IN: Andy Samuel Griffith (June 1, 1926 - July 3, 2012) was an American actor, comedian, television producer, Southern gospel singer, and writer, whose career spanned seven decades of music and television. Known for his southern drawl, his characters with a folksy-friendly personality, and his gruff, gregarious voice, Griffith was a Tony Award nominee for two roles, and gained prominence in the starring role in director Elia Kazan's film A Face in the Crowd (1957) before he became better known for his television roles, playing the lead roles of Andy Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968) and Ben Matlock in the legal drama Matlock (1986-1995).

Griffith was born on June 1, 1926 in Mount Airy, North Carolina, the only child of Carl Lee Griffith and his wife, Geneva (Nunn). As a baby, Griffith lived with relatives until his parents could afford to buy a home. With neither a crib nor a bed, he slept in dresser drawers for several months. In 1929, when Griffith was three, his father began working as a helper or carpenter and purchased a home in Mount Airy's "blue-collar" south side. Griffith grew up listening to music. By the time he entered school, he was well aware that he was from what many considered the "wrong side of the tracks". He was a shy student, but once he found a way to make his peers laugh, he began to come out of his shell and come into his own. As a student at Mount Airy High School, Griffith cultivated an interest in the arts, and he participated in the school's drama program. A growing love of music, particularly swing, would change his life. Griffith was raised Baptist and looked up to Ed Mickey, a minister at Grace Moravian Church, who led the brass band and taught him to sing and play the trombone. Mickey nurtured Griffith's talent throughout high school until graduation in 1944. Griffith was delighted when he was offered a role in The Lost Colony by Paul Green, a play about Roanoke Island still performed today. He performed as a cast member of the play for several years, playing a variety of roles, until he finally landed the role of Sir Walter Raleigh, the namesake of North Carolina's capital. He attended the University of North Carolina (UNC) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree in 1949. He began college studying to be a Moravian preacher, but he changed his major to music and became a part of the school's Carolina Playmakers. At UNC, he was president of the UNC chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, America's oldest fraternity for men in music. He also played roles in several student operettas, including The Chimes of Normandy (1946), and Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers (1945), The Mikado (1948) and H.M.S. Pinafore (1949). After graduation, he taught music and drama for a few years at Goldsboro High School in Goldsboro, North Carolina, where he taught, among others, Carl Kasell. He also began to write.

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OUT: As a baby, Griffith lived with relatives until his parents could afford to buy a home.

input: In later years, Fellini explained that from "a sentimental point of view," he was "most attached" to La Strada: "Above all, because I feel that it is my most representative film, the one that is the most autobiographical; for both personal and sentimental reasons, because it is the film that I had the greatest trouble in realizing and that gave me the most difficulty when it came time to find a producer." Of all the imaginary beings he had brought to the screen, Fellini felt closest to the three principals of La Strada, "especially Zampano." Anthony Quinn found working for Fellini invaluable: "He drove me mercilessly, making me do scene after scene over and over again until he got what he wanted. I learned more about film acting in three months with Fellini than I'd learned in all the movies I'd made before then." Long afterwards, in 1990, Quinn sent a note to the director and his co-star: "The two of you are the highest point in my life -- Antonio." Critic Roger Ebert, in his book The Great Movies, has described the current critical consensus as holding that La Strada was the high point of Fellini's career and that, after this film, "his work ran wild through the jungles of Freudian, Christian, sexual and autobiographical excess". (Ebert, himself, disagrees, seeing La Strada as "part of a process of discovery that led to the masterpieces La Dolce Vita (1960), 8 1/2 (1963) and Amarcord (1974)".) The years since its initial release have solidified the high estimation of La Strada. It holds a 97% rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes from 31 reviewers who, on average, scored it 8.7 on a scale of 10. Its numerous appearances on lists of best films include the 1992 Directors' poll of the British Film Institute (4th best), the New York Times "Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made", and the "Greatest Films" list of They Shoot Pictures, Don't They (# 67) - a website that statistically calculates the most well-received movies. In 1995, the Catholic Church's Pontifical Commission for Social Communications issued a list of 45 films representing a "...cross section of outstanding films, chosen by a committee of twelve international movie scholars." This has come to be known as the Vatican film list, and includes La Strada as one of 15 films in the sub-category labeled Art. Pope Francis, has said it is "the movie that perhaps I loved the most," because of his personal identification with its implicit reference to his namesake, Francis of Assisi.

Answer this question "Who were some of the characters in La Strada ?"
output:
Anthony Quinn found working for Fellini invaluable: "He drove me mercilessly, making me do scene after scene over and over again until he got what he wanted.