Born on July 21, 1924, Don Knotts’ greatest success came in the 1960s on The Andy Griffith Show as the bumbling Deputy Barney Fife, but in his early days, he started off as a ventriloquist while in high school. After graduating in Morgantown, West Virginia, he enrolled in college at West Virginia University in 1943 after a short stint in New York City to try to make it as a comedian. It was when America got heavily involved in World War II that he dropped out of school after his freshman year and enlisted in the Army. He served in the South Pacific in the South Pacific Theater of Operations as a comedian and was in a GI variety troop show called “Stars and Gripes.”
It was during this time that he dropped the ventriloquism and moved into straight comedy. Knotts reported got so angry with his dummy named Danny that he threw it off the ship. After being discharged from the service, Knotts returned to college, where he earned a teaching degree in 1948, and moved back to NYC to pursue acting. He found work in radio and TV, doing a stint on the soap Search for Tomorrow and on the children’s show Howdy Doody, as Tim Tremble, a nervous friend of Buffalo Bob.
While on The Andy Griffith Show, Knotts was also getting into feature films and left the show to pursue film, and he went on to spend the second half of the decade as a feature comedy star. And the rest, as they say, is history. Don Knotts passed away on Feb. 24, 2006, at age 81 from pulmonary and respiratory complications from pneumonia related to lung cancer. In honor of what would be the star’s 100th birthday, we take a look at his impressive career in TV and film.
He worked alongside Louis Nye and Tom Poston in the popular sketch “Man on the street” on The Steve Allen Show. It helped launch all three of their careers.
Don Knotts, with his first wife, Kathryn Knotts, and their children, Karen Knotts and Thomas Knotts
1962 Emmy Award winners Don Knotts, Carl Reiner and Peter Falk.
Fun photo shoot with Andy Griffith and Jim Nabors in 1964.
As a meek bookkeeper transforms into an animated fish in the 1964 The Incredible Mr. Limpet.
