Actors - Don Knotts

Home > Listing Index > Actors > Don Knotts

	Actors - Don Knotts

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. He also appeared opposite Tim Conway in a number of comedy films aimed at children.

Biography

Early life

He was born in Morgantown, West Virginia to Elsie L. Moore and William Jesse Knotts, who had once worked as farmers. His father had a nervous breakdown and lost his farm before Don was born. His father's family had been in the United States since the 17th century, originally settling in Queen Anne's County, Maryland.

Knotts' father suffered from schizophrenia and alcoholism and died when Knotts was thirteen years old.

At 19 Knotts joined the Army and served in World War II as part of a traveling GI variety show called "Stars and Gripes." He received the World War II Victory Medal. After the war Knotts graduated from his hometown West Virginia University in 1948 with a degree in theater.

Career

After being a regular performer in the soap opera Search for Tomorrow from 1953 to 1955, he gained additional exposure in 1956 on Steve Allen's variety show, appearing in Allen's mock "Man in the Street" interviews, always as a man obviously very nervous about being on camera. The humor in the interviews would be increased by having Knotts state his occupation as being one that wouldn't be an obvious choice for such a nervous, shaking person, such as a surgeon or an explosives expert.

Knotts's portrayal of a bumbling deputy sheriff on the very popular television sitcom The Andy Griffith Show was the role which earned him his greatest recognition. A summary of the show from the website of the Museum of Broadcast Communications describes Deputy Fife: :Most of Andy's time, however, was spent controlling his earnest but over-zealous 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 issued to him. 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.

After leaving the series in 1965, Knotts starred 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) and The Love God? (1969).

In the late 1960s and early '70s, he served as the spokesman for Dodge trucks and was featured prominently in a series of print ads and dealer brochures. He also had a short-lived Tuesday night variety series on NBC during the fall of 1970.

In the 1970s, Knotts and Tim Conway starred together 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.

Knotts returned to series television in the late 1970s, appearing as landlord Ralph Furley on Three's Company, after Audra Lindley and Norman Fell left the show to star in a short-lived spin-off series (The Ropers). Knotts remained on the show from 1979 until it ended in 1984. In 1986, he reunited with Andy Griffith in the 1986 made-for-television movie Return to Mayberry
, where he reprised his role as "Barney Fife". From 1989 to 1992, Knotts again co-starred with Griffith, playing a recurring role as pesky neighbor Les Calhoun on Matlock. More recently, he guest starred on Robot Chicken with Phyllis Diller.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Don Knotts ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Don Knotts; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Actors - Don Knotts

Biography

Early life

Career

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay