Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
Characters
Gomer's personality might best be summed up by the words "Aw, shucks." The Andy Griffith Show Book Gomer Pyle (played by Jim Nabors), from Mayberry, North Carolina, is a good-natured and innocent private whose naïvete constantly annoys his drill instructor, Sergeant Carter. Eventually, however, his "unquestioning love and trust of the world" lead those in his platoon to befriend him. His good nature attracts the friendship of women; meanwhile, in so far as Carter's abrasiveness repels women, Gomer is in the position of salvaging numerous social occasions by charming the women whose opinions are important to officers at the Marine base. Gomer was created as a stereotype of a rural American; according to Time, he "wears a gee-whiz expression, spouts homilies out of a lopsided mouth and lopes around uncertainly like a plowboy stepping through a field of cow dung. He is a walking disaster area." Though never promoted beyond private first class during the show's run, Jim Nabors (who played Gomer) was given an honorary promotion to lance corporal in 2001, to corporal in 2007, and then to sergeant in 2013 by the Marines.
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.-12