Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,729
By This is the grave of Don Knotts.
One of the all time greats, Knotts was born Jesse Donald Knotts in Morgantown, West Virginia in 1924. He had a real rough childhood. His father was schizophrenic and used to chase the boy around with a knife, until the old man died when Don was 13. His mother then ran a boardinghouse in Morgantown and that’s how he finished his childhood years. Not surprisingly, he got out when he could and served in World War II, part of the Army’s 6817th Special Services Battalion.
Now, Knotts had discovered what a lot of kids with rough homelives had–being funny made up for a lot of terribleness. He had started a ventriloquist act when he was a kid and was pretty good at it, though he later came to hate the whole genre. He moved to New York briefly to take a stab at comedy but then there was the war. See the 6817th was the entertainment division of the Army. Lots of famous peoole served here–Glenn Miller, Hank Greenberg, Mickey Rooney, Sammy Davis, Jr. Of course Knotts was just a kid. But he was so funny that this is where he ended up. After he was mustered out, he came back home and enrolling in West Virginia University. He graduated in 1948 with an education degree.
But comedy was still Knotts’ calling, so he went back to New York. He got some early western radio work, mostly thanks to guys he had known in the military. His first real TV role was on the soap opera Return to Tomorrow, from 1953-55. Then he started to work for Steve Allen in various skits and that lasted til 1960. Around this time, Knotts got to know Andy Griffith. This would make his career and make him an icon of television comedy. They worked together in Mervyn LeRoy’s No Time for Sergeants, in 1958. Knotts has played in the Broadway version in 1955 and reprised his role. He and Griffith liked each other’s work and these very different comic actors played off each other effectively.
Meanwhile, Griffith was moving toward stardom. So in 1960, CBS offered Griffith his own comedy show. He accepted of course and wanted Knotts hired to play Sgt. Barney Fife. While most sitcoms were flashes in the pan at best, The Andy Griffith Show ran from 1960 to 1968. The rural South and its residents were the subject of a lot of sitcoms in this period (The Beverly Hillbillies being the other obvious example) and then the rural exploitation movies of the 70s. So it was a rich subject and Griffith managed to portray this fictional town, based on his own home town in North Carolina, with quite a bit of sympathy. There was nothing southern about Don Knotts, but boy did he make Barney Fife his own. We hardly need to discuss this. It’s one of the iconic roles in television history. Knotts was so over the top and so ridiculous that in lesser hands, the role would have been intolerable. But who doesn’t love Barney Fife? Then, decades of syndication meant that every kid who grew up in the 80s like me knew this show frontwards and backwards. Now, when the show was first conceptualized, the idea was that Griffith would be the funny man and Knotts the straight man. But it took about 5 minutes for everyone involved to figure out that the other way was going to work way, way better.
Knotts worked on The Andy Griffith Show for the first five of its eight seasons and he won three Emmy Awards in those five seasons. He only left the show because he thought Griffith was going to end and they didn’t communicate well about this and, well, these things happen. But they were still friends and he would guest star from time to time in those last three years. Knotts meanwhile tried to make it in the movies, but it’s hard to say that many of the mostly silly comedies he was in were actually good. The Reluctant Astronaut coming out two days before the Apollo I tragedy didn’t help. Knotts had a variety show for a year but it didn’t do well and he didn’t like the format anyway. In truth, he wasn’t a good lead. He was great, don’t get me wrong. But a bit of Knotts went a long way and asking him to hold an entire show was a bit much. He did have some range. I’d have been real curious to see him and Art Carney play in The Odd Couple and he did some other Neil Simon plays as well in the 70s. Those of us who grew up in the 80s remember Knotts for a lot of things he did in this era. There was his appearance in Scooby Doo of course. Then there were the children’s movies he made, which really fit his style of humor, such The Apple Dumpling Gang and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo. The Apple Dumpling Gang films put him with Tim Conway, a good pairing for this kind of thing.
This leads us to the second great role of Knotts’ TV career. In 1979, Norman Fell and Audra Lindley decided to leave Three’s Company for their own spinoff, The Ropers. That didn’t go anywhere, but it did open a role. Mr. Roper was a good character. Don Knotts as their new landlord, Mr. Furley, was absolutely epic. It didn’t hurt that Knotts fit into the 70s very well. I am not sure if Knotts himself wore Furley’s ridiculous unbuttoned 70s swinger shirts, but Knotts himself was a big time ladies man and married a few of them. The rest of the Three’s Company cast were scared to death to work with him because he was such a legend, but then they all loved him because of course you loved Don Knotts!
Knotts didn’t work a ton after this. He appeared on various Griffith projects, including as Barney Fife in Return to Mayberry and a recurring character on Matlock. He had a few roles on TV shows and small parts in a few movies. Did a bit of theater too. In fact, he was on a production of On Golden Pond when he found out that John Ritter had died. They had worked together again on Ritter’s show 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, which as I recall was not a bad show.
Toward the end, Knotts health got bad and he had macular degeneration too. Ugh. He died in 2006, at the age of 81.
Don Knotts is buried in at Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California. Now, when I went to this cemetery, I had no idea Knotts was there. I stepped out of the car, looked down, and there was Don Knotts! I knew that was going to be a good day.
If you would like this series to visit other stars of The Andy Griffith Show, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Francis Bavier, i.e., Aunt Bee, is in Siler City, North Carolina and George Lindsay, ol’ Goober Pyle himself, is in Jasper, Alabama. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.