In this exclusive interview, his biographer and brother-in-law discusses Knotts’ life and career
When you watch reruns of The Andy Griffith Show—most notably its first five seasons—you can’t help but get taken in by the easy-going chemistry between Griffith’s role as Mayberry’s Sheriff Andy Taylor and Don Knotts as Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife. At the same time, bring up the subject of the show to people, more often than not they’ll respond with some variation of “I love Barney Fife—Don Knotts is just great!”
“Don was one of the all-time great comedic actors—part of a long line of top-tier comedians across generations,” observes Daniel de Vise, author of Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show as well as Knotts’ brother-in-law. “Barney Fife was an iteration of his finest achievement: the Nervous Man, a character he had created about a decade over. Barney was essentially a version of that character, but fleshed out as, mentally and emotionally, a nine- or 11-year-old child. He was this kid in the body of a middle-aged man—jumpy, wiry and hilarious
“People connected with him instantly,” he adds. “And mind you, audiences had already connected with Don in his earlier work, and they would continue to in his later career. But Barney Five was likely his greatest character, embodying human frailty in a very funny way—particularly masculine frailty.”
It’s his feeling that Barney is a kind of send-up of the 1950s and 1960s masculine ideal—the square-jawed man with a cocktail in his hand, a girl on his arm, the “man of the house” type, comparable to someone like father figure Steve Douglas on My Three Sons.
Notes de Vise, “Don very cleverly and consciously played against that image with Barney Fife. That’s why the character energized and electrified the show But beyond that, you also had this phenomenal chemistry between Don and Andy, and you can’t separate the two. Their loving friendship on screen really resonated—especially with male viewers, but also with audiences in general. People just loved watching them interact.”
