“He passed away this morning at his home in Hawaii” of multiple causes, she said, speaking from the actor’s Honolulu-based entertainment company Naborly Productions. “He’d been ill for a while.”
Nabors’ husband, Stan Cadwallader, told news media the actor’s immune system had been suppressed since a liver transplant in 1994.
Nabors’ roles — first as the gullible but endearing auto mechanic Gomer Pyle on “The Andy Griffith Show” and then as a good-hearted if inept Marine on a spinoff, “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” — made him one of the more beloved television actors of the 1960s.
His patented phrases like “Gawww-leee,” “Surprise, surprise, surprise” and “Shazam!” were instantly recognizable, delivered in a high-pitched Southern drawl that contrasted sharply to his sonorous baritone singing voice.
After his shows went off the air, Nabors bounced between the stage, concert tours, the occasional television role — he struggled with being typecast — and full-length movies, three of them with his friend Burt Reynolds.
His liver transplant followed a near-fatal bout of hepatitis B in the 1990s, which he said he contracted while shaving with a razor purchased in India.
He married Cadwallader, his long-time partner, in 2013.
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