The history of American film comedy is written in the broad strokes of classic film comedians who built a career out of playing a certain type of character: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Abbott and Costello, Jerry Lewis, and Bob Hope. These actors essentially played the same guy over and over again and no fan ever thought to suggest that perhaps the should play too many roles that differed greatly.
One name that generally goes without mention in the list of great film comedians is one that perhaps is lost in the consciousness because his greatest claim to fame-by far-came on television. He is a man who won no less than five consecutive Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a comedy series setting, I do believe, a record that shall never be equaled. (Although John Larroquette came within one award of tying this record and Jeremy Piven is currently just two awards away from a tie I still stand by my prediction.) Don Knotts is the actor I am obviously talking about and as famous as he was for playing Deputy Barney Fife, he actually did become one of the first TV stars to carve out a measure of success as an actor on the big screen.
Starting when he was still a regular on The Andy Griffith Show-which accounts for the fact that he appeared in only 141 out of the 160 episodes that make up the first five years of that classic TV comedy. In his transition to the big screen, the character that Don Knotts played in a series of mostly beloved family films during the 1960s was essentially just a riff on Barney Fife. Buster Keaton played a stone-faced survivor of everything that could be thrown at him, Harold Lloyd played an overly optimistic never-say-die young man pursing the American Dream, and Don Knotts played a nervous little man with dreams of grandeur who usually stumbled into any kind of success he enjoyed. Don Knotts created and perfected a comedic type, in other words, that stands alongside most of the great names in cinematic history.
The Andy Griffith Show was announced by its titular star to come to an end after its fifth season and so Don Knotts signed a lucrative deal with Universal Studios to star in five pictures. And then Griffith changed his mind and decided to continue. Some reports claim that Knotts desperately wanted to ride into the sunset with Griffith but couldn’t get out of his contract, while other reports claim that the contract had not yet been signed when Griffith pulled his one-eighty, but that Knotts felt he would never have such an opportunity again. Whatever the truth, Knotts left Mayberry except for infrequent guests appearances that were always the highest rate of the season. Instead, Knotts fulfilled his contract with Universal and made some movies that are considered classics in the genre of family-friendly movies.
There are some who complain that all of Don Knotts movies look more like a TV show than a movie, but that doubtlessly was not by accident. After all, it is worth remembering that this was a period when going from TV to the movies was just not done. Today, we think nothing of watching an actor leave a successful TV show and achieve movie stardom, but this was the Pernell Roberts era in which it happened very rarely. In fact, the only two TV actors who seemed to do it successfully in the 1960s were Don Knotts and Clint Eastwood and Eastwood wasn’t nearly the star that Don Knotts was. These movies would later have become TV-movies, but shooting them on what were clearly second rate that resembled nothing more than sets lent them a sense of continuity for Knotts’ fans used to seeing him on the TV sets on Andy Griffith.
The Incredible Mr. Limpet: This was Don Knotts first starring role in a movie and he brings his Fife person here intact, although he is allowed the leeway of becoming a hero because of his brains. Of course, Knotts is an animated fish when he uses his brain. I imagine that perhaps 90% of the population today who were kids in the 1960s and 1970s have seen The Incredible Mr. Limpet; it’s just one of those movies that were shown constantly on TV back when they showed movies on TV made before 1990 and it’s such a fun little flick that it sticks in your head. The plot is about a guy who couldn’t make it into the military during World War II who falls into the water and becomes a fish and only then becomes a hero. It’s a rousing little movie that obviously has great appeal to kids who are usually as powerless as Limpet but have the same kind of outrageous fantasies. Mr. Limpet has a cold fish wife and a bullying friend who seems more interesting in getting into his wife’s panties so, well, who wouldn’t want to escape those two for a life beneath the sea?
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken: The masterpiece in the canon of Don Knotts, this film is fits quite nicely between Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and the Ghostbusters in the line of comedic horror films. There is a long tradition of combining horror and comedy and Don Knotts’ ability to get across his character’s nervous personality is put to great use. Anybody who watches the Andy Griffith Show regularly cannot forget how Knotts could show both bravado and fear at once whether inside a supposedly haunted house or reading fortunes with the help of Count Ist Van Telecky. Knotts plays a would-be reporter who gets suckered into spending the night in a haunted house and he plays the scares up for all they’re worth with that genuinely creepy organ playing by itself.
The Reluctant Astronaut: It was the 1960s and there were essentially three types of heroes and role models for young boys: British spies, race car drivers, and astronauts. And so Don Knotts was brought in to take advantage of the space race. Again, Knotts plays a nervous loser, but this time his delusions of grandeur are the work of his overbearing father. There are some pretty funny sight gags in this one, though it is one of the lesser movies in the Knotts body of work.
The Shakiest Gun in the West: A remake of a Bob Hope movie, The Paleface, this is usually the second or third favorite Don Knotts movie, behind his playing a ghost chaser and a fish. The shaky gunned Don Knotts is not quite as satisfying as the Knotts who insists upon the reality of that haunted house, but it’s pretty close. And, besides, there aren’t really that many funny westerns that you can watch with your kids.
The Love God?: It has been said that this the film that ended Don Knott’s career as a leading man. The Love God was one of those 1960s sex comedies that probably should have starred Jerry Lewis; it kind of reminds you of Boeing Boeing or a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie, only a little racier. The idea is that Don Knotts plays his usual mild-mannered character who gets tricked into turning his bird water’s magazine into a girlie magazine. It’s not sexy enough to be a real sex farce, but it’s too sexy to be the kind of kids movie that Knotts’ previous films were. (The girlie magazine pictures alone are enough to actually warrant the film’s current PG-13 rating.) After this jarring pairing of one type of actor with another type of movie, Don Knotts would make only one more “Don Knotts Movie” before lapsing into supporting roles in Disney movies and popping up on TV again as Mr. Furley in Three’s Company.
How to Frame a Figg: This was the movie that put an end to his career as a movie star and wouldn’t you know that it’s actually one of his most underrated. There are several funny sight gags and the whole idea of Knotts being set up by a gaggle of corrupt town politicians is inspired. This movie has sort of become lost to history and is now mostly known for introducing the world to Frank Welker, the man who would gain fame as the voice of Scooby-Doo and too many other animated characters to mention. How to Frame a Figg was Don Knotts’ swan song as a leading man and it is a testament mainly to his talent that it holds one’s interest in a time so very far removed from the naïve and innocent spirit in which it was made.
