See also: Highlights of Jim Nabors’ Life »
Despite a half-century of success as an actor and singer, Jim Nabors remains as unassuming and gracious as the good-natured TV character that made him famous. And like Gomer Pyle, Nabors was raised up right.
"The celebrity part is not real. It’s just what we do for a living. You’re still who you are, it’s just how you handle it," said Nabors, 82, who lives in an oceanfront home in the ritzy Black Point neighborhood at the foot of Diamond Head.
"I always try to handle it just like my folks brought me up: to be nice and polite. I’ve never felt that special, even though I was successful in our business."
That Nabors doesn’t view himself as special is the reason he was shocked when hundreds of media outlets reported his Jan. 15 marriage to longtime partner Stan Cadwallader.
"I feel that people had pretty much forgotten me — I’m pretty much old hat," Nabors said. "I never take for granted that people know who I am. I never have. That’s the reason I said I was surprised that the media took on this thing about Stan and me."
Same-sex marriage was legalized in Washington state in December, and Nabors and Cadwallader, 64, went to Seattle for a private ceremony with two of their Honolulu neighbors as the only witnesses. Nabors describes it as a private decision and "a simple story."
"I’m 82 years old. We’ve been together 38 years, and I don’t have that much longer. It’s such a personal thing," Nabors said.
"One of the questions (a reporter) asked me (was), ‘Are you doing this for the Supreme Court push (on same-sex marriage)?’ Absolutely not! I’m not an activist. I never have been. Everybody has their own opinion about this, and this was ours. There’s nothing more to it than that."
Nabors added that the judge who performed the marriage noted he had recently married two women who had been together 47 years.
"I thought that was so sweet," Nabors said. "Every person born on this earth should have the right to spend their life with whomever they choose. … It’s just a human right.
"I chose Stanley and we’ve been together 38 years. That’s it."
THE TWO met in the mid-1970s. Nabors needed someone to watch the house while he was touring.
"(Stan) went to work for me, and we became best friends," Nabors said. "I was on the road all the time, and I was doing a lot of work on the house, and I asked him if he would stay here and keep an eye on the house while I was gone. He did and we became friends, and that was it. Simple story. No big romantic thing. It’s a human story (but) it’s not a huge story."
Nabors’ friends in Hawaii would second that emotion. His relationship with Cadwallader has never been an issue here, nor has his popularity hinged on his celebrity status. As a resident entertainer, macadamia nut farmer and supporter of local entertainment, Nabors has been, literally, a good neighbor for several decades.
Nabors came to Hawaii for the first time in 1965. He met actor Gene Barry on the flight over, saw Ava Gardner with "some bullfighter" at the Kahala Hilton and watched while Judy Garland sang with Don Ho & the Aliis at Duke’s in the International Market Place.
He later bought a condo at the Kahala. He discovered the Black Point home by accident several years later and bought it on first sight. He purchased a flower and macadamia nut farm in Hana, Maui, and still maintains a home there. (In 2002, Nabors sold the 341 acres to the National Tropical Botanical Garden for $4.7 million in a deal that allows him to still use the home when he wants.)
More photos: The Life and Career of Jim Nabors »
In 1978 he sold his house in Bel Air, Calif., and became a full-time resident of Hawaii.
"I’ve been around a long time," he said.
Nabors became a nationally known figure in 1963 when he appeared as Pyle on "The Andy Griffith Show." The show’s writers had envisioned the oddball character as a one-time guest, but the audience response was so strong that Pyle became a core member of the show and Nabors a full-time network television star.
"I was doing (a Gomer-type character) in a nightclub, but when I read for Andy’s show, which was totally out of the blue, I’d never acted. When they gave me the part, it scared the heck out of me. … Andy said there’s nothing to it, but it is a very hard job."
In 1964, Griffith’s writers had Gomer Pyle join the Marines, and Nabors became the star of his own sitcom on CBS, "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C."
The show was the start of a long-term relationship between Nabors and the Marine Corps. His TV character was never promoted beyond private first class during the show’s five-season run, but Pyle/Nabors received a ceremonial promotion to lance corporal in 2001 and to corporal in 2007 in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the Marine Corps and the United States.
"I’m very proud of that," Nabors said.
After five years as Gomer Pyle, Nabors decided to move on, embarking on a career as a Las Vegas headliner. He remained a draw there for 35 years.
