[Vision2020] Don Knotts Dies

[J Ford]

LOS ANGELES -

Don Knotts, the skinny, lovable nerd who kept generations of television 
audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith 
Show," has died. He was 81.

Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at 
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, said Paul Ward, a spokesman 
for the cable network TV Land, which airs "The Andy Griffith Show," and 
another Knotts hit, "Three's Company."

Unspecified health problems had forced him to cancel an appearance in his 
native Morgantown in August 2005.

The West Virginia-born actor's half-century career included seven TV series 
and more than 25 films, but it was the Griffith show that brought him TV 
immortality and five Emmies.

The show ran from 1960-68, and was in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings each 
season, including a No. 1 ranking its final year. It is one of only three 
series in TV history to bow out at the top: The others are "I Love Lucy" and 
"Seinfeld." The 249 episodes have appeared frequently in reruns and have 
spawned a large, active network of fan clubs.

As the bug-eyed deputy to Griffith, Knotts carried in his shirt pocket the 
one bullet he was allowed after shooting himself in the foot. The constant 
fumbling, a recurring sight gag, was typical of his self-deprecating humor.

Knotts, whose shy, soft-spoken manner was unlike his high-strung characters, 
once said he was most proud of the Fife character and doesn't mind being 
remembered that way.

His favorite episodes, he said, were "The Pickle Story," where Aunt Bea 
makes pickles no one can eat, and "Barney and the Choir," where no one can 
stop him from singing.

"I can't sing. It makes me sad that I can't sing or dance well enough to be 
in a musical, but I'm just not talented in that way," he lamented. "It's one 
of my weaknesses."

Knotts appeared on six other television shows. In 1979, Knotts replaced 
Norman Fell on "Three's Company," playing the would-be swinger landlord to 
John Ritter, Suzanne Somers and
Joyce DeWitt.

Early in his TV career, he was one of the original cast members of "The 
Steve Allen Show," the comedy-variety show that ran from 1956-61. He was one 
of a group of memorable comics backing Allen that included Louis Nye, Tom 
Poston and Bill "Jose Jimenez" Dana.

Knotts' G-rated films were family fun, not box-office blockbusters. In most, 
he ends up the hero and gets the girl — a girl who can see through his 
nervousness to the heart of gold.

In the part-animated 1964 film "The Incredible Mr. Limpet," Knotts played a 
meek clerk who turns into a fish after he is rejected by the Navy.

When it was announced in 1998 that Jim Carrey would star in a "Limpet" 
remake, Knotts responded: "I'm just flattered that someone of Carrey's 
caliber is remaking something I did. Now, if someone else did Barney Fife, 
THAT would be different."

In the 1967 film "The Reluctant Astronaut," co-starring Leslie Nielsen, 
Knotts' father enrolls his wimpy son — operator of a Kiddieland rocket ride 
— in NASA's space program. Knotts poses as a famous astronaut to the joy of 
his parents and hometown but is eventually exposed for what he really is, a 
janitor so terrified of heights he refuses to ride an airplane.

In the 1969 film "The Love God?," he was a geeky bird-watcher who is duped 
into becoming publisher of a naughty men's magazine and then becomes a 
national sex symbol. Eventually, he comes to his senses, leaves the big city 
and marries the sweet girl next door.

He was among an army of comedians from Buster Keaton to Jonathan Winters to 
liven up the 1963 megacomedy "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." Other films 
include "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (1966); "The Shakiest Gun in the West," 
(1968); and a few Disney films such as "The Apple Dumpling Gang," (1974); 
"Gus," (1976); and "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo," (1977).

In 1998, he had a key role in the back-to-the-past movie "Pleasantville," 
playing a folksy television repairman whose supercharged remote control 
sends a teen boy and his sister into a TV sitcom past.

Knotts began his show biz career even before he graduated from high school, 
performing as a ventriloquist at local clubs and churches. He majored in 
speech at West Virginia University, then took off for the big city.

"I went to New York cold. On a $100 bill. Bummed a ride," he recalled in a 
visit to his hometown of Morgantown, where city officials renamed a street 
for him in 1998.

Within six months, Knotts had taken a job on a radio Western called "Bobby 
Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders," playing a wisecracking, know-it-all 
handyman. He stayed with it for five years, then came his series TV debut on 
"The Steve Allen Show."

He married Kay Metz in 1948, the year he graduated from college. The couple 
had two children before divorcing in 1969. Knotts later married, then 
divorced Lara Lee Szuchna.

In recent years, he said he had no plans to retire, traveling with theater 
productions and appearing in print and TV ads for Kodiak pressure treated 
wood.

The world laughed at Knotts, but it also laughed with him.

He treasured his comedic roles and could point to only one role that wasn't 
funny, a brief stint on the daytime drama "Search for Tomorrow."

"That's the only serious thing I've done. I don't miss that," Knotts said.

J  :]

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