Why Howard Morris (Ernest T. Bass) Still Steals 'TAGS' 60 Years Later

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A look at Howard Morris’ life as a comic pioneer, Ernest T. Bass, director and voice legend

By Ed Gross
September 29, 2025

Howard Morris may forever be remembered by generations of television fans as Ernest T. Bass, the wild-eyed rock-throwing menace of The Andy Griffith Show (who joined such luminaries as Floyd the Barber and Otis the Drunk), but that single character barely scratches the surface of his astonishing career. Morris was a fixture in the early days of live television, a pioneering sketch comic on Your Show of Shows, a respected director of sitcoms and commercials and a prolific voice actor whose work for Hanna-Barbera and others became a soundtrack of Saturday morning. Yet behind the laughter was a man who lived with insecurities, contradictions and a restless need to prove himself.

Morris, who was born on September 4, 1919, remembered that his beginnings were far removed from Mayberry. “I was a Jewish kid from the Bronx,” he told the Television Academy Foundation, noting that he had been drawn to performing almost from the start. After serving in the Army during World War II—where, remarkably, he crossed paths with other future comedy greats like Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner—Morris found his way into acting. Like many returning veterans, he tried the stage first, honing his craft in New York theater, but with certain limitations. “I was very short and could never play the leading man,” he recalled with candor. Instead, he channeled his energy into comedy, where his boundless physicality and high-pitched voice became assets.

That path brought him into comic legend Sid Caesar’s orbit just as television was entering its golden age. When Your Show of Shows debuted in 1950, Morris was not a guest star, not a sometime player, but part of the official ensemble. Week after week, in front of a live audience at New York’s Center Theater, Morris unleashed characters that ranged from the timid to the deranged, usually throwing himself headlong into slapstick. It was the perfect outlet for a performer who had the “funny in him,” as pop culture historian Geoffrey Mark would later put it, and it established Howard Morris as one of the great comic forces of the medium’s earliest decade.