DON KNOTTS
Name: Jesse Donald Knotts
Born: 21 July 1924 Morgantown, West Virginia
Died: 24 February 2006 Los Angeles, California
Jesse Donald Knotts (July 21, 1924 – February 24, 2006) was an American comedic
actor best known for his portrayal of Barney Fife on the 1960s television sitcom
The Andy Griffith Show (a role which earned him five Emmy Awards), and as
landlord Ralph Furley on the television sitcom Three’s Company in the 1980s. He
also starred in over a dozen comedy films. Knotts was also featured in Air
Buddies as the voice of Deputy Sniffer.
Knotts was born in the university town of Morgantown, West Virginia, to William
Jesse Knotts and his wife, Elsie L. Moore. His father’s family had been in the
United States since the 17th century, originally settling in Queen Anne’s County,
Maryland. His father had been a farmer, but suffered a nervous breakdown and
lost his farm. The family (including Don’s two brothers) was supported by Don’s
mother, who ran a boarding house in town. Knotts’ father suffered from
schizophrenia and alcoholism and died when Don was 13 years old. Some time
later, Knotts graduated from Morgantown High School.
At 19, Knotts joined the Army and served in World War II as part of a traveling
GI variety show and as a nurse. He did not serve in the Marine Corps as a drill
instructor, as has been the subject of a popular urban legend. After the war,
Knotts graduated from West Virginia University in 1948.
After performing various roles and venues (including a ventriloquist act with a
dummy named Hooch Matador), Knotts got his first major break on television in
the soap opera Search for Tomorrow where he appeared from 1953 to 1955. However,
he gained greater fame in 1956 on Steve Allen’s variety show, appearing as part
of Allen’s comedic repertory company, most notably in Allen’s mock “Man in the
Street” interviews, always as a man obviously very nervous and breathing heavily
about being on camera. The humor in the interviews would be increased when
Knotts stated his occupation- always one that wouldn’t be appropriate for such a
nervous, shaking person, such as a surgeon or explosives expert.
In 1958, Knotts appeared in the movie No Time for Sergeants alongside Andy
Griffith. The movie, based on the play and book of the same name, began a
professional and personal relationship between Knotts and Griffith that would
last for decades.
In 1960, when Griffith was offered the opportunity to headline in his own
television sitcom, The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968), Knotts took the role of
Barney Fife, the deputy and cousin of Sheriff Andy Taylor.
Knotts’ five seasons portraying the deputy on the popular show would earn him
five Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Television Comedy.
A summary of the show from the website of the Museum of Broadcast Communications
describes Deputy Barney Fife: “Self-important, romantic, and nearly always wrong,
Barney dreamed of the day he could use the one bullet (which he kept in his
shirt pocket) Andy had allowed him to be issued. While Barney was forever
frustrated that Mayberry was too small for the delusional ideas he had of
himself, viewers got the sense that he couldn’t have survived anywhere else. Don
Knotts played the comic and pathetic sides of the character with equal aplomb
and aploom.”
When the show first aired, Andy Griffith was intended to be the comedic lead
with Don Knotts as his “foil”, or straight man. But, it was quickly found that
the show was funnier the other way around. As Griffith maintained in several
interviews, "By the second episode, I knew that Don should be funny, and I
should play straight". The years during which the two worked on the show
cemented Griffith’s lifelong admiration for Don Knotts and their lifelong
friendship.
Believing earlier remarks made by Griffith, that The Andy Griffith Show would
soon be ending after five seasons, Knotts began to look for other work, and
signed a five film contract with Universal Studios. He was caught off guard when
Griffith announced he would be continuing with the show after all, but Knotts’
hands were tied. Knotts left the series in 1965. (Within the series, it was
announced that Deputy Fife had finally made the “big time”, and had joined the
Raleigh, NC, police force.)
Knotts went on to star in a series of film comedies which drew on his high-strung
persona from the TV series: The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964), The Ghost and Mr.
Chicken (1966), The Reluctant Astronaut (1967), The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968),
The Love God? (1969) and How to Frame a Figg (1971). Knotts would, however,
return to the role of Barney Fife several times in the 1960s: he made five more
guest appearances on The Andy Griffith Show (gaining him another two Emmys), and
later appeared once more on the spin-off Mayberry RFD, where he was present as
best man for the marriage of Andy Taylor and his longtime love, Helen Crump.
