Don Knotts’ Daughter Karen Reflects on the Iconic TV and Movie Roles That Defined His Career
From Barney Fife to Ralph Furley, the stories behind the parts that made Don Knotts unforgettable
Key Takeaways
- Karen Knotts shares personal memories behind her father's biggest roles.
- Discover why Don Knotts left The Andy Griffith Show for Hollywood.
- From Barney Fife to Ralph Furley, revisit Don Knotts' remarkable career.
In the 1960s, television and movies were still viewed as two very different worlds. TV actors rarely managed to make the leap to becoming movie stars, while established film actors generally looked down on the small screen. Don Knotts was one of the few performers who successfully crossed that divide. Despite becoming one of television’s most beloved comedians as Deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, he never lost sight of his ambition to headline feature films.
That opportunity came sooner than expected. Knotts had joined The Andy Griffith Show believing that he and Andy Griffith would leave after five seasons. While Griffith ultimately chose to remain when the network made it financially worthwhile, Knotts stuck with the original plan after Universal offered him a five-picture contract. Although he continued to return as Barney for several guest appearances during the series’ final years and once on Mayberry R.F.D., his focus had shifted to building a movie career—a gamble that ultimately paid off.
Knotts wasn’t starting from scratch when he signed with Universal. He had already appeared alongside Andy Griffith in the 1958 film adaptation of No Time for Sergeants, the Broadway hit that first brought the two comedians together and sparked a lifelong friendship. Supporting roles followed in Wake Me When It’s Over (1960) and The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961), before he joined the all-star ensemble of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in 1963 as the appropriately named “Nervous Driver.” That same year, he appeared opposite Doris Day and James Garner in Move Over, Darling, paving the way for his first true starring vehicle, 1964’s The Incredible Mr. Limpet.
As part of our ongoing effort to preserve classic television history, we sat down with Don’s daughter, Karen Knotts, to look back not only at her father’s remarkable career, but also at the stories behind many of his best-known performances. A comedian herself, Karen tours with her acclaimed one-woman show, Tied Up in Knotts, an affectionate and deeply personal portrait of growing up with one of America’s most beloved comic actors. Here, she shares her memories of the roles that defined Don Knotts’ extraordinary career.
‘The Andy Griffith Show’ (1960–68)
Don achieved his greatest fame as Deputy Barney Fife, forever earning a place in television history alongside Andy Griffith’s Sheriff Andy Taylor in the fictional town of Mayberry.
KAREN KNOTTS: “We didn’t see him a lot, because he worked 10, 12 hours a day. And when he was home, he was always holed up in his room working on his lines and stuff like that.”
From the outset, Don and Andy Griffith had agreed they would spend five seasons on The Andy Griffith Show before moving on to other opportunities. When that fifth season arrived, however, their paths diverged. Andy accepted an offer to remain with the series, while Don honored the original plan after Universal came calling with a five-picture contract.
KAREN KNOTTS: “Put yourself in his place. That show was hard, hard work. Then think of the character, and also the energy that it took to play him. Imagine the intensity, plus the level of perfection that was being strived for. 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.”
Although he left as a regular cast member, Don would return for five guest appearances during the show’s remaining seasons.
‘The Incredible Mr. Limpet’ (1964)
Blending live action with animation years before it became commonplace, The Incredible Mr. Limpet casts Don as Henry Limpet, a mild-mannered civilian who, during World War II, is transformed into a fish while retaining his human mind. After adapting to his remarkable new life, he becomes an unlikely ally of the U.S. Navy, helping track down and destroy Nazi submarines.
KAREN KNOTTS: “If not the first, it was certainly one of the first films to combine live action with animation. Maybe Disney did one before, but this was very early on. In those days, films always debuted in New York, and it got a terrible, crushing review there that it never recovered from. That review destroyed the movie and it got no box office after that. The man who produced it, John C. Rose, went to Mexico after that, retired and never made another movie again. Dad wasn’t frustrated about the movie, because it was still a great piece of work. I don’t think he was expecting anything major out of it.”
Karen fondly remembers visiting the set of The Incredible Mr. Limpet, where the magic of moviemaking first inspired her to pursue acting herself.
KAREN KNOTTS: “I remember seeing Carole Cook putting the glasses on the face of the imaginary fish. Actually what they had in front of her was just a box full of junk that was raised up on a crane so that it would be at the proper eye level for her. Then she could lean forward and put the glasses on him. In the end, it was a very touching scene; she was such a very good actress. So she leaned forward and put the glasses on the fish, and the way she did that made me realize that I wanted to be an actress because I saw the power of that moment, how she made it real while just talking to a box of stuff.
“The funny thing is that we had a 16-millimeter projector in our house. Every time my brother would thread the movie and we’d watch it, when it came to that part where my dad turned into a fish, I would start to cry. I don’t know why. My dad was obviously still alive—he was actually in the same room with me—and he wasn’t a fish, but it just made me sad.”
