The Genius of Don Knotts
December 1997 By Michael McClelland
The Beatles claimed that all you need is love. Frankly, love has never done much except get me into a lot of trouble. In fact, after a strong bout of love, what I really need is laughter. There are many people who have dedicated their lives to making others laugh. There's that guy that you work with, there's all those stand-up comedians, and then there are the handful of people who have managed to tickle our funny bone so effectively that they have wedged themselves into our psyches deeply enough that they can make us laugh on the spur of the moment when we suddenly remember their antics, be it on an elevator, driving in the car or in that crowded restaurant. Finally, there are a very select number who can make us laugh in the most dire of times, i.e., when we are afraid, embarrassed, heartbroken or defeated. We can remember the hilarious way that they portrayed these tough situations and, that humor can make our own trouble seem a bit less serious. When I think about someone who can do this miraculous feat, someone who can truly make me laugh at myself and my trouble, the foremost person who springs to mind is Don Knotts.
Born July 21, 1924, in Morgantown, West Virginia, Don Knotts is the impossibly skinny, big-eared, rubbery-faced comedian possibly most famous for playing Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show." He won Emmys for an unprecedented five years in a row during his five years on the show (1960-1965). He played a character who masked his insecurity with grandiosity, who hid his fear with false bravado, and who covered his embarrassment with a swaggering smugness. Of course, Don Knotts's talent is for externalization. He could physically show you exactly what was in his characters mind without any dialogue. One look at his expression or posture and you knew exactly what Barney was thinking and feeling. His ridiculous and overblown attempts to cover up those feelings were doubly hysterical. Few actors have been gifted enough to convey such complexity through comedy.
Don Knotts possesses a gift for pathos. He could make you feel sorry for Barney even as you laughed at his bumbling inanity. He could make you laugh at Barney and wince at the aspects of the character that you saw in yourself. Best of all, Don Knotts is capable of physically portraying the embodiment of our most powerful emotions. When scared, Don can make his entire body quiver, his eyes bug out, his voice tremble. When scared out of my wits I might not actually look like Don Knotts, but that is sure how I feel, and he SHOWS you that. He gives you a picture of what is going on inside during your most dire moments and somehow seeing it there in front of you makes you realize how hilarious it really is.
Another quality that made the Barney Fife character so hilarious is that he seemed more afraid of looking nervous or insecure than actually being so. That is, he tried so hard (even while terrified) not to look tense that he ended up looking ten times as absurd. This keys right into the audiences' psyche. Most of us are so concerned with appearances and with looking cool that sometimes we end up looking ridiculous. No one ever tried so hard to look cool and ended up looking more ludicrous than Barney Fife.
Don Knotts met Andy Griffith while making "No Time for Sergeants" in 1958. It was a fortuitous meeting because on "The Andy Griffith Show" the two would have a rapport that has yet to be topped. As Andy Taylor, Griffith made the perfect straight man for Knotts and served as a foil for his outlandish antics by keeping things firmly grounded in reality. Somehow if the Andy Taylor character could see something worthwhile in Barney Fife, then it had to be there. It helped the audience to look more deeply at Barney, who in a lesser comedic environment might have been merely a jackass or a buffoon. There was a bit of pain in the Barney character, a bit of nobility. Barney had some finer points, hard to see perhaps, but there. Barney had many qualities good and bad. But even more important we have a bit of Barney in us. He was one of the best developed television characters ever (especially for a comedy). When you consider the other popular TV comedies of the time ("Gilligan's Island," "Hogans Heroes," "Beverly Hillbillies," "The Munsters," "Bewitched," "Dobie Gillis," "The Patty Duke Show," etc.) the depth is staggering.
