Don Knotts will always be remembered for his role as Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife on
the Andy Griffith Show. While Don Knotts was epically funny on the small screen,
his tragic-real life story includes a wounded childhood, struggles with insomnia and pill
addiction, and later severe health struggles. Jesse Donald Knotts was born in Morgantown,
West Virginia in 1924. When Knott's brother-in-law Daniel de Visé did a deep-dive into Knotts'
childhood in his book Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show,
he wrote that Knott's childhood was horrible. Knotts was an accidental child that came along
14 years after his next closest sibling. His two older brothers shared their bedroom with
the family's various boarders while Knotts slept on a cot in the kitchen.
His father, Jesse Sr., was mostly bedridden by the time Knotts was born.
Closer Weekly says the elder Knotts was a schizophrenic alcoholic,
while The New York Times adds that he also suffered from hysterical blindness.
Abuse was a regular part of his childhood. Around age 30,
Knotts' mother Elsie asked him if he remembered a horrifying confrontation where his father had
threatened him with a knife. In order to get from his kitchen bedroom to literally anywhere else,
Knotts needed to walk through the living room, and past the sofa where his father spent most of
his time. Sometimes, young Don could sneak by. Otherwise, it invariably ended with threats.
It's no wonder, then, that as a young boy, Don Knotts was already pale,
thin, and was regularly sick. He'd later recall:
"I did not come into the world with a great deal of promise."
Knotts' relationship with his brothers was complicated as well.
They were funny, says The New York Times, especially his brother William,
nicknamed Shadow. An impressive feat when there was so little to laugh about.
But there was more to it. Knotts' daughter Karen would later tell Closer Weekly that
her father was mistreated by his brothers, too. They were often drunk and fought, until
Shadow tragically died after suffering an asthma attack. Knotts was only a teenager at the time.
It's difficult to imagine growing up in that kind of environment with that kind of fear,
and Don Knotts had a deep desire for happiness. He later revealed some of
the coping mechanisms he used, saying that he managed to find some comfort -
"By filling my space with imaginary characters with whom I would act out some happy drama."
Things started to improve as he entered his teenage
years. His daughter, Karen, told Closer Weekly:
"When his father passed, he was 13 years old. At that point,
that burden — that huge burden — lifted off 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."
She also recalled that once her father entered high school,
he really started to come into his own. He was class president, he had a yearbook column,
he was popular, and he had a best friend for the first time. But in 1976,
he told the Los Angeles Times he had a slightly different view of his youth.
"I felt like a loser. I was unhappy, I think,
most of the time. We were terribly poor, and I hated my size."
It's perhaps not entirely surprising, then,
that it was during Don Knotts' early teens that he turned to a friend named Danny. Who
was Danny? A ventriloquist's dummy, and with the dummy, he started performing.
There's an oft-repeated rumor about Knotts that says he was once an incredibly strict
Marine Corps Drill Instructor. That's balderdash, and it also ignores his actual military service.
According to The New York Times, when World War II rolled around,
everyone was convinced that the military wouldn't take such a sickly,
undernourished man. But they did, and they found the perfect place for him.
Knotts toured the Pacific front as a member of the comedy troupe Stars and Gripes, who were
tasked with entertaining the troops and he also worked as a nurse when those services were needed.
It was while he was in the military that he caught the eye of another, older comedian
named Red Ford. Ford's comments stuck with him, and he would remember what he said years later:
"You know something? You're a funny little son of a b---h."
By the time he was out, he wasn't a ventriloquist anymore. He had
moved on to other types of comedy, and according to Appalachian Talk,
he threw his dummy Danny off of a ship while he was somewhere in the South Pacific.
After the military and after graduating from West Virginia University in 1948,
Don Knotts headed for New York City. He had $100 in his pocket, according to the LA Times,
and his career started out like many: He was rejected. He was turned down for a series of radio
gigs then landed a spot on a soap opera, but it took seven years before he got a role on Broadway,
some attention, and a co-star that would become a lifelong friend. That co-star was Andy Griffith,
and the play was a comedy called No Time for Sergeants.
From there, he started making a reputation as the perfect person to play a certain type of
character: nervous, anxious, and non-threatening. And here's the thing: The New York Times
says that he absolutely stole some of the material he was doing, and those he stole from were largely
fine with it. Why? Because the small, thin, nervous Knotts was the perfect sidekick to make
others look more manly, so anyone he shared the screen with looked more like a leading man.
It was Don Knotts who went to Andy Griffith and suggested himself for the role of Barney Fife,
and according to the LA Times, he was almost joking when he said it. But Griffith absolutely
went for it, and it was a match made in TV heaven. Knotts had made it and found the success that most
aspiring actors and comedians could only dream of, but not all was well behind the scenes.
According to de Visé, Knotts had long struggled with massive feelings of
inferiority. Long before he even made it to the small screen alongside Andy Griffith,
he would become so distraught that before a performance, he might spend days in bed. In
the 1950s, his doctors gave him a prescription for anti-anxiety drugs, to which he became addicted.
Wrapped up with his anxiety was hypochondria, too, along with chronic insomnia. De Visé says that his
insomnia stemmed from a tendency to stay out too late ... and enjoy the company of too many women.
