Tragic Details About Don Knotts

don knotts will always be remembered for his role as deputy sheriff barney fife on the andy griffith show while don knotts was especially 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 visay did a deep dive into knott's childhood in his book andy and dunn 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 borders while knotts slept on a cot in the kitchen his father jesse senior was mostly bedridden by the time knots was born closer weekly says the elder naughts 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 knottz's 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 pass the sofa where his father spent most of his time sometimes a young don would 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 naza's 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 and i think it was probably because of him that i really got interested in comedy myself but there was more to it nancy's 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's early teens that he turned to a friend named danny who was dany ventriloquist's dummy and with the dummy he started performing there's an oft repeated rumor about nods 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 [ __ ] 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 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 a hundred dollars 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 knots was the perfect side kick to make others look more manly so anyone he shared the screen with looked more like a leading man well i mean any complaints anything wrong with me oh gosh no i'm as strong as a bull 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 davise 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 in his anxiety was hypochondria too along with chronic insomnia davise 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 not 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 knots changed at least some of his ways while success did come for the poor boy from west virginia don knott's 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 davise was that knott 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 davise says that knots 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 i've never really amounted to anything my whole life has just been one big failure after another still not's 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 story lines 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 knots just wasn't the same there is a positive here though and that's the fact that griffith and knott's remain 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 scored a five film deal with universal in hindsight movies like the incredible mr olympics 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 the 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 myoclinic the condition interferes with the 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 notts struggled with the diagnosis for 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 reel in the early 70s 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 me tv 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 mash's gary bergoff 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 stop four score seven years ago 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 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 to cause 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 check out one of our newest videos right here plus even more grunge videos about your favorite comedians are coming soon subscribe to our youtube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one

Channel: Grunge

Views: 190,551

Rating: 4.8795733 out of 5

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Id: DTSKfcR-HR4

Length: 12min 8sec (728 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020