After making How to Frame a Figg, Knotts’ 5-film contract with Universal came to
an end. He continued to work steadily, though he did not appear as a regular on
any successful television series until his appearance on Three's Company in 1979.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Knotts served as the spokesman for Dodge
trucks and was featured prominently in a series of print ads and dealer
brochures. On television, he went on to host an odd-variety show/sitcom hybrid
on NBC, The Don Knotts Show, which aired Tuesdays during the fall of 1970, but
the series was low-rated and short-lived. He also made frequent guest
appearances on other shows such as The Bill Cosby Show and Here’s Lucy. In 1970,
he would also make yet another appearance as Barney Fife, in the pilot of The
New Andy Griffith Show. (This was particularly odd, as Andy Griffith did not
play Sheriff Taylor in this series.) In 1972, Knotts would voice an animated
version of himself in two memorable episodes of The New Scooby Doo Movies. He
also appeared as Felix Unger in a stage version of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple
with Art Carney as Oscar Madison.
Beginning in 1975 Knotts was teamed with Tim Conway in a series of slapstick
movies aimed at children, including the 1975 Disney film The Apple Dumpling Gang,
and its 1979 sequel, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again. They also did two
independent films, A boxing comedy called The Prize Fighter in 1979, and a
comedy/mystery movie in 1981 called The Private Eyes. Between 1975 and 1979,
Knotts co-starred in several other Disney movies, including 1976's Gus, 1977's
Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, and 1978's Hot Lead and Cold Feet.
In 1979, Knotts returned to series television in his second most identifiable
role, landlord Ralph Furley on Three’s Company. The series, which was already an
established hit, added Knotts to the cast when the original landlords, a married
couple played by Audra Lindley and Norman Fell, left the show to star in a short-lived
spin-off series (The Ropers). Though the role of the outlandish, overdressed,
nerdy-geeky-buffoon landlord was originally intended to be a minor recurring
character, Knotts was so funny and lovable as a character who fantasized that he
was an incredibly attractive lothario, that the writers greatly expanded his
role. On set, Knotts easily ingratiated himself to the already-established cast.
Knotts remained on the show until it ended in 1984. The Three’s Company script
supervisor, Carol Summers, went on to be Knotts’ agent--often accompanying him
to personal appearances.
In 1986, Don Knotts reunited with Andy Griffith in the 1986 made-for-television
movie Return to Mayberry, where he reprised his role as Barney Fife yet again.
In 1989, he joined Griffith in another show, playing a recurring role as pesky
neighbor Les Calhoun on Matlock until 1992.
After his run on Matlock ended in 1992, Knotts’ film and television roles became
sporadic including appearing in a cameo in the 1996 flop Big Bully as the
principal of the main characters' high school. In 1998, Knotts had a small but
pivotal role as the mysterious TV repairman in Pleasantville. That year, his
home town of Morgantown, West Virginia, changed the name of the street formerly
known as South University Ave (US 119, SR 73) to “Don Knotts Boulevard” on “Don
Knotts Day”. Also that day, in a nod to Don’s role as Barney Fife, he was also
named an honorary Deputy Sheriff with the Monongalia County Sheriff’s Department.
Two years later, Knotts was recognized for his television work with a star on
the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Though he continued to act on stage, much of his film and television work after
2000 was voice only. In 2002, he would appear again with Scooby-Doo in the video
game Scooby-Doo: Night of 100 Frights (Knotts also sent up his appearances on
that show in various promotions for Cartoon Network and in a parody on Robot
Chicken, where he was teamed with Phyllis Diller). In 2003, Knotts teamed up
with Tim Conway again to provide voices for the direct-to-video children’s
series, Hermie & Friends which would continue until his death. In 2005, he was
the voice of Mayor Turkey Lurkey in Chicken Little (2005), his first Disney
movie since 1979.
On September 12, 2003, Knotts was in Kansas City doing a stage version of On
Golden Pond when he received a phone call from John Ritter’s family telling him
that his ex-Three’s Company's co-star had died of an aortic dissection that day.
Knotts and the rest of his co-stars attended the funeral four days after Ritter’s
death. Before Ritter’s death, Knotts appeared with the former one final time in
a cameo on an episode of the series 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage
Daughter. It was an episode that paid homage to the earlier famous TV series.
