Lots of people in Mayberry had a motive for wanting to kill Barney Fife. He was always throwing Ernest T. Bass in the pokey for throwing rocks. Otis the town drunk couldn’t have a couple of cocktails without Barney cuffing him. Maybe Thelma Lou finally had it with the deputy’s two-timing ways with Juanita over at the diner. But the actual person who posed the biggest threat to Don Knotts, the comedian who played Barney, was none other than Andy Griffith himself.
“I dreamed I killed Don Knotts,” Griffith once told the Sioux City Journal, as reported by MeTV, revealing an unconscious desire to throttle his wiry costar. The dream occurred while Griffith was filming his first project after The Andy Griffith Show — but Knotts remained on the actor’s mind. “I woke up the next morning, and my conscience was killing me,” Griffith remembered. “I called Don and couldn’t find him anywhere. I finally went to work … shot the scene and called my shrink.”
Did Griffith need a psychiatrist to interpret this one? He clearly wanted to murder Don Knotts, the “friend” who took home five Emmy Awards for The Andy Griffith Show compared to a big fat zero for its titular star. Of course, the Matlock star had another explanation. “Listen, I had this nightmare, but I think I’ve analyzed what it was. I think I was killing my character, my image, and it bothered me,” Griffith told his therapist.
The shrink agreed, probably because Griffith was the one paying for the session.
“Isn’t that funny?” Griffith pondered. “I was killing the image of Andy Taylor that day, and it bothered me to the point that I had that nightmare.”
Sure, sure. The dream had nothing to do with Knotts landing big-screen roles in The Shakiest Gun in the West and The Incredible Mr. Limpet while Griffith struggled to find work. By his own admission, the folksy comedian was suffering through a dry spell. “After I did the old Griffith Show for eight years I thought I was hot stuff and I was going to go right into motion pictures and do just anything I wanted to,” he said. “Well, I didn’t, and I hung around trying to get a job for a while. In order to survive, I played heavies. And now, that’s what I’m considered. I’m not considered a comedy actor anymore.”
Knotts passed away in 2006, allegedly of complications from pneumonia. But where was 80-year-old Griffith at the time? Does he have an alibi? Maybe the folks at MeTV can look into that particular Matlock mystery.
“Television is a funny business,” Griffith said.
His murderous dreams, though, were anything but.