After an all too brief five years Don Knotts left "The Andy Griffith Show" and went on to make some of the funniest movies ever including: "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (1965), "The Shakiest Gun in the West" (1968), "The Love God?" (1969), "The Apple Dumpling Gang" (1975), "The Prizefighter" (1979) and "The Private Eyes" (1980). These movies don't have the intellectual sting of a Woody Allen or Monty Python film, or the deft parody of Mel Brooks. They aren't irreverent like "Saturday Night Live" and they aren't rapid fire gag fests like the movies inspired by "Airplane!" To the contemporary movie-watcher these movies might seem naive or simplistic, and indeed there is a gentle innocence to them. However, they affect the viewer on a gut level. Don Knotts perfects his mastery of taking you through the gamut of negative emotions and making you laugh your head off at them. Again, he doesn't show you what someone scared or embarrassed or broken-hearted might look like; he shows you what they FEEL like. Don Knotts shows us our demons in their underwear and by doing so he gives us the ability to laugh at them when they beset us. His comedy is cathartic. It cleanses and purifies us of our anxieties and woes--and that is exactly what comedy was intended to do. That's what makes laughter the best medicine.
In "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (probably the quintessential Knotts film) Don Knotts examines cold raw terror inside and out. He plays his typical nebbish character (Luther Heggs) with big aspirations and little nerve. In this outing he must spend a night in a haunted house. Each second he spends in that house is a study in hysterical hysteria. I believe Knotts runs the gamut on every possible quiver and contortion of externalized fear. He leaves no stone unturned. Once having seen this movie you will never look at being scared the same way again. I could try to describe this sequence, but it truly must be seen to be believed.
He made a string of hit comedies over the next seven years, each spotlighting the pathetic but lovable character he had mastered. They examined anxiety, embarrassment, dashed dreams, heartbreak, and stress. And they couldn't be funnier! In the 70's he appeared in a line of movies for Disney which were perhaps not his best movies, but they did result in his teaming with perhaps the only comedian of the time who could hold his own on screen with The Don, the one and only Tim Conway. Conway was a veteran of television comedy ("The Carol Burnett Show") and a master of slapstick. The two made quite the on-screen comedy team. "The Prizefighter" (1979) and "The Private Eyes" (1980) are not to be missed. They complement each other marvelously. Where Don Knotts is frenetic and shaky, Tim Conway is slow-moving and barely cognizant. Everything puts Knotts in a frenzy; nothing phases Conway. Both movies give Don Knotts plenty of opportunity to be scared. "The Private Eyes" is my personal favorite among the films of Don Knotts. He combines the law-official posturing of Barney Fife with the haunted house terror of "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" with the slapstick of "The Apple Dumpling Gang." It's fitting that this was his last major picture, as he combines all the elements that makes him a great comedic actor into one tour-de-force performance.
The end of the 70's brought Knotts back to television in a role for which many people will remember him, Ralph Furley from "Three's Company" (1979-1984). Here, he mostly gets to show wide-eyed shock and amazement at the goings on of Jack and Chrissy and Janet and occasionally mortification at being zinged by one of their clever retorts. But even here Knott's talent for pathos shines through as you find yourself rooting for the outlandishly garbed Mr. Furley at times even though there would be little reason to do so if the character were played by another actor.
Unfortunately Don Knotts faded away for the most part after "Three's Company," but he left a great legacy of films and TV shows for us to enjoy forever.
Filmography:
Chicken Little (2005) (voice)
Cats Don't Dance (1996) (voice)
Big Bully (1995)
Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night (1987)
Cannonball Run II (1984)
The Private Eyes (1980)
The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979)
The Prizefighter (1979)
Hot Lead and Cold Feet (1978)
Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977)
Gus (1976)
No Deposit, No Return (1976)
The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975)
How to Frame a Figg (1971)
The Love God? (1969)
The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968)
The Reluctant Astronaut (1967)
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1965)
The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
Move Over, Darling (1963)
The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961)
Wake Me When It's Over (1960)
No Time for Sergeants (1958)
TV-ography:
Step by Step (1991)
Return to Mayberry (1986)
What a Country (1986)
Matlock (1986)
Three's Company (1979-1984)
The Muppet Show (1977 & 1978)
I Love a Mystery (1973)
The Don Knotts Show (1970 - 1971)
The Andy Griffith Show (1960 - 1965)
The Steve Allen Show (1956)
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