Decades later, Maggie Mancuso still receives fan mail for her "Andy Griffith Show" role. Photo by Ronda Churchill.

EDITOR'S NOTE: "Looking Back" is a new occasional series about showbiz veterans living in Las Vegas.

On the big screen, Maggie Mancuso's knowledge and instincts as a location scout have guided acclaimed filmmakers shooting in Las Vegas, from Martin Scorsese (1995's "Casino") to Tim Burton (1996's "Mars Attacks"), and Joel and Ethan Coen (2003's "Intolerable Cruelty").

On the small screen, however, Maggie Mancuso made her mark under another name: Maggie Peterson. Or, as millions of "Andy Griffith Show" fans know her, Charlene Darling -- the singing, dancing, Sheriff Andy-chasing daughter of a musical mountain clan.

Almost 40 years after "The Andy Griffith Show" ended its network run, Mancuso's still Charlene Darling to her fans.

When she celebrated her 66th birthday earlier this month, the members of the Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club, Mayberry Chapter (based in Knoxvillle, Tenn.), celebrated, too, sending her a birthday card -- adorned with pictures from last year's party -- and telephoning greetings.

"We'll sing 'Happy Birthday' to you, blow out the candles for you on a chocolate cake and then talk with you for a few minutes ..." the card reads. "After we get off the phone with you we'll watch a few episodes that feature Charlene Darling prominently."

Mancuso has encountered many of those fans at the annual Mayberry Days gathering in Griffith's hometown of Mount Airy, N.C. Mancuso has attended for the past seven years, singing with the Dillards, the bluegrass veterans who played her music-making brothers on the show.

Viewers remain devoted to Mancuso because "she's a very nice person," says Dennis Beal, who heads the club's Mayberry chapter. "She's so kind to her fans."

In Mancuso's view, "People will blur the character with the person." But her continuing popularity, and the show's, "still shocks me," she says. "I did five episodes -- and a lot of (fans), they know every line" of dialogue. (Mancuso made a sixth appearance as a different character in one of the series' final episodes, 1968's "A Girl for Goober.")

That's hardly surprising, considering that "The Andy Griffith Show" has never been off the air since it ended production.

"I get fan mail from New Zealand, Germany, Holland," she says. "It's just ridiculous."

Then again, the benefits go beyond fan letters and birthday cards.

Take the time she was working as assistant location manager for Burton's 1996 sci-fi spoof "Mars Attacks."

Burton kept looking at her, Mancuso recalls. She couldn't figure out why -- until she found out he was an "Andy Griffith Show" fan who finally figured out that his assistant location manager and Charlene Darling were one in the same.

That realization changed Mancuso's status on the set, she notes, because "I got to sit with him at lunch."

BRIGHT EYES

Like Charlene, Mancuso hails from the mountains -- although, in her case, the mountains were in Greeley, Colo.

Also like Charlene, Mancuso comes from a musical family. Her father, a doctor, worked his way through medical school playing banjo -- the same banjo her brother, Jim, played in a Dixieland-style musical group he formed with two pals.

Too young to perform, Maggie sat on the stairway and sang along while they rehearsed.

At age 12, she officially joined the group, dubbed the Ja-Da Quartet, named after the 1918 novelty hit "Ja-Da." Their big break came in 1954, while performing for the summer at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo., the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Prominent manager Dick Linke, who heard Mancuso while attending a Capitol Records convention there, told her, " 'If you ever get to New York, look me up.' "

After high school -- "I couldn't wait to graduate," Mancuso says -- she did just that, passing up Smith College for showbiz.

"What a different life," she muses, pondering the road not taken.

With the Ja-Da four, Mancuso performed on such TV showcases as "Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts," "The Perry Como Kraft Music Hall" and "The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom." She remembers meeting Hollywood icon Gary Cooper and sitting next to another legend, singer Lena Horne, in a backstage makeup chair before a TV appearance.

"I didn't think it was that unusual," she says. "When you're a kid you just don't know. When I look back, I think what a miracle it all was."

