Don Knotts, alias 'Barney Fife,' dies at 81

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The West Virginia-born actor's half-century career included seven TV series and more than 25 films, but it was the Griffith show that brought him TV immortality and five Emmys.

The show ran from 1960-68, and was in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings each season, including a No. 1 ranking its final year. It is one of only three series in TV history to bow out at the top: The others are I Love Lucy and Seinfeld. The 249 episodes have appeared frequently in reruns and have spawned a large, active network of fan clubs.

As the bug-eyed deputy to Griffith, Knotts carried in his shirt pocket the one bullet he was allowed after shooting himself in the foot. The constant fumbling, a recurring sight gag, was typical of his self-deprecating humor.

Knotts, whose shy, soft-spoken manner was unlike his high-strung characters, once said he was most proud of the Fife character and doesn't mind being remembered that way.

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I wasn't much of an Andy Griffith Show fan when I was a kid, although I liked his work on it a great deal: it was Knotts' films and his work on Three's Company that most influenced me. It's weird, I was actually drawing on Knotts for inspiration as recently as the show we closed last weekend, but I think I've always been ripping him off. He was an absolute master of physical comedy, a real life counterpart to Warner Brothers cartoon characters, but it was the complete seriousness with which he approached his comedic roles that has inspired me the most. It's just not funny if the character is somehow in on the joke with the audience. To Knotts, the trials and tribulations of his characters were extraordinarily important, nothing funny about them; his characters were constantly in danger of total and devastating failure, and the humor came out of his flailing attempts to avoid disaster--I've long believed that something's not really funny unless someone gets hurt, and Knotts always illustrated that perfectly.

I think many of today's comedic actors and comedians, especially the usually forgettable cast of SNL, would do well to study him. Because, you know, they're not really funny.

Farewell, Don Knotts.



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