But he also says that Knotts quit all his bad habits with the snap of his fingers. After an
accidental overdose of sleeping pills and an ultimatum from his third wife
Knotts changed at least some of his ways. While success did come for the poor boy
from West Virginia, Don Knotts' daughter Karen told Closer Weekly that the long,
hard years of his childhood definitely left their mark, saying -
"Things came back to haunt him."
Another part, according to de Visé, was that Knotts had difficulty reconciling his lives.
He constantly played characters who were submissive, anxious,
nervous, and often, the butt of the joke, and at the same time, he'd found more success
than he'd ever imagined. Reconciling those two things proved difficult, and de Visé says that
Knotts was a good way into his career when he found himself sitting in the office of a
Hollywood therapist, screaming and cursing God in an attempt to rid himself of depression,
self-doubt, and the lessons of his Bible loving father.
Still, Knotts' daughter, Karen, remembered:
"He was mercurial. He had a lot of different kinds of moods. He fought
a lot of depression and I helped him, or thought I did, because I could see how
he had this endless loop of thought that would always lead to a downward spiral."
On a more positive note, she felt that by the end of his life he had overcome a lot
of his past trauma and that he'd worked hard to become a happy person who loved people.
There are a few different stories as to why Don Knotts left The Andy Griffith Show. His daughter,
Karen, told Closer Weekly that the work was hard and there were only so many storylines
the show could go through. According to the LA Times, though, Knotts had only ever intended on
doing five seasons of the show when it started — and that's what he did. In 1967, he told them,
"The grind gets to you in television,
and that's primarily the reason I'm concentrating on pictures."
The Andy Griffith Show continued on without him for the most part,
though he did continue to make the occasional guest appearance.
But the general consensus is that without Knotts, it just wasn't the same.
There is a positive here, though, and that's the fact that Griffith and Knotts remained friends.
The tragedy, on the other hand, is that Knotts never quite made it in the movie career that he'd
been hoping for. After leaving TV, he'd scored a five-film deal with Universal. In hindsight,
movies like The Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Reluctant Astronaut, and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken
were absolutely brilliant. Not only did Mr. Limpet kickstart the idea of mixing animation and live
action, but later comedians from Martin Short to Jim Carrey have cited them as a major inspiration.
Unfortunately, at the time, Knotts didn't see the critical acclaim that he thought he should have.
When Knotts was only 57 years old, he was given a troubling diagnosis
of macular degeneration. According to the Mayo Clinic, the condition
interferes with a person's ability to see directly in front of them
and makes anything in their direct line of sight appear distorted or blurry. In some cases,
it can even lead to an inability to recognize faces, and it usually gets progressively worse.
Knotts struggled with the diagnosis. Per The New York Times, Knotts once said,
"I got pretty depressed for a while. And then one day I said to myself,
'I bet a blind person would give his right arm to have the vision I have.'"
Knotts continued to work, and according to the American Macular Degeneration Foundation,
he continued to participate in his favorite hobby: swimming laps. Eventually, though,
his eyesight had deteriorated to the point where he could no longer drive or read.
In the early 70's, variety shows were all the rage,
which led to the opportunity of a lifetime: The Don Knotts Show. The show seemed like
it had everything that would have made it a major hit. According to MeTV, they had given
the show 22 weeks to make an impact ... and it didn't. Knotts talked about the show, saying -
"We did all kinds of things. There was tremendous competition that season for
variety, because everybody and his brother had a variety show."
The show was on NBC, and Knotts went on to say that they essentially had
stolen him away from CBS. That didn't go over well, but everyone had been so
convinced it was going to be a hit that they didn't see where it could possibly go wrong.
The Andy Griffith Show director Bob Sweeney was even brought in to try to fix things,
M*A*S*H's Gary Burghoff was brought in as a recurring sketch comedy character,
and they even debuted acts like The Carpenters. Still, it came to a premature end,
while Don Knotts continued to make appearances on other variety shows.
It was in the early 2000s that Closer Weekly reports that Don Knotts was diagnosed with lung
cancer. By that time, he and his longtime friend Andy Griffith had fallen a bit out of touch,
but Griffith rushed to his side and was right there with him as he fought it.
According to their Matlock co-star Nancy Stafford,
"As soon as the two of them were together,
it was like they never skipped a beat. They fell into this routine of singing,
laughing, and telling jokes together — it was hysterical. They had this amazing communication."
Unfortunately, Knotts would ultimately lose his battle with cancer. He passed away on February 24,
2006, and People reported that one of the very last people to
go and sit at his bedside was Andy Griffith. Griffith later recalled:
"I told him I loved him and I held
his hand. [...] his chest heaved several times, and I believe he heard my voice."
14 years after his passing his daughter, Karen, shared some regrets.
"He had this funniness that was just completely, insanely natural. When he was dying,
he was making 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."
And that is what Karen Knotts regretted: Leaving her dad's side to laugh. She
added that she had been telling the story to the director Howard Storm,
who told her she should have stayed, laughed out loud, and let him hear her.
"He was right; I should have just stood there and blasted out laughing."
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