Knotts was the last Three's Company star to work with Ritter.
During this period of time, macular degeneration in both eyes (a disease which
first appeared during the 1980s) caused the otherwise robust Don Knotts to
become virtually blind, and his live appearances on television were few, and all
were nostalgic or parodic versions of his iconic characters. In 2005, Knotts
parodied his Ralph Furley character while playing a Paul Young variation in a
Desperate Housewives sketch on The 3rd Annual TV Land Awards. He would parody
that part one final time, in his last live-action television appearance, an
episode of That ’70s Show, (“Stone Cold Crazy”). In the show Don played Fez and
Jackie’s new landlord. Although the landlord was never named, it was obvious to
Knotts fans that he was none other than Ralph Furley. Knotts' last official film
project was in the 2006 direct-to-video sequel to Air Bud, Air Buddies, voicing
the sheriff's dog/deputy Sniffer. (ironically, the actor playing the sheriff
Patrick Crenshaw also died after finishing this film)
Don Knotts died on February 24, 2006, at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles,
California, at the age of 81 from pulmonary and respiratory complications
related to lung cancer. He had been undergoing treatment at Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center in recent months, but went home after he reportedly had been getting
better. Long-time friend Andy Griffith visited Knotts’ bedside a few hours
before he died. His daughter stayed with him until his death.
Knotts’ obituaries began surfacing the Saturday afternoon following his death,
mostly noting his Barney Fife character. Some cited him as a huge influence on
other famous television stars. Musician and fan J.D. Wilkes said this about
Knotts: “Only a genius like Knotts could make an anxiety-ridden, passive-aggressive
Napoleon character like Fife a familiar, welcome friend each week. Without his
awesome contributions to television there would’ve been no other over-the-top,
self-deprecating acts like Conan O’Brien or Chris Farley.”
Knotts is buried at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.
Since his death, his hometown, Morgantown, West Virginia, has begun working
towards the creation of a statue of Knott’s likeness in his honor which will be
placed in a special memorial park along the river and Don Knotts Boulevard.
Name: Jesse Donald Knotts
Born: 21 July 1924 Morgantown, West Virginia
Died: 24 February 2006 Los Angeles, California
Jesse Donald Knotts (July 21, 1924 – February 24, 2006) was an American comedic
actor best known for his portrayal of Barney Fife on the 1960s television sitcom
The Andy Griffith Show (a role which earned him five Emmy Awards), and as
landlord Ralph Furley on the television sitcom Three’s Company in the 1980s. He
also starred in over a dozen comedy films. Knotts was also featured in Air
Buddies as the voice of Deputy Sniffer.
Knotts was born in the university town of Morgantown, West Virginia, to William
Jesse Knotts and his wife, Elsie L. Moore. His father’s family had been in the
United States since the 17th century, originally settling in Queen Anne’s County,
Maryland. His father had been a farmer, but suffered a nervous breakdown and
lost his farm. The family (including Don’s two brothers) was supported by Don’s
mother, who ran a boarding house in town. Knotts’ father suffered from
schizophrenia and alcoholism and died when Don was 13 years old. Some time
later, Knotts graduated from Morgantown High School.
At 19, Knotts joined the Army and served in World War II as part of a traveling
GI variety show and as a nurse. He did not serve in the Marine Corps as a drill
instructor, as has been the subject of a popular urban legend. After the war,
Knotts graduated from West Virginia University in 1948.
After performing various roles and venues (including a ventriloquist act with a
dummy named Hooch Matador), Knotts got his first major break on television in
the soap opera Search for Tomorrow where he appeared from 1953 to 1955. However,
he gained greater fame in 1956 on Steve Allen’s variety show, appearing as part
of Allen’s comedic repertory company, most notably in Allen’s mock “Man in the
Street” interviews, always as a man obviously very nervous and breathing heavily
about being on camera. The humor in the interviews would be increased when
Knotts stated his occupation- always one that wouldn’t be appropriate for such a
nervous, shaking person, such as a surgeon or explosives expert.
In 1958, Knotts appeared in the movie No Time for Sergeants alongside Andy
Griffith. The movie, based on the play and book of the same name, began a
professional and personal relationship between Knotts and Griffith that would
last for decades.
