Karen Knotts on Her Father, Don Knotts: Stories From ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ and Beyond

One generation of television watchers knows him as Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show . Another recognizes him as landlord Ralph Furley on Three’s Company , with additional viewers meeting him for the first time in the recurring role of Les “Ace” Calhoun, the nosy neighbor of Andy Griffith’s Ben Matlock, on Matlock . But to his daughter, Karen, Don Knotts is simply Dad.

In this revealing interview, Karen Knotts, an accomplished actor and writer in her own right, looks back at her father’s life and career, the early challenges he faced growing up with an alcoholic father and brother, who were abusive as well; the way he turned his life around, achieved great success, had a decades-spanning friendship with Andy Griffith , constantly fought the demons of depression and ultimately found some measure of happiness. Through it all, he brought the gift of laughter to everyone around him, literally to his dying days.

As much as you think you know about Don Knotts—who lived from 1924 to the age of 81 in 2006—you may be surprised by some of Karen’s revelations.

When The Andy Griffith Show made its debut in 1960, few could have imagined the enduring legacy it would leave on American television and in the hearts of viewers, then or now. Set in the fictional town of Mayberry, North Carolina, the series represented a comforting slice of small-town life, filled with humor, heart, and […]

WOMAN’S WORLD (WW): When it comes to your dad, what do you think are the misconceptions out there?

KAREN KNOTTS: There wasn’t really any particular misconception. My dad has become mythologized, to some extent, which means that people love to imagine his life and sometimes things get repeated so often that you’re not sure what’s true and what isn’t. But most things are true or close to the truth. I haven’t read anything that’s struck me as, “This is a huge lie.” For example, there’s one story that goes around the internet about my father being a chicken plucker when he was young.

WW: Wait, a chicken plucker ?

KK: Yes, that was a job that he had; he plucked chickens in the grocery store. When he got that, it was the first time he went to New York. He was out of high school, and he failed at that mission. He was not able to make any success in New York, because the first thing that happened when he got out there was the casting directors who were New Yorkers noticed his astonishingly thick, southern drawl, which was more of a hillbilly kind of sound, a twang, than an actual real southern speech. They sent him back home and the only job he could get was as a chicken plucker. So this story was going around on the internet like crazy and people were emailing it to me. I believed in the story, but I wasn’t quite sure because I hadn’t heard it firsthand from my dad. But just to make sure, I interviewed the fellow whose father owned the grocery store, which was in Morgantown during the period, which would have been the ‘30s and ‘40s. I asked him, “Is it plausible that people were still plucking chickens in grocery stores in that era?” He said yes, so I believe that story now 100%. That is a story that people absolutely love, and I understand that, because it’s a funny image of my father plucking chickens in the first place, and in the second place, it just fit that that’s something that could happen to him.

WW: Your dad was quite good at ventriloquism when he was younger, but the impression various sources give is that he couldn’t wait to get away from that damn dummy.

KK: That was only true once he got into the Army. He saw ventriloquism as a way for him to get out of his impoverished surroundings and into show business, because he listened to Edgar Bergen on the radio and was absolutely thrilled by Edgar Bergen’s routines with his dummy. Of course, that was radio …

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WW: Which begs the question: how can you have a ventriloquist act on the radio? It makes no sense.

KK: Because Edgar Bergen was a genius at creating characters and jokes and it all came across and was convincing. In actual fact, he was not a very good ventriloquist. Television came along and, if anything, it should have hurt Edgar Bergen because you could see his lips moving, but nobody cared by that time. My father was just thrilled by this as a boy, and so he saw in Boy’s Life or one of those kinds of magazines, “Be a ventriloquist. Send away for this device so that you can throw your voice.” He sent away every penny he could scrounge up. They were so poor, but he did manage to get 10 cents or whatever, and sent it in. The device that came back was, of course, completely a fraud, but it came with a booklet that explained how to manipulate your tongue and your mouth to throw your voice. He studied that book and he learned to do this and things started to happen for him. He was always practicing around the house, making his mother giggle with voices coming out of apple pies and loads of laundry and all that kind of stuff.

Television in the 1960s embraced outlandish concepts, from stranded castaways (Gilligan’s Island) to suburban witches (Bewitched) and neighborhood monsters (The Munsters). Yet amidst all the fantastical storytelling, The Andy Griffith Show stood out for its simplicity. It wasn’t about magic or mayhem but an idealized vision of small-town life and the innocence of bygone days. […]

There’s another fun story: when I went down to his hometown in Morgantown, West Virginia, I found out that when he was in high school, there was this little walkway called Senior Alley, and it was where all of the older teens used to stand and check each other out. He used to stand there beside another boy and throw his voice to a girl and when she turned around to look, she would see that other boy. He was causing all kinds of havoc.

WW: Wow. And he didn’t get his butt kicked as a result?

KK: No, not that I know of.

WW: You talk about his impoverished childhood and there were serious issues between he and your grandfather. How much did the traumatic experience of his youth turn him into the funny man he became?

KK: All of it. Here’s the thing about my dad. He had this funniness that was just completely, insanely natural. Even when he was dying, he was making us laugh in hysterics. My stepmother and I got into fits of laughter, and I had to run out of the room. I thought, “I don’t want to be standing there in front of this man, my dearly beloved father, who’s dying.” I was telling this story to Howard Storm, who’s a big director, director of Mork and Mindy and all that, and he said, “You should have stayed and laughed out loud. That’s what comedians live for!” And I thought that was wonderful. He was right, I should have just stood there and burst out laughing.

WW: Amazing that at the end he could be funny. How’s that even possible?

KK: Like I say, it was something that was just so natural. A gene? I don’t know what it was, it was just this natural funniness and it was just out of control. I can’t explain it. I’ll tell you this, too, that my dad was burdened by all these problems with his father, and then he also had problems with an older brother who tormented him, because they were alcoholics. When his father passed, he was 13 years old. 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.

When he got into high school, all of a sudden his whole world changed. He just blossomed and 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 Knots.” 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 that was the first time that 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 always had a lifelong condition of hypochondria, which he battled. In the end, he even conquered that, too.

WW: There remains such a strong love for The Andy Griffith Show, and for Andy and your dad, if not more so. You were six when the show hit the air. What kind of memories do you have of those days?

KK: I remember it well. We didn’t see him a lot, because he worked 10, 12 hours a day. When he was home, he was always holed up in his room working on his lines and stuff like that, but he did take us down to the set quite a few times. I remember just walking around and seeing how interesting it was, because I had never been on a set before. My first memory was the stores, how they always would have those cans piled up in the windows like they did in those days. I remember going inside and looking at that and saying, “Gosh, everything is so fake.” One thing about that show is it’s done so well that you believe in its reality 100%, and I kind of do even though I knew my dad wasn’t really Barney Fife. Watching the show, you get so involved.  I just remember walking around the set and being amazed at how not- real it was.

WW: It was a real town, right? Then they went to the sound stages for all the interiors?

KK: I think they had a couple of different locations for the outdoor stuff. One of them, where the lake was and all that, was up there on Franklin Canyon, and that’s where that lake and all that woodsy stuff was. They had another location they went to for some of the outdoor stuff, but they shot all the studio stuff at the studio which was, at the time, Desilu Studios. It’s still there, the studio is still there, but it’s changed hands and it’s changed names a number of times.

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WW: What was his feeling about The Andy Griffith Show while he was shooting it?

KK: We kids were pretty young, so he confided more of that kind of thing to my mom, but I remember watching him rehearse and listening to him rehearse. He asked me to run lines, and I already knew I wanted to act, so I would try to act it out and he’d say, “No, no, no, just give me the lines straight, no inflection, nothing, because otherwise you throw me off.” I was just a part of that process. I remember my mother telling me how much Andy and Don liked to gossip. She would go by and listen, and they would talk about everybody on the show. Stuff like that. When he was on set, he was pretty immersed and also, I remember one time when I was there, one of the actors had a small part and he was so nervous working with my dad, and he apologized profusely. He came over and whispered something to me, like, “Your dad is amazing.”

WW: When you visited the set, did you have much of an impression of Andy himself, Ron Howard or any of those people?

KK: Ron and I were the same age, but he was not like a kid at all. Not like any kid I knew. He just had this poise and this maturity about him. He had  a whole other personality in a way. He was very friendly to me. I remember him showing me a little transistor radio that could fit in your hand, which in those days was unheard of. I hadn’t seen anything like that. I remember, it was gold in color, and so that was a precursor to him becoming a director, just involved with all that technical stuff.

WW: Did you interact with Andy Griffith much?

KK: He was very friendly to me, it was like an uncle, but he had different sides to him. You could see that sometimes he would be intense and other times, he was just very, very warm and endearing. He was very multifaceted. One thing I will tell you, and one thing I differ with, is the idea that Andy was ever jealous of my dad. If he was, he never let on to that. He was his biggest fan, he was his mentor. Everything that he was in, he wanted to get my dad in, too. He loved him more than his own self, and even when he was on Matlock and my dad wasn’t working at that time, he went to the producers and said, “I want Don Knotts on the show.” They said, “No. This show is a dramatic show, there’s no part for a character comedian.” He kept fighting and fighting, and then they put him on, but they didn’t want to pay him anything, so Andy went to the mat and fought with them on that. They gave him not really what he should have gotten, but at least a decent salary. Everything from the day they met, he was in my dad’s corner. He just loved him more than life itself.

WW: Your dad won five Emmy Awards for playing Barney, but Andy never won one, which is pretty shocking. He wasn’t even nominated.

KK: Andy should have been, because that was an amazing acting job that he was doing. A lot of times people say to me, “Oh, your dad really made the show.” I’m going, “I know what they mean, but they don’t realize what Andy was to the show. He was the backbone.” They took notes from each other. They constantly talked about their characters and their performances. They were both completely consumed with it.

