This man is a bonafide comedy legend
Don Knotts, the skinny, lovable nerd who kept generations of television audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, has died. He was 81.
Whether he was playing Barney Fife or Mr. Furley, Don Knotts has always been one of the funniest actors I’ve ever seen.
Kolchak too.
I remember Don Knotts as the impossibly nervous / jittery “man in the street” being interviewed on Steve Allen’s (original) Tonight Show*. Usually, he wouldn’t answer any questions, he would shake, and clear his throat, until Steve would ask, You seem to be nervous — is anything wrong?” Don would bug out his eyes and say the line that would be repeated in school yards, and at water coolers and at dinner tables for years: “Nope!”
* a role that laid the foundation for the future Barney Fife.
Are you nervous? Nope! I can still hear that little yelp.
He seemed like a really sweet guy.
He portrayed the good hearted NAIVE soul in a way eyeryone could relate too
mark the passing of the common knowledge of humanity that gave him the platform to relate to us in a human way ,… please….a hero of humanity,in his own individual way….
he had grace and kindness …i lament his passing ,having come up ,when he was a guest of considerable stature in our living room
as phony as the concept of the whole maybeery thing was …the honesty of his portrayal of his character…was part of the ‘reality ‘of that show …
rock on Barney! I see you1 hangin’ with Maynard!
so long pal
“impossibly nervous / jittery man in the street being interviewed on Steve Allen s (original) Tonight Show*”
Frank showing his age.
Remember the other man in the street interviewees: Louis Nye, Tom Poston.
Remember Steve Allen’s “musical questions”: The answer would be: “by running them over with tractors.” He would then play the musical question: “how ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm.”
Some absolutely great reading is an interchange between Steve Allen, a great old style liberal and one of the old supposedly “heroic’ Communist Hollywood writers/producers. Lets you understand how illiberal today’s liberals are.
Dugger (I do run on)
Any possibility you’ll let us know where we can find this “great reading”? Or do you ask us to accept your interpretation blindly?
Quaker,
I don’t expect you to accept my interpretation with eyes wide open. But, I can’t find the whole exchange. Some commie sites reference only Dalton Trumbo’s side of the debate (which ultimately had to to do with a meeting re Tom Bradley’s run for LA mayor – you could Google ‘Steve Allen trumbo esquire’ and see what I mean) . Here’s an excerpt from the only Steve Allen quote I could find:
It would be to a degree irrelevant and presumptuous here to review the political history of the first half-century but I cannot conceive how any true Liberal, being familiar with that history could be anything but anti-Communist. As a Liberal, I am in favor of freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and of freedom of assemblage. But I know of no Communist society in which such freedoms exist. I am also opposed to the death penalty, as are most Liberals, but it is clear that Communist societies cannot function without the threat, and frequently the reality, of state murder. As a Liberal I am suspicious of official censorship, but I observe that it is harshly dominant in all Communist cultures. As a Liberal I do not think a college student should automatically be considered a criminal if a marijuana cigarette is found in his possession, but we know of the utter ruthlessness with which Communist societies stamp out such instances of bourgeois decadence. The civil liberties the ACLU so courageously defends are not the foundation-stones of any existing Marxist society. The litany of specifics need not be continued; certainly the point is clear enough… I have frequently been a stern critic of American society and expect to function as such in the future, [ed.: note the admonition he finds necessary] but for years I have consistently maintained the position that it does not profit the non-Communist political Left to be formally allied with those who will endorse a Liberal cause only when to do so coincides with the purposes of Moscow or Peking in Vietnam, for example, what I hope for is peace; therefore I cannot cooperate with those who are motivated primarily by hopes of victory for Ho Chi Minh.
Dugger
maybe here
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1573920908/102-8826931-4044169?v=glance&n=283155
Well, you lost me.
I don’t see what’s supposed to be illuminative of “how illiberal today’s liberals are.”
Suppose Allen were to say the same thing today. How would that be significant (other than as proof of life after death)?
Ann Althouse comes out o her self absorbed and supercilious lair to discuss
Don Knotts as a phenomenon of sexual identity.(i.e. Men are bad)
http://althouse.blogspot.com/
Oh, and Don Knotts rocks. RIP.
“The civil liberties the ACLU so courageously defends are not the foundation-stones of any existing Marxist society.”
Dugger –
Please kindly pass this Dugger-endorsed bit of wisdom on to rest of your conservative brethren: http://tinyurl.com/lzkqb
Quaker,
For some, those words echo some profound toughts and perspectives. For others, nuttin. I’m not at all ashamed to admit I’m one of the former.
Dugger, Different strokes