Although many original cast members reprised their roles, Aunt Bee's portrayer, film veteran character actress and 1967 Emmy winner Frances Bavier, had retired to Siler City, North Carolina (where she died in 1989 and is buried), was in ill health, and declined to participate.
According to a 1981 article by Chip Womick, a staff writer of The Courier Tribune, Bavier enthusiastically promoted Christmas and Easter Seal Societies from her Siler City home, and often wrote inspirational letters to fans who sought autographs.
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Bavier's medical condition prevented her from taking part in the 1986 television movie Return to Mayberry.
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).
The town was the retirement home and burial location of Frances Bavier (1902–1989) an American actress, best remembered for her role as Aunt Bee on The Andy Griffith Show, a television sitcom in the 1960s set in the fictional town of Mayberry, North Carolina.
Frances Hodgson Burnett | Frances Fox Piven | Frances McDormand | Hurricane Frances | Frances Spence | Frances Curran | Frances | Mary Frances Berry | Frances Yates | Frances Itani | Frances Hyde, Countess of Clarendon | Frances Bean Cobain | Frances Lankin | Frances Black | Frances Arnold | Frances Parkinson Keyes | Frances Moore Lappé | Frances Conroy | Frances Carr, Countess of Somerset | Frances Burney | Frances Bavier | Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux | Frances Wood | Frances Wilson Grayson | Frances Villiers, Countess of Jersey | Frances Stewart | Frances Sternhagen | Frances Senska | Frances Ruffelle | Frances Perkins |