When the rest of the Ja-Da Quartet headed off to college, Mancuso stayed in New York, then returned to the road when manager Linke teamed her with the Ernie Mariani Trio.

On the nightclub circuit, they eventually hit Las Vegas, playing the Sands during the Rat Pack's early '60s heyday.

Frank Sinatra called her Bright Eyes, Mancuso remembers. "They were very nice," she says of Sinatra and his Rat Pack pals, "considering we were kind of corny -- I wore cotton dresses, I didn't wear gowns. They could have cut us dead. But Sinatra would say, 'Sing, Bright Eyes, sing.' "

Onstage, Mancuso was "a bundle of energy who is apt to kick off her shoes and belt out a song that vibrates the wineglasses on the back bar," a newspaper columnist wrote at the time. Offstage, he added, "she is shy as a fawn and about as aggressive as a canary."

Mancuso was singing in Scottsdale, Ariz., when "Andy Griffith Show" officials caught her act and invited her to audition for the role of Charlene Darling.

Following her "Andy Griffith Show" breakthrough, Mancuso also worked with Griffith and co-star Don Knotts -- alias bumbling deputy Barney Fife -- in such movies as "Angel in My Pocket" and "The Love God?"

She also had two television series written for her, but neither went into production.

"They had high expectations for me, but I didn't have the drive," Mancuso says. "I never really wanted to be a star."

For Mancuso, the performance, not the payoff, remained a priority. Accordingly, she made guest appearances on such TV hits as "The Odd Couple" and "Love, American Style" and did "hundreds of commercials" touting cars, shampoo, detergent and other products.

"It was a terrific living," she says. And by that time, she had met musician Gus Mancuso, who has been her husband for almost 30 years.

NOT ALL GLAMOUR

In 1980, the Mancusos moved from Southern California to Las Vegas, setting the stage for Maggie's third showbiz career: location scout.

Her Las Vegas experience came in handy during "Casino," which filmed at 132 locations, including sites standing in for a Kansas City airport and an Indiana cornfield.

"And I did 98 percent of them," Mancuso says of the "Casino" locations. "I worked here in the '60s -- I knew where the places were."

For three months, Mancuso and Oscar-winning production designer Dante Ferretti would scout "Casino" locations, sometimes with director Scorsese along for the ride.

"What a thing," she says, "having them listening to your opinion."

Mancuso listened, too, particularly when Ferretti shared tales of his collaborations with legendary Italian director Federico Fellini -- or his culture-shock reaction to Las Vegas schlock, punctuated by an incredulous "What is theese?" Mancuso recalls, expertly imitating Ferretti's thick Italian accent.

Handling locations means being the first one on the set and the last to close, she explains. In addition, it's grungy work, moving the traffic cones surrounding the set at 4 a.m. "When does the glamour truck get here?"

Mancuso doesn't worry about any of that anymore. A few years ago, she gave up location scouting, in part because "making movies has changed drastically," she says. "Now everyone thinks they can do their own locations."

She cut back professionally, only to face a personal crisis: breast cancer, which necessitated a lumpectomy and chemotherapy.

"I had wonderful care," she says. "I'm very grateful." Despite the fact that, during chemotherapy, "I lost my energy -- and my hair." (But not, clearly, her sense of humor.)

Mancuso celebrated her survival, in and out of showbiz, on New Year's Eve by singing at the Bootlegger Bistro.

"It just about wiped me out," she confesses. "I was scared to death. It ruined my December."

And while singing for 80,000 people at a bluegrass festival never fazed her, "I come here and sing and I couldn't do it. Thank God (husband Gus) was there."

Despite her trepidation, "I'm going to sing again," she vows. "I'm going to do it right."

For Mancuso, that means putting together an act featuring the same combination of Dixieland and show tunes she performed with the Ja-Da Quartet.

The career that followed may have been "kind of accidental," Mancuso says.

But it's no accident that, four decades after "The Andy Griffith Show" ended, Charlene Darling lives on with the rest of her Mayberry TV neighbors.

"I'm very grateful for the little career I had," she says. "It's a lovely legacy."