‘The Andy Griffith Show’ star didn’t seem cut out to be a movie star. But thanks to some enduring connections to Mayberry, Knotts will have the last laugh.
In 1964, Don Knotts was looking for a new gig. He was approaching the fifth season of what was intended to be a five-year run on The Andy Griffith Show, the series that had made him famous and earned him three consecutive Primetime Emmys for his portrayal of the bumbling but soft-hearted Deputy Barney Fife . (Two more statuettes would follow in 1966 and 1967 for guest appearances on the show.) But Knotts knew his time in Mayberry was ending. He dreamed of being a movie star, and in 1966, he got his first genuine box-office hit with The Ghost and Mr. Chicken—with more than a bit of help from his Mayberry cohorts.
In February 1960, Knotts was nearing the end of a stint on the original Steve Allen Show when he watched the debut of Sheriff Andy Taylor, played by Knotts’s No Time for Sergeants costar Andy Griffith, in a backdoor pilot episode of The Danny Thomas Show.
Knotts called Griffith the next day and suggested that Sheriff Taylor needed a deputy. In his book Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show, author Daniel de Visé speculates that, in Knotts, Griffith saw an opportunity to offload some of the qualities he didn’t like about the original version of Sheriff Taylor—namely the character’s country-bumpkin persona—onto a different character, allowing him to shape Taylor into something more in line with his own vision. Knotts was soon hired, becoming the fourth long-term cast member to sign on, behind Griffith, Ron Howard (Opie Taylor), and Frances Bavier (Aunt Bee).
The show was a hit early on, and it stayed one for the entirety of its eight-year run, never leaving Nielsen’s top 10. But according to Knotts’s 1999 autobiography Barney Fife and Other Characters I Have Known, Griffith’s plan had always been to exit the show after five years, and Knotts assumed that would be the end of his Mayberry residency, too. There were also other factors at play, including financial ones. Knotts reported earned less than $100,000 a year for his work on the show; legend has it that when he once asked for a raise, he was bluntly reminded that he was not the star of the series.
So, Knotts looked elsewhere. He was, in his own words, “pretty hot at the time,” and he fielded several lucrative offers for other television series. But Knotts had his sights set on a career in the movies. “Remember,” the actor wrote, “there was no such thing as television when I was growing up. Motion pictures were my dream.”
