Tragic Details About Don Knotts

Don Knotts will always be remembered for his role as Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife on the Andy Griffith Show. While Don Knotts was epically funny on the small screen, his tragic-real life story includes a wounded childhood, struggles with insomnia and pill addiction, and later severe health struggles.

Jesse Donald Knotts was born in Morgantown, West Virginia in 1924. When Knott's brother-in-law Daniel de Visé did a deep-dive into Knotts' childhood in his book Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show, he wrote that Knott's childhood was horrible. Knotts was an accidental child that came along 14 years after his next closest sibling. His two older brothers shared their bedroom with the family's various boarders while Knotts slept on a cot in the kitchen.

His father, Jesse Sr., was mostly bedridden by the time Knotts was born. Closer Weekly says the elder Knotts was a schizophrenic alcoholic, while The New York Times adds that he also suffered from hysterical blindness.

Abuse was a regular part of his childhood. Around age 30, Knotts' mother Elsie asked him if he remembered a horrifying confrontation where his father had threatened him with a knife. In order to get from his kitchen bedroom to literally anywhere else, Knotts needed to walk through the living room, and past the sofa where his father spent most of his time. Sometimes, young Don could sneak by. Otherwise, it invariably ended with threats.

It's no wonder, then, that as a young boy, Don Knotts was already pale, thin, and was regularly sick. He'd later recall:

"I did not come into the world with a great deal of promise."

Knotts' relationship with his brothers was complicated as well. They were funny, says The New York Times, especially his brother William, nicknamed Shadow. An impressive feat when there was so little to laugh about.

But there was more to it. Knotts' daughter Karen would later tell Closer Weekly that her father was mistreated by his brothers, too. They were often drunk and fought, until Shadow tragically died after suffering an asthma attack. Knotts was only a teenager at the time.

It's difficult to imagine growing up in that kind of environment with that kind of fear, and Don Knotts had a deep desire for happiness. He later revealed some of the coping mechanisms he used, saying that he managed to find some comfort -

"By filling my space with imaginary characters with whom I would act out some happy drama."

Things started to improve as he entered his teenage years. His daughter, Karen, told Closer Weekly:

"When his father passed, he was 13 years old. At that point, that burden — that huge burden — lifted off him, and he became old enough that he was able to get the other brother under control, so he was no longer terrorized at home."

She also recalled that once her father entered high school, he really started to come into his own. He was class president, he had a yearbook column, he was popular, and he had a best friend for the first time. But in 1976, he told the Los Angeles Times he had a slightly different view of his youth.

"I felt like a loser. I was unhappy, I think, most of the time. We were terribly poor, and I hated my size."

It's perhaps not entirely surprising, then, that it was during Don Knotts' early teens that he turned to a friend named Danny. Who was Danny? A ventriloquist's dummy, and with the dummy, he started performing

slides
His childhood wasn't the greatest | 00:00
His military career | 03:16
Making others look good | 04:09
Anxiety | 05:07
He coped in therapy | 06:11
Knotts was incredibly underappreciated | 07:25
Don Knotts struggled with blindness | 08:36
His own show flopped | 09:23
Laughing on his deathbed | 10:19

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