‘The Ghost and Mr. Chicken’ (1966)
The first release under Don’s five-picture Universal contract gave him his first opportunity to carry a major studio comedy. He stars as Luther Heggs, a timid typesetter and aspiring newspaper reporter who volunteers to spend the night in a supposedly haunted mansion, hoping the assignment will earn him both a byline and the attention of Alma Parker (Joan Staley).
KAREN KNOTTS: “He was absolutely terrified, excited, overwhelmed—everything about this movie because it was the one he left The Andy Griffith Show to do. I mean, he left for the five-picture deal, but on this one I just remember him being extremely nervous, pacing around the house, and just completely consumed with it. He had his own little bungalow at Universal Studios with an office and a secretary. He would go down there to work with the writers. He actually hired Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, who were two of the top writers on The Andy Griffith Show. Part of his nervousness is that he didn’t have the safety net of The Andy Griffith Show. There, the producers were running the show and Andy was kind of like the kindly headmaster, but none of that was there now. It was him.”
What surprised Karen most was how quickly The Ghost and Mr. Chicken was made. Shot in just 17 days on a modest budget, the film nevertheless became one of Don Knotts’ signature comedies.
KAREN KNOTTS: “It was so unbelievable and now it’s a classic film. And it was exciting for him, because he was stepping out and being his own boss now, and that was scary, but the film’s success was a huge deal. What’s interesting is that the first draft of the script wasn’t working very well, so Dad called Andy Griffith in to be a story consultant. That’s a little-known fact, that Andy Griffith was one of the best story consultants in the business. He had a mind for stories that was absolutely unbelievable, and that’s probably one of the reasons why those stories on The Andy Griffith Show were so tight. Every story had a beginning, middle and end, and an arc, and surprises. I think a lot of that was Andy’s doing.”
‘The Reluctant Astronaut’ (1967)
For his next starring role, Don left haunted houses behind for the Space Race. In The Reluctant Astronaut, he plays Roy Fleming, a carnival ride operator who lands a janitor’s job at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston before a series of comic mishaps unexpectedly launches him into orbit. Once again, the screenplay came from former The Andy Griffith Show writers Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum. With The Ghost and Mr. Chicken proving to be a hit, Don entered production with considerably more confidence than he had on his first Universal film.
KAREN KNOTTS: “He kind of knew the ropes now. One interesting thing about The Reluctant Astronaut is that he actually went to NASA to poke around the rockets there. There’s a picture of him somewhere up there in the rocket, looking around. It’s possible it wasn’t research and that he was invited there.”
One of Karen’s favorite memories from the production involved the old-school movie magic used long before CGI became commonplace.
KAREN KNOTTS: “In those days when you had to have things lift off the ground in a rocket, like a peanut butter tube or something, it would float because of strings that were attached to it and lifted it up. Nowadays, with CGI, they don’t need to do it that way anymore. But when I was a kid, I loved the fact that you could see the strings on set, but they were gone when the movie came out.”
‘The Shakiest Gun in the West’ (1968)
For his third Universal comedy, Don headed to the Old West in The Shakiest Gun in the West. He stars as Jesse W. Haywood, a newly minted dentist whose arrival on the frontier quickly lands him in the middle of a dangerous gun-smuggling scheme alongside a mysterious woman played by Barbara Rhoades.
KAREN KNOTTS: “Those films really did cover a lot of ground dealing with a lot of different themes and topics, so you never got bored. I mean, his performance in The Shakiest Gun in the West was hysterical. They came up with some great gags. This was a remake of a Bob Hope film called The Paleface. Barbara Rhoades was a contract player at Universal, and she didn’t have a very good acting background. My father said she wasn’t really ‘cutting the mustard’ in that role, so he worked with her a lot. He taught her how to act, basically, and in the end she did a fine job. But she didn’t have enough training at the time, and she was beautiful and was cast. Dad didn’t have any choice in who was cast in the role.”
Karen also appeared on the set of The Shakiest Gun in the West, and one memory still makes her laugh.
KAREN KNOTTS: “I think I actually put my hand down on the bar and kind of wrecked the shot. Also my brother and I were extras in that moment; we were extras in a lot of them. I was so excited to be on the set for this one that I couldn’t stop smiling. I was just happy and kept smiling. So I’m standing there in the background during this shootout Dad has with the gunslinger, and I’m smiling. The crowd is supposed to be terrified. I think I was 11 or 12. So in between takes, the costume lady comes over to me and wanted to change my outfit a little bit. So they gave me this Western hat. It was big and flat with a wide brim, and the hat covered my face. It put my face in shadow, so you couldn’t see me smiling. Oops. My brother and I were hamming it up like crazy on the set of that movie. We were all over the place, running around, playing around on the sets like we were cowboys and Indians, and it was beautiful.”
‘The Love God?’ (1969)
By the fourth film in his Universal contract, the studio was eager to move Don beyond the wholesome image audiences had come to expect. The Love God? cast him as Abner Peacock IV, the mild-mannered publisher of a struggling birdwatching magazine who is unwittingly transformed into the figurehead of a risqué publishing empire—a role that effectively turned him into an unlikely Hugh Hefner-style celebrity.
