitor was arriving at the courthouse, much to the chagrin of Sheriff Andy Taylor or Deputy Barney Fife.
Crime-waves, or other major happenings in the town would often leave Otis put out. On one occasion, the Sheriff had locked a goat, which had gotten loose and ate an entire case of dynamite, in a jail cell with padding up on the walls to prevent an explosion. Predictably, Otis stumbled in after a night of drinking, and let himself into the same cell, only to find the mattress nailed to the wall (curiously, along with the blanket). Otis attempted to climb into the bed anyway, and naturally fell on the floor. Believing the peculiarity to be a result of his intoxication he proclaimed, "First time I ever fell off a bed onto the wall."
When he was sober enough, Otis would occasionally be deputized, if the call went out for additional help due to a minor crime-wave in Mayberry, or because Andy was leaving town. Otis had a problem with authority—mainly Barney—which would cause conflict and usually resulted in a shouting match between the two. In the Danny Thomas Show episode that became the precursor for The Andy Griffith Show, it was mentioned that Andy had deputized the original town drunk, Will Hoople, so that Will could arrest himself every time he got drunk. It could be assumed that Andy had probably given Otis this same "authority", since Otis regularly "arrested" himself, and so he could be called upon to help when needed.
A common joke on the show was Otis seeing something genuinely bizarre or otherwise unexpected and attributing it to being drunk.
In the 1986 television movie Return to Mayberry, it was revealed that Otis was now completely sober and was currently employed as the town's ice cream man.
Ironically, Mr. Smith was a teetotaller according to Andy Griffith ("Larry King Live", 2003). Apart from playing Otis, Mr. Smith provided the voices of animated and claymated characters, including Golliath ("Davey and Golliath"), Captain Crunch; Mr. Slate ("Flintstones").
