The one and only Don Knotts, the beloved Barney Fife of The Andy Griffith Show, was on his deathbed in February 2006, when his daughter, Karen, felt the need to run out of the room … so she could laugh. As horrific as that might sound, anyone who knew Don wouldn’t be the least bit offended to hear that response.
“Here’s the thing about my dad,” says Karen Knotts in an exclusive interview. “He had this funniness that was just completely, insanely natural. When he was dying, he made us laugh in hysterics. He was literally dying, but he did something or said something that caused my stepmother and I to go into fits of laughter, which is why I ran out. I thought to myself, ‘I don’t want to be standing there in front of this man, my dearly beloved father, who’s dying, and laughing. I was telling this story to Howard Storm, who’s a director, and he said, ‘You should have stayed and laughed out loud. That’s what comedians live for!’ He was right; I should have just stood there and blasted out laughing.”
For his part, when Don was interviewed by Emmy TV Legends, he reflected on what drew him to comedy in the first place: “I think it was because I grew up around comedy with my brothers, especially my brother Shadow. I think it just became a part of my whole person. I don’t think I ever did consciously think about it. It just became instinctive. Somebody once told me that timing is something you learn, but I think I learned that by making my family laugh.”
Well, obviously he was on to something, which became apparent to anyone who ever laughed at Don playing Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, Ralph Furley on Three’s Company or any of his many different movie roles. “Being funny,” Karen notes, “was just something so natural. It was a gene or …. well, I don’t know what it was, except that it was just an out of control natural funniness.”
That natural humor is somewhat surprising to hear, given Don’s truly difficult childhood. He was born in 1924 in Morgantown, West Virginia, to a mother who was 40 at the time and a father who suffered from both schizophrenia and alcoholism — and would even go so far as to hold a knife to Don’s neck to threaten him. And as if that wasn’t enough, there was an abusive older brother (Willis) as well. As a result of all of that and more, he will eventually spend years in therapy.
“My dad,” says Karen, who was born in 1954, “was very burdened down by all these problems. He had problems with his father and an older brother who tormented him, because they were alcoholics. When his father passed, he was 13 years old. At that point, that burden — that huge burden — lifted off of him, and he became old enough that he was able to get the other brother under control, so he was no longer terrorized at home.”
Given some emotional freedom, Don changed his life for the better when he participated in Morgantown High School, which in many ways offered a salvation to all the angst he had been feeling. “His whole world changed,” Karen smiled warmly. “He just blossomed and he said those high school years were the best years of his life. He was class president every year, he had a column in the yearbook that was called ‘Dots and Dashes by Knotts.’ He was the most popular boy, and he had this best friend and they got into all of these adventures. The world was his oyster, and it was the first time he’d ever experienced such complete happiness, where all those problems fell away and there he was, living the beautiful life. Of course, things came back to haunt him later, because he had a lifelong condition of hypochondria, which he battled. But he even conquered that in the end.”
When he was growing up, Don fell in love with the idea of ventriloquism, which served as a kind of gateway drug to the entertainment world for him. Once developed, it was a skill that he would use at different school and church functions, and even in the US Army (which he served in from 1943-46), where he was part of the Stars and Gripes G.I. variety show that tours the Pacific. It wasn’t long, however, before he literally threw that dummy overboard from a ship he was on in the South Pacific, preferring a one-man act, if you will.
When he was growing up, Don fell in love with the idea of ventriloquism, which served as a kind of gateway drug to the entertainment world for him. Once developed, it was a skill that he would use at different school and church functions, and even in the US Army (which he served in from 1943-46), where he was part of the Stars and Gripes G.I. variety show that tours the Pacific. It wasn’t long, however, before he literally threw that dummy overboard from a ship he was on in the South Pacific, preferring a one-man act, if you will.