KAREN KNOTTS: “This was his fourth picture in the deal, so by this point, they had three in the can and they were all successes, generating a nice bit of profit there. Because of that, the studio wasn’t paying too much attention anymore to the scripts and that sort of thing. So this script, written by Nat Hiken, comes in and in it Dad plays this guy, Abner Peacock IV, who has a bird magazine that’s failing, and he can’t get enough funding for it. These gangsters, who run a porno ring with a dirty magazine, decide to buy out his magazine so they can put their own content in it. And they convince him to become the symbol of the magazine, and they basically turn him into Hugh Hefner.”
“With all due respect, it is difficult to imagine Don in the role of a Hugh Hefner type. And that was the problem. Everybody thought of him as a squeaky-clean guy, which he had always been. I mean, this was all comical and a satire, of course, but all of a sudden the studio didn’t know where the audience was going to be. They had him in these outrageous costumes—like the ultimate 1960s outrageous Nehru jackets and hats… I can’t even describe these outfits that they had him in. Plus they had a bevy of women following him around from city to city, while he’s totally naive about what’s going on. Plus, Anne Francis plays a woman trying to facilitate all this, who tries to seduce Abner. At the same time, he’s got a girl at home.”
Karen enjoyed visiting the set and seeing the lavish lifestyle being created for Abner Peacock, but she also believes the film faced an uphill battle almost from the beginning.
KAREN KNOTTS: “Instead of letting Dad look over the different drafts of the script, Nat kept saying, ‘No, no, you can’t look at this until it’s finished.’ So that drove my dad crazy, because he was one of those nervous people who would say, ‘I want to know what I’m getting myself into!’ It took Nat forever to write it, and when it was finally finished, they shot it. Afterwards the studio finally realized what the movie was about and they were stunned. They didn’t really want to promote it, so they didn’t. It got very little publicity and came and went as a result, with very few people even knowing it existed. I honestly don’t know how Dad felt about it, but he was always kind of frustrated with his squeaky-clean image. He loved being Barney Fife and all that, but then, as we got into the late ’60s, everything had this sexual innuendo to it. It was the days of free love and all this stuff, so he was hindered by that because of his image. Many of the sketches they wrote for him on variety shows had to be toned down, because they didn’t want to offend his public, which he thought was a little bit unnecessary.”
‘How to Frame a Figg’ (1971)
Following the more adult-themed The Love God?, Don returned to the kind of family comedy that had made him a favorite with audiences. In How to Frame a Figg, he stars as Hollis Figg, a well-meaning but bumbling municipal bookkeeper whose unexpected promotion threatens to unravel a corruption scheme engineered by his own superiors. While Karen admits she doesn’t remember much about the production itself, she does recall her father reflecting on what the film ultimately represented in his career.
KAREN KNOTTS: “I don’t remember very much about this one, but I remember Dad saying that that was the end of his film career such as it was, because the family picture era had ended at that point. The variety shows were coming to an end, too. Hippies were prominent and it changed the whole texture of the way they were marketing things. So that was kind of the end of an era for him. But he did the five pictures, they were successful and he was very happy, because it established him as a movie star and somebody who could carry a movie.”
Teaming up with Tim Conway
After a few quieter years in film, Don found a perfect comic partner in Tim Conway. Disney teamed the two together for the 1975 hit The Apple Dumpling Gang, and audiences responded so enthusiastically that they reunited for Gus (1976), The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979), The Prize Fighter (1979) and The Private Eyes (1980). Looking back, Karen believes the pairing was nothing short of inspired.
KAREN KNOTTS: “Disney put Dad and Tim together, and whoever came up with that combination was brilliant. He was ecstatic making those films, especially the Apple Dumpling films. He absolutely adored Tim Conway, and they were great friends. Tim did ad-lib a lot and he wrote a lot, too, so my dad had to kind of learn to adapt to Tim and learn to improvise a bit. He was comfortable doing it as long as he was with Tim.”
‘Three’s Company’ (1979–84)
While Don continued appearing in feature films, it was television that would once again redefine his career. Joining ABC’s hit sitcom Three’s Company as the eccentric landlord Ralph Furley, he introduced himself to a new generation of viewers. Sharing the screen with John Ritter, Joyce DeWitt and Suzanne Somers, Don once again proved why he was one of television’s most gifted comic performers.
KAREN KNOTTS: “What was wonderful about the show is that it introduced him to a whole new generation who was discovering him. That was such a wonderful thing because he just kept coming back. It’s like The Andy Griffith Show touched one generation, The Apple Dumpling Gang touched another and Three’s Company reached a whole different audience. So in every phase of his career, he became known to a new age group of people. It was fantastic.”
A Career That Never Stood Still
Whether he was making television history as Barney Fife, headlining Universal comedies, teaming with Tim Conway or delighting audiences as Ralph Furley, Don Knotts rarely looked back on past successes. Instead, he threw himself completely into whatever project came next.
KAREN KNOTTS: “He just looked at things as one project or another. He never was one to go back and look at stuff from the past. In fact, I don’t remember ever seeing him watch The Andy Griffith Show. He loved the show, but he would just look at each new project for what it was and take it for what it was. And dive into that particular project. That’s just how he functioned.”
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