![]() ![]() ![]() In 1998, he had a key role in the back-to-the-past movie “Pleasantville,” playing a folksy television repairman whose supercharged remote control sends a teen boy and his sister into a TV sitcom past. ![]() Chicken” (1966) “The Shakiest Gun in the West,” (1968) and a few Disney films such as “The Apple Dumpling Gang,” (1974) “Gus,” (1976) and “Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo,” (1977). He was among an army of comedians from Buster Keaton to Jonathan Winters to liven up the 1963 megacomedy “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” Other films include “The Ghost and Mr. Eventually, he comes to his senses, leaves the big city and marries the sweet girl next door. In the 1969 film “The Love God?,” he was a geeky bird-watcher who is duped into becoming publisher of a naughty men’s magazine and then becomes a national sex symbol. Knotts poses as a famous astronaut to the joy of his parents and hometown but is eventually exposed for what he really is, a janitor so terrified of heights he refuses to ride an airplane. In the 1967 film “The Reluctant Astronaut,” co-starring Leslie Nielsen, Knotts’ father enrolls his wimpy son - operator of a Kiddieland rocket ride - in NASA’s space program. In most, he ends up the hero and gets the girl - a girl who can see through his nervousness to the heart of gold. G-rated family filmsKnotts’ G-rated films were family fun, not box-office blockbusters. He was one of a group of memorable comics backing Allen that included Louis Nye, Tom Poston and Bill “Jose Jimenez” Dana. In 1979, Knotts replaced Norman Fell on “Three’s Company,” playing the would-be swinger landlord to John Ritter, Suzanne Somers and Joyce DeWitt.Įarly in his TV career, he was one of the original cast members of “The Steve Allen Show,” the comedy-variety show that ran from 1956-61. Knotts appeared on six other television shows. It makes me sad that I can’t sing or dance well enough to be in a musical, but I’m just not talented in that way,” he lamented. His favorite episodes, he said, were “The Pickle Story,” where Aunt Bee makes pickles no one can eat, and “Barney and the Choir,” where no one can stop him from singing. Knotts, whose shy, soft-spoken manner was unlike his high-strung characters, once said he was most proud of the Fife character and doesn’t mind being remembered that way. ![]()
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