Aaron Ruben | TV producer, writer, 95

Aaron Ruben, 95, a producer, writer, and director for some of the most popular television comedies of the 1960s and '70s, notably

The Andy Griffith Show

;

Gomer Pyle, USMC

; and

Sanford and Son

, died of pneumonia Saturday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Mr. Ruben, who cut his teeth as a comedy writer on radio for George Burns and Gracie Allen, and Milton Berle and on television for Phil Silvers and Sid Caesar, tapped a rich vein of television gold when, in 1960, he shifted location to the mythical town of Mayberry, N.C.

As the producer and sometime writer and director of The Andy Griffith Show for its first five seasons, he helped create one of the most revered series in TV history.

He created the series Gomer Pyle, USMC, with Jim Nabors transposing his lovable but clueless Mayberry character to the hostile environment of the Marine Corps.

Mr. Ruben was later hired to produce Sanford and Son, a U.S. version of the British hit Steptoe and Son, with Redd Foxx in the lead role as an ill-tempered junk dealer. That series ran from 1972 to 1977.

In his later years, Mr. Ruben was a court-appointed special advocate for abused and abandoned children.

- N.Y. Times News Service