AMERICA had discovered Nabors via his Gomer Pyle character, but it embraced him as a serious vocalist. It could be a bit disconcerting to hear Nabors talk in his familiar down-home voice and then have him burst into pop, gospel and country songs in a rich, unaccented operatic baritone. He recorded almost 30 albums, three that were certified gold and one platinum for sales of more than 1 million copies.
His popularity as a singer made him a fixture at the annual Indy 500, where he sang "Back Home Again in Indiana" before the start of the race for more than 30 years.
In between his commitments in Las Vegas, concerts and special appearances elsewhere, and recording dates, Nabors lived in Hawaii.
When he got tired of traveling and being away from the islands, he took a break from Las Vegas in 1979 and headlined "The Jim Nabors Polynesian Extravaganza" for two years in the Hilton Hawaiian Village Dome. In 1981 he starred in a locally produced television special, "Christmas in Hawaii with Jim Nabors," with Carol Burnett, Tom Selleck, Susan Anton and the Brothers Cazimero.
"One of the most memorable things that I ever did was the finale of this show. They put me on the (USS) Arizona all by myself, late in the afternoon. The sun was going down, and they shot it from a helicopter and I sang ‘Silent Night.’ I gotta tell you, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, it truly was. I got very emotional just thinking about it."
Nabors’ many friends rallied around him in 1994 when at age 63 he suffered liver failure caused by hepatitis B. He was not expected to survive, but his friend Carol Burnett was able to arrange a liver transplant for him at the UCLA Medical Center, and he resumed entertaining shortly after his recovery.
Nabors’ biggest contribution to the local entertainment scene came in 1997 when he starred in the musical revue "A Merry Christmas with Friends and Nabors" at the Hawaii Theatre.
Nabors donated his time and expertise to what became an annual production for the next decade. Emma Veary and Karen Keawehawai’i were his co-stars for several years; Jimmy Borges also appeared several times. The show featured Phil Huber & the Huber Marionettes, Diamond Head Theatre’s Shooting Stars youth troupe and various chorales, hula dancers and special guests.
Nabors ended the concert series in 2006.
"I feel I have some really good friends here," he said. "Solid friends. In Hollywood it’s kind of hard to make lasting friends. Everybody’s sort of into their own thing, and they’re always working. But I did make some friends there who are still like family. Carol Burnett, of course. Florence Henderson. Ruth Buzzi — close friends who I worked with and we kind of bonded. That’s hard to do in Hollywood. Mostly you’re just working."
WHEN Nabors arrived in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s, gay entertainers of both sexes kept their sexual orientation out of public awareness. Some made it a point to attend gala events with a companion of the opposite sex. A few even married compliant or unwitting spouses as part of the masquerade.
Nabors said he avoided the problem by keeping a low profile.
"I never did make a thing of it at all," he said. "Nobody ever asked me out, right? And you don’t get a plaque and walk around town … and back then I wasn’t really sure how I was going to handle my life. I had no idea, I just worked. I was so focused on my work and my job that I didn’t get out much. If you’ve got 20 pages of dialogue to memorize every night, and you’re going through 12 to 14 hours on the set the next day, you don’t go out. Ask anybody who does it. It’s the only way to survive."
(A caption on an Associated Press photo in 1967 on Nabors’ rising stardom noted the bachelor said "he is unable to give, or find, the time for marriage.")
Indeed, Nabors was so isolated doing two years on "Andy Griffith" and the first of "Gomer" that he had no idea how popular he’d become.
"I was really surprised. … I’d never really been out in public much, and I was overwhelmed by the recognition (but) that doesn’t change who you are. It doesn’t hurt to be nice — to everyone.
"The smartest thing I ever did was to become an entertainer as opposed to an actor. Even though I did a lot of movies and films, I never thought I was that good. Gomer was just a character I created in my head, and then when I read for ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ they gave me words, so I knew (the character) really well."
Still, celebrity has its privileges. Nabors said he has most enjoyed meeting folks from all walks of life.
"It’s like a cross section of everybody. It offered me the opportunity for people to know who I was, and when you have a (public) identity, you get to meet a lot more people who don’t think you’re some crazy man. I got to meet so many across-the-board people and become friends with, and it’s been amazing.
"Because you are recognized, you do get to meet people you wouldn’t ordinarily meet — like presidents and kings and so forth."
One person Nabors has yet to meet is another celebrity with Hawaii ties: President Barack Obama.
"But I know his sister," he said.