In 1960, when Griffith was offered the opportunity to headline in his own
television sitcom, The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968), Knotts took the role of
Barney Fife, the deputy and cousin of Sheriff Andy Taylor.
Knotts’ five seasons portraying the deputy on the popular show would earn him
five Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Television Comedy.
A summary of the show from the website of the Museum of Broadcast Communications
describes Deputy Barney Fife: “Self-important, romantic, and nearly always wrong,
Barney dreamed of the day he could use the one bullet (which he kept in his
shirt pocket) Andy had allowed him to be issued. While Barney was forever
frustrated that Mayberry was too small for the delusional ideas he had of
himself, viewers got the sense that he couldn’t have survived anywhere else. Don
Knotts played the comic and pathetic sides of the character with equal aplomb
and aploom.”
When the show first aired, Andy Griffith was intended to be the comedic lead
with Don Knotts as his “foil”, or straight man. But, it was quickly found that
the show was funnier the other way around. As Griffith maintained in several
interviews, "By the second episode, I knew that Don should be funny, and I
should play straight". The years during which the two worked on the show
cemented Griffith’s lifelong admiration for Don Knotts and their lifelong
friendship.
Believing earlier remarks made by Griffith, that The Andy Griffith Show would
soon be ending after five seasons, Knotts began to look for other work, and
signed a five film contract with Universal Studios. He was caught off guard when
Griffith announced he would be continuing with the show after all, but Knotts’
hands were tied. Knotts left the series in 1965. (Within the series, it was
announced that Deputy Fife had finally made the “big time”, and had joined the
Raleigh, NC, police force.)
Knotts went on to star in a series of film comedies which drew on his high-strung
persona from the TV series: The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964), The Ghost and Mr.
Chicken (1966), The Reluctant Astronaut (1967), The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968),
The Love God? (1969) and How to Frame a Figg (1971). Knotts would, however,
return to the role of Barney Fife several times in the 1960s: he made five more
guest appearances on The Andy Griffith Show (gaining him another two Emmys), and
later appeared once more on the spin-off Mayberry RFD, where he was present as
best man for the marriage of Andy Taylor and his longtime love, Helen Crump.
After making How to Frame a Figg, Knotts’ 5-film contract with Universal came to
an end. He continued to work steadily, though he did not appear as a regular on
any successful television series until his appearance on Three's Company in 1979.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Knotts served as the spokesman for Dodge
trucks and was featured prominently in a series of print ads and dealer
brochures. On television, he went on to host an odd-variety show/sitcom hybrid
on NBC, The Don Knotts Show, which aired Tuesdays during the fall of 1970, but
the series was low-rated and short-lived. He also made frequent guest
appearances on other shows such as The Bill Cosby Show and Here’s Lucy. In 1970,
he would also make yet another appearance as Barney Fife, in the pilot of The
New Andy Griffith Show. (This was particularly odd, as Andy Griffith did not
play Sheriff Taylor in this series.) In 1972, Knotts would voice an animated
version of himself in two memorable episodes of The New Scooby Doo Movies. He
also appeared as Felix Unger in a stage version of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple
with Art Carney as Oscar Madison.
Beginning in 1975 Knotts was teamed with Tim Conway in a series of slapstick
movies aimed at children, including the 1975 Disney film The Apple Dumpling Gang,
and its 1979 sequel, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again. They also did two
independent films, A boxing comedy called The Prize Fighter in 1979, and a
comedy/mystery movie in 1981 called The Private Eyes. Between 1975 and 1979,
Knotts co-starred in several other Disney movies, including 1976's Gus, 1977's
Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, and 1978's Hot Lead and Cold Feet.
In 1979, Knotts returned to series television in his second most identifiable
role, landlord Ralph Furley on Three’s Company. The series, which was already an
established hit, added Knotts to the cast when the original landlords, a married
couple played by Audra Lindley and Norman Fell, left the show to star in a short-lived
spin-off series (The Ropers). Though the role of the outlandish, overdressed,
nerdy-geeky-buffoon landlord was originally intended to be a minor recurring
character, Knotts was so funny and lovable as a character who fantasized that he
was an incredibly attractive lothario, that the writers greatly expanded his
role. On set, Knotts easily ingratiated himself to the already-established cast.
