Legacy MattersOn the passing of Don Knotts, Damian Penny says
Only a few performers have been able to give us one unforgettable TV character. Don Knotts, who passed away today at 81, gave us two of the all-time greats: Barney Fife and Ralph Furley. And that's on top of dozens of other film and television roles, over five decades.
Knotts probably made more people laugh than any other person in history. Not a bad legacy.
RIP
From the NY Times
Don Knotts was a high-status comic who played low-status roles. Actors who worked with him almost universally deferred to him as a comedic grandmaster, yet his characters were not jokers but the butts of jokes. He was absolutely flappable. No one had a better tremor or double-take, and with his unmistakable homeliness — bulging eyes, receding chin, stooped shoulders, broad hips — he didn't bother to play the wise fool; he wisely stuck to just the fool.
--
Mr. Knotts, over and over, was willing to play the desperate, pathetic low-man-on-every-pole. He did it so well — never forsaking his persona and trying to seize the lead, as nearly all major comedians do these days — that his talent for abasement became a source, paradoxically, of great authority. By revealing but never indulging these pretenses, he enlightened everyone he worked with, and his audiences.