Loading ...What Don Knotts Meant to Me
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Loading ...By Dale Nauertz
The sun shines a little dimmer today…because it no longer shines on Don Knotts.
Don Knotts, best known as Barney Fife on “The Andy Griffith Show” passed away on Friday night at Cedars Sinai hospital in Los Angeles. He was 81 years old. Having just read his biography, I now know that he started his career as a ventriloquist before enlisting in World War II. After the war ended, Don went to New York City to try his hand at acting. It was there that he received his big break, co-starring with a young Andy Griffith in a Broadway play entitled “No Time for Sergeants”. He reprised his role when the same play was turned into a feature film, also starring Andy Griffith. And when Andy got his own television series, well, guess who ended up co-starring in it (not to mention stealing the majority of it).
It’s sort of odd that I loved Don’s work as much as I did, considering that the man’s greatest success was found in a T.V. series I was way too young to have seen in first-run and in movies that were made before my time. But I loved him anyway. When I was a child, we only got one channel, and it was CBS. For the early years of my life, I had no idea that watching “Dallas” on Friday nights was optional. Then I found out there were four other channels one could get, if one had the right kind of antenna. I wasn’t one of those kids who envied kids who got cable. I envied kids that had the full “farmer five” (as the five channels accessible with a mere antenna in southwest Wisconsin are affectionately known). Finally, in third grade, my parents bought the right kind of antenna and a whole new world of entertainment was opened before my disbelieving eyes.
And the king of that entertainment to this particular eight year old was Don Knotts.
Channel 47 became a FOX station eventually, which means that it now shows about three shows worth watching. But there has never, ever been a finer television station than the mid-eighties incarnation of Channel 47 (WMSN TV). They showed a different old movie every night of the week (thus I soon became a fan of guys like Clint Eastwood) and the rest of their programming schedule was old, syndicated shows that were no longer on the air. This can’t be correct, but it seems to me that they showed “The Andy Griffith Show” about four times a day (it was probably only two, maybe three) and during the summer I watched every episode they chose to play. I didn’t just watch them. I absorbed them. (I also absorbed pretty much everything else that was on, “Gunsmoke”, “Rawhide”, “Mork and Mindy”, “The Monkees”, “Leave it to Beaver”, “Kate and Allie”…I guess I never have gotten out much.) I liked Andy and Gomer and Opie and the other characters on that show, but none of them could compete with the sheer comedic bliss of watching Don Knotts do his thing. To my young mind, Don Knotts was like a god. He cracked me up, no matter what. Soon, 47 (and the PBS station, 21) showed old Disney movies that the man had done, and I loved him even more. I devoured every airing of “The Apple Dumpling Gang” and “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again”. The best Herbie movies were the ones featuring Don as a bug-eyed mechanic (according to his filmography, he was only in one Herbie film: “Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo” but it seems to me he was in at least three, that’s how good he was). I even watched “Gus: The Field Goal Kicking Mule” wherein he and Ed Asner coached a football team that was brought to glory once they employed a field-goal kicking mule (whose name was…you guessed it). And, when 47 began showing “Three’s Company” every evening at 9:30, I watched fervently to see the high jinks of yet another Knotts creation: landlord Ralph Furley. Hell, once he became a semi-regular on “Matlock”, I even became an avid viewer of “Matlock”.
There was something magical about Don Knotts’s tightly wound, manic screen creations, with his constant nervous energy ready to explode like a neutron bomb and his eyes nearly popping from his skull as though he were a cartoon character that had been made human. No one has ever captured that same energy. No one has ever managed to replicate the gold standard he set down. I was happy to see him make an appearance, well within the twilight of his career, in “Pleasantville” as an old cable technician who literally opens a world of wonder to Tobey Maguire’s character: a young man who watches way too much classic television. Don had the same affect on me, not quite so literally. Perhaps this was the reason I identified so readily with Tobey’s character in “Pleasantville”, perhaps it was the reason the fantasy of that movie held an element of truth. Don Knotts was more than just a great comedic actor, he was one of the reasons I became interested in filmed entertainment, both television and motion picture. He opened this Pandora ’s Box of delights to me…or, at least, he certainly helped. And I think he even had a hand in shaping my personality. After the hours and hours of footage I once watched featuring the man, I don’t think it could be helped.
Though, for my money, one of his best roles was one of his most overlooked. He made a great Western comedy in 1968 called “The Shakiest Gun in the West”. In this movie he was a frantic, bumbling dentist (thanks to movies I grew up on, I assumed for the longest time that there was no other kind) who makes his way West and is, somehow, mistaken for a famous gunslinger. The premise is absurd, but Don makes something magical and hilarious out of it. I haven’t seen this movie in years, and perhaps it hasn’t aged all that well…but when until the age of eleven, that was one of the greatest films I had ever seen. (And if you don’t laugh when Don goes undercover as an Indian maiden, you may not have a pulse.)
So, in short, I must thank you, Don. You made an impression on me at an early age and helped shape me into the man I am today (in however small a fashion). Your particular genius will never be equaled. Your legacy will live on and inspire kids like myself for decades to come. And, above all, your work will always put a smile on my face and have a special, goofy little place in my heart.
