Andrews was proficient on a number of conventional music instruments, but what distinguished him from fellow musicians was the ability to make music on funnels, tire pumps, rubber gloves, fishing poles, and many other such objects. He was reputed to have played more than 100 different instruments. Andrews appeared as a one-man band, simultaneously playing four instruments, in Rhythm of the Rio Grande, his first Hollywood film, with Tex Ritter in 1940. Ritter had discovered Andrews during a 1939 tour when the two were playing competing shows in Monticello (Drew County). Upon learning that the Toby show had drawn the larger audience, Ritter investigated and found Andrews to be the main attraction. This encounter resulted in an invitation to Hollywood.

Andrews was in ten Ritter westerns in 1940 and 1941, playing the sidekick in eight of the films. He basically played his Toby role in western garb, astraddle a mule, ad-libbing his lines, and repeating signature phrases such as “Hi Ho Josephine” and “Great gobs of goose grease.” When Ritter left Monogram, the film partnership with Andrews ended, but the two remained friends and continued to tour together for nearly ten years. Andrews played sidekick to Tom Keene in his next four films before moving to Republic Pictures, where, in 1942, he appeared in two films with Don “Red” Berry and in Cowboy Serenade with Gene Autry. Over a fifteen-year period, he had parts in approximately thirty-four films, including musical shorts, and played a major supporting role in Clayton Moore’s 1952 film Buffalo Bill in Tomahawk Territory, in which Andrews received second billing for his role of Cactus.

In 1950, as the popularity of B-westerns was on the decline, Andrews found a niche in children’s television, working for three years in Los Angeles before moving to KMJ-TV in Fresno, California, where as “The Forty Niner” he hosted weekday afternoon shows. After ten years in Fresno, Andrews landed at KOAM in Pittsburg, Kansas, and hosted The Fun Club, which aired on Saturday mornings from 1963 to 1984.

Among other highlights in Andrews’s career were a ten-month tour as a comedian and musician with Bob Wills in 1947; playing harmonica, accordion, and other instruments with a Wills satellite band led by Harley Huggins in 1948; nearly 10,000 television appearances; and a speaking role as the ferryman in the television miniseries The Blue and the Gray (1982). He received composer credits in the 1940 Ritter film Arizona Frontier for the song “Wastin’ Time.”