Knotts remained on the show until it ended in 1984. The Three’s Company script
supervisor, Carol Summers, went on to be Knotts’ agent--often accompanying him
to personal appearances.
In 1986, Don Knotts reunited with Andy Griffith in the 1986 made-for-television
movie Return to Mayberry, where he reprised his role as Barney Fife yet again.
In 1989, he joined Griffith in another show, playing a recurring role as pesky
neighbor Les Calhoun on Matlock until 1992.
After his run on Matlock ended in 1992, Knotts’ film and television roles became
sporadic including appearing in a cameo in the 1996 flop Big Bully as the
principal of the main characters' high school. In 1998, Knotts had a small but
pivotal role as the mysterious TV repairman in Pleasantville. That year, his
home town of Morgantown, West Virginia, changed the name of the street formerly
known as South University Ave (US 119, SR 73) to “Don Knotts Boulevard” on “Don
Knotts Day”. Also that day, in a nod to Don’s role as Barney Fife, he was also
named an honorary Deputy Sheriff with the Monongalia County Sheriff’s Department.
Two years later, Knotts was recognized for his television work with a star on
the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Though he continued to act on stage, much of his film and television work after
2000 was voice only. In 2002, he would appear again with Scooby-Doo in the video
game Scooby-Doo: Night of 100 Frights (Knotts also sent up his appearances on
that show in various promotions for Cartoon Network and in a parody on Robot
Chicken, where he was teamed with Phyllis Diller). In 2003, Knotts teamed up
with Tim Conway again to provide voices for the direct-to-video children’s
series, Hermie & Friends which would continue until his death. In 2005, he was
the voice of Mayor Turkey Lurkey in Chicken Little (2005), his first Disney
movie since 1979.
On September 12, 2003, Knotts was in Kansas City doing a stage version of On
Golden Pond when he received a phone call from John Ritter’s family telling him
that his ex-Three’s Company's co-star had died of an aortic dissection that day.
Knotts and the rest of his co-stars attended the funeral four days after Ritter’s
death. Before Ritter’s death, Knotts appeared with the former one final time in
a cameo on an episode of the series 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage
Daughter. It was an episode that paid homage to the earlier famous TV series.
Knotts was the last Three's Company star to work with Ritter.
During this period of time, macular degeneration in both eyes (a disease which
first appeared during the 1980s) caused the otherwise robust Don Knotts to
become virtually blind, and his live appearances on television were few, and all
were nostalgic or parodic versions of his iconic characters. In 2005, Knotts
parodied his Ralph Furley character while playing a Paul Young variation in a
Desperate Housewives sketch on The 3rd Annual TV Land Awards. He would parody
that part one final time, in his last live-action television appearance, an
episode of That ’70s Show, (“Stone Cold Crazy”). In the show Don played Fez and
Jackie’s new landlord. Although the landlord was never named, it was obvious to
Knotts fans that he was none other than Ralph Furley. Knotts' last official film
project was in the 2006 direct-to-video sequel to Air Bud, Air Buddies, voicing
the sheriff's dog/deputy Sniffer. (ironically, the actor playing the sheriff
Patrick Crenshaw also died after finishing this film)
Don Knotts died on February 24, 2006, at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles,
California, at the age of 81 from pulmonary and respiratory complications
related to lung cancer. He had been undergoing treatment at Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center in recent months, but went home after he reportedly had been getting
better. Long-time friend Andy Griffith visited Knotts’ bedside a few hours
before he died. His daughter stayed with him until his death.
Knotts’ obituaries began surfacing the Saturday afternoon following his death,
mostly noting his Barney Fife character. Some cited him as a huge influence on
other famous television stars. Musician and fan J.D. Wilkes said this about
Knotts: “Only a genius like Knotts could make an anxiety-ridden, passive-aggressive
Napoleon character like Fife a familiar, welcome friend each week. Without his
awesome contributions to television there would’ve been no other over-the-top,
self-deprecating acts like Conan O’Brien or Chris Farley.”
Knotts is buried at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.
Since his death, his hometown, Morgantown, West Virginia, has begun working
towards the creation of a statue of Knott’s likeness in his honor which will be
placed in a special memorial park along the river and Don Knotts Boulevard.