Sitcom superstar Don Knotts dead at 81

[TexasStooge]

LOS ANGELES, Calif. (AP) — Don Knotts, who kept generations of TV audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show" and would-be swinger landlord Ralph Furley on "Three's Company," has died. He was 81.

Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at a Los Angeles hospital, said Paul Ward, a spokesman for the cable network TV Land, which airs his two signature shows.

Griffith, who remained close friends with Knotts, said he had a brilliant comedic mind and wrote some of the show's best scenes.

"Don was a small man ... but everything else about him was large: his mind, his expressions," Griffith told The Associated Press on Saturday. "Don was special. There's nobody like him.

"I loved him very much," Griffith added. "We had a long and wonderful life together."

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

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 Emmys.

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 Bee 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 several other television shows. In 1979, he joined the cast of "Three's Company," also starring 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.

[Brent]

RIP Barney Fife.

[O Town]

Aww, man. He was so great in The Andy Griffith Show! Cracked me up. That one bullet he used to carry around in his shirt pocket. What a great actor he was.
May you rest in peace Don. You will never be forgotten.

[Miss Mary]

He truly created a one of a kind character. Don Knotts will be sorely missed. You can't think of the Andy Griffith show without Barney. Andy/Barney - the two just went hand in hand. That's why when there's an Andy Griffith rerun on, my husband asks this question - black and white or in color? Apparently, when the show went to color, Barney had taken another job in Mt. Pilot. My husband finds the later shows not the same w/o Barney. I'm rambling.......I'm sure that entire cast missed his absence too! And now the world will miss him.

RIP Mr. Knotts.....

Mary

[Lindaloo]

Rest in Peace Barney Fife! I also loved him in "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" "Mr. Limpett"

[Stephanie]

RIP Mr. Knotts!

[TexasStooge]

When my mom was still working at a Hotel in Utah, she actually got to talk to Don Knotts on the phone.

[tropicana]

I'd miss him most for Mr. Furley on Three's Company. He was a zany landlord. A true great actor.

-justin-

[breeze]

Besides his Mayberry character, "The Ghost & Mr. Chicken" has always been
one of my favorites.

[Miss Mary]

TV Land aired several Andy Griffith episodes last night. And will honor Don Knotts with a 48 hour Marathon this weekend, beginning Saturday, March 4th at 6 a.m. (Andy Griffith and Three's Company). For more info, here are a few links I found on TV Land.

http://www.tvland.com/obits/knotts/

http://www.tvland.com/schedule/index.jh ... y=20060304

http://www.tvland.com/schedule/index.jh ... y=20060305



RIP Mr. Knotts. Whenever I see the special clip of his past work and accepting an award on TV Land and hear that music, I get all choked up.

Mary

[TexasStooge]

A local station in my area (KDFI-TV) still airs "The Andy Griffith Show" in the afternoons.