WW: Your dad left the show five years in. Do you have any recollection of how heavy a decision that was for him?

KK: There was character, and also the energy that it took to play that character. Imagine the intensity plus the level of perfection and all that, and then all of a sudden you get offered a five-picture deal to be a star in your own right and make all the decisions and all of that. After five years of Andy’s show, I don’t care what it is, writers start to run out of ideas. There’s only so many stories you can tell. If you keep on going, you’re going to start repeating stuff and then it loses its quality and its perfection. That is probably the reason why Andy himself originally said he only wanted to do the show for five seasons, or whatever. The reason why he changed his mind was because they probably offered him a fortune to keep on with the show. I don’t think he wanted to continue on, especially not without Barney. They couldn’t replace him. They tried.

WW: He was in a string of very successful movies and things then kind of slowed down for him, until he joined Three’s Company, which really recharged things for him, didn’t it?

KK: It allowed him to reach a new audience, another generation who had not really seen The Andy Griffith Show . At that point, you couldn’t really see reruns as easily as you can now. A lot of people hadn’t seen it and then, all of a sudden, these young people were seeing him for the first time, which was really fantastic.

WW: Was he proud of the continuing impact of The Andy Griffith Show ?

KK: My dad had this amazing ability to put the past in the past. He never went back and watched old episodes or any of that kind of thing. He was always in the present moment. And he had a very big career as a guest on variety shows after his Universal film days. Variety shows were huge, and everybody had specials featuring them. He was a guest on The Smothers Brothers and Donny and Marie , among others. A lot of people don’t know about that whole aspect of my dad’s, and probably Andy’s, career. Andy, my dad and Jim Nabors, with Jerry Van Dyke as a guest, did a musical variety show at Lake Tahoe after the Griffith Show was over, so they kept on working together.

WW: Off camera, what were those days like for you growing up?

KK: My dad was mercurial. In other words, 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 thinking that would always lead to a downward spiral. I would try to break through that, and I was like the Pollyanna, pointing out the positives. Of course, I couldn’t do much; I was a kid. He had a great psychiatrist who was able to help him a lot. He was also a very loving father, though he was a very internal kind of person. He liked to tell stories and talk; he talked a lot about other celebrities, like Jackie Gleason. He was a showbiz person through and though. We talked about show business a lot.

WW: It’s so odd that many comedians have a depressive streak about them.

KK: It’s because comedy is a drug; it makes you laugh and the laughter boosts you out of your depression. Thinking of funny things helps you get out of that sadness. And if the audience is laughing at what you’re doing, your drug is intensified. That feeling of euphoria is intensified by all those people laughing.

WW: How did your relationship evolve over the years?

KK: I became a teenager and got a little bit more withdrawn myself and started having my own problems. But we always had a lot of fun together, and he could be a big tease sometimes. I remember the first serious boyfriend I had, bringing him over to dinner and my dad started pretending I was an alcoholic. He thought that was hysterical and the guy was just really freaked out. But that was my dad’s humor. It came from practical jokes, depression and things like that.

WW: If it isn’t too personal, did that depression get passed on to you?

KK: I had my own problems, which was low self-esteem from being in the shadow of this famous person, though I was able to recover from that. You always walk a fine line when you’re related to somebody that famous. It did kind of help as we got older that a lot of people weren’t as familiar with my dad and he wasn’t the center of everything anymore. I started being associated with people who had less awareness of him, then I had a little bit more of a chance to grow myself. I started getting more confidence and once that happened and I really embraced who my father was, because then I felt like I was also being appreciated for myself.

WW: When you hear his name, what do you think?

KK: Just Dad. I do find it interesting that people want to stay connected with him. I think he’s become an important touchstone for people who have an identity of coming from a small town or a small community, which still comprises the majority of our country. People’s fear of losing that identity is one reason why, apart from the brilliant performances and characters, they’re drawn to Mayberry and what it represents to them. So many people go of to a big city and become a success, but—guess what?—many of them come back to their hometown and use their skills to make things better. I love it when I hear that people are actually coming back to their towns and putting resources into it, allowing those towns to grow while maintaining their own identity. It’s like the old cliche: you can take the boy out of Mayberry, but you can never take Mayberry out of the boy.

Behind-the-scenes facts about Don Knotts

• Don Knotts was born Jesse Donald Knotts on July 21, 1924 in Morgantown, West Virginia, and passed away on February 24, 2006 in Los Angeles
• He attended Morgantown High School and West Virginia University
• During World War II, while in the Army he became a ventriloquist and comedian as part of a GI variety show called Stars and Gripes
• His most famous role was as Deputy Barney Five opposite Andy Griffith’s Sheriff Andy Taylor on the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show
• His big-screen credits include The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Apple Dumpling Gang and a small role as a mysterious TV repairman in Pleasantville
• He made his television debut as a series regular on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow from 1953 to 1955
• In 1956, Knotts achieved fame as a part of Steve Allen’s variety show
• The last time he played Barney Fife was in the 1986 TV reunion film Return to Mayberry