That's what made the show." Playing Fife, Knotts won Emmys for Best Supporting Actor in 1961, '62, '63, '66, and '67.Īfter leaving Mayberry, Knotts had his own comedy hour, The Don Knotts Show on NBC in 1970, featuring skits with future Radar Gary Burghoff. "But halfway through the second episode, I realized Don should be the funny one and I should play straight man to him. "I was supposed to be the funny one on the show," Griffith said in a 2002 interview. His manic performance made the laid-back Griffith seem wiser, and the sheriff's respect for Fife signaled to audiences that the deputy was more than merely a buffoon. Knotts envisioned Deputy Fife as a bumbling but proud character, clearly not cut out for work as a lawman. When Knotts heard that a sitcom was in development with Griffith as a small-town sheriff, he phoned his friend and pointed out that every sheriff needs a good deputy, but a deputy who is not so good might be funnier. He also played a fidgety chap in recurring bits on the late-1950s Steve Allen Show.
Don knotes tv#
Early in his TV career, Knotts played it relatively straight on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow in the mid-1950s. They eventually reprised their roles in a well-received film adaptation of No Time for Sergeants, which was Knotts' first movie.
The two Southern boys soon bonded by wordlessly whittling sticks, and worked together for almost two years on Broadway. Knotts first met Andy Griffith when he auditioned for Griffith's hit play, No Time for Sergeants. After graduation, his first break came when 25-year-old Knotts was hired to play the decrepit old "Windy Wales" in a revival of the popular radio western Bobby Benson. To overcome the accent, he went to college, majoring in education but with a strong minor in speech. Upon being discharged, he tried breaking into show business as a ventriloquist and stand-up comedian, but found that his thick Southern accent made his act almost unintelligible beyond the South. Beginning in high school, he performed as a ventriloquist, with modest success.Īt 19, he joined the Army, where his duties consisted primarily of entertaining the troops in traveling GI variety shows called "Stars and Gripes". During his childhood, Knotts' father became a paranoid schizophrenic and alcoholic, and Knotts sometimes joked that he drove his father crazy. Military service: US Army (2 to, technician)īorn to a pair of farmers, Don Knotts was raised "dirt poor" in West Virginia during the Great Depression. Remains: Buried, Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery, Los Angeles, CAĮxecutive summary: Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show
0 kommentar(er)
