Topic: A DREAMER AND HIS DREAM

[oldcoastie6468]

Unsure whether it's truth or fiction. Anyway......

A DREAMER AND HIS DREAM

Let me tell you, Jesse hated this job. And you would too, I imagine, if you had to do it.

Jesse was a chicken plucker. That’s right. He stood on a line in a chicken factory and spent his days pulling the feathers off dead chickens so the rest of us wouldn’t have to. It wasn’t much of a job. But at the time, Jesse didn’t think he was much of a person. His father was a brute of a man. His dad was actually thought to be mentally ill and treated Jesse rough all of his life. Jesse’s older brother wasn’t much better. He was always picking on Jesse and beating him up.

Yes, Jesse grew up in a very rough home in West Virginia. Life was anything but easy. And he thought life didn’t hold much hope for him. That’s why he was standing in this chicken line, doing a job that darn few people wanted. In addition to all the rough treatment at home, it seems that Jesse was always sick. Sometimes it was real physical illness, but way too often it was all in his head. He was a small child, skinny and meek. That sure didn’t help the situation any.

When he started to school, he was the object of every bully on the playground. He was a hypochondriac of the first order. For Jesse, tomorrow was not always something to be looked forward to.

But, he had dreams. He wanted to be a ventriloquist. He found books on ventriloquism. He practiced with sock puppets and saved his hard earned dollars until he could get a real ventriloquist dummy. When he got old enough, he joined the military. And even though many of his hypochondriac symptoms persisted, the military did recognize his talents and put him in the entertainment corp.

That was when his world changed. He gained confidence. He found that he had a talent for making people laugh, And laugh so hard they often had tears in their eyes. Yes, little Jesse had found himself.

You know, folks, the history books are full of people who overcame a handicap to go on and make a success of themselves, but Jesse is one of the few I know of who didn’t overcome it. Instead he used his paranoia to make a million dollars, and become one of the best-loved characters of all time in doing it!

Yes, that little paranoid hypochondriac, who transferred his nervousness into a successful career, still holds the record for the most Emmy’s given in a single category. The wonderful, gifted, talented, and nervous comedian who brought us Barney Fife Was Jesse Don Knotts.





NOW YOU KNOW, “THE REST OF THE STORY.” There is a street named for him and his statue is in Morgantown, West Virginia, his place of birth.

Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly and trust in our GOD

http://wdednh2.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/129/

[oldcoastie6468]

Then there's this link, although the first one is more "heart-felt." Sorry if anyone gets all riled up at my possible error, but regardless of which story is true, Mr. Knotts demonstrated that a good guy CAN come out first, which is something we all need to remember.

Don Knotts
Don Knotts AKA Jesse Donald Knotts

Born: 21-Jul-1924
Birthplace: Morgantown, WV
Died: 24-Feb-2006
Location of death: Beverly Hills, CA
Cause of death: Cancer - Lung
Remains: Buried, Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery, Los Angeles, CA

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show

Military service: US Army (21-Jun-1943 to 6-Jan-1946, technician)

Born to a pair of farmers, Don Knotts was raised "dirt poor" in West Virginia during the Great Depression. During his childhood, Knotts' father became a paranoid schizophrenic and alcoholic, and Knotts has sometimes joked that he drove his father crazy. Beginning in high school, he performed as a ventriloquist, with modest success.

At 19, he joined the Army, where his duties consisted primarily of entertaining the troops in traveling GI variety shows called "Stars and Gripes". Upon being discharged, he tried breaking into show business as a ventriloquist and stand-up comedian, but found that his thick Southern accent made his act almost unintelligible beyond the South. To overcome the accent, he went to college, majoring in education but with a strong minor in speech. After graduation, his first break came when 25-year-old Knotts was hired to play the decrepit old "Windy Wales" in a revival of the popular radio western Bobby Benson.

Knotts first met Andy Griffith when he auditioned for Griffith's hit play, No Time for Sergeants. The two Southern boys soon bonded by wordlessly whittling sticks, and worked together for almost two years on Broadway. They eventually reprised their roles in a well-received film adaptation of No Time for Sergeants, which was Knotts' first movie. Early in his TV career, Knotts played it relatively straight on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow in the mid-1950s. He also played a fidgety chap in recurring bits on the late-1950s Steve Allen Show.

When Knotts heard that a sitcom was in development with Griffith as a small-town sheriff, he phoned his friend and pointed out that every sheriff needs a good deputy, but a deputy who is not so good might be funnier. Knotts envisioned Deputy Fife as a bumbling but proud character, clearly not cut out for work as a lawman. His manic performance made the laid-back Griffith seem wiser, and the sheriff's respect for Fife signaled to audiences that the deputy was more than merely a buffoon. "I was supposed to be the funny one on the show," Griffith said in a 2002 interview. "But halfway through the second episode, I realized Don should be the funny one and I should play straight man to him. And that's the best thing we ever did. That's what made the show." Playing Fife, Knotts won Emmys for Best Supporting Actor in 1961, '62, '63, '66, and '67.

After leaving Mayberry, Knotts had his own comedy hour, The Don Knotts Show on NBC in 1970, featuring skits with future Radar Gary Burghoff. He also had success as a film star. His first top billing was for The Incredible Mr. Limpet, where Knotts envied the lives of his tropical fish, and after only a few minutes on screen, he fell off a pier at Coney Island and became a fish who fought Nazis.

Knotts' films, including The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, The Reluctant Astronaut, and How to Frame a Figg, were ostensibly "family" movies, and kids loved them. His oeuvre, however, should not be dismissed as merely "kid stuff". Knotts' faults and foibles, albeit exaggerated, were universal, and given a feature-length showcase, he could unravel his anxiety, embarrassments, hopes and impossible dreams, heartache, and worries. By the end of a Knotts film, his character's shortcomings were usually overcome when some crisis revealed this everyman's inner nobility and courage. Audiences came to sincerely like Knotts, whether he was Barney Fife, Mr. Furley, or a fish. With his nervous tics, his shaky insecurity hidden under a mask of overconfidence, and a sexual tension so often present (even when Knotts was alone), his best performances spoke to the insecurities of the nuclear age and the sexual revolution.

Beginning in the 1970s, Knotts made several comedies with Tim Conway, including The Apple Dumpling Gang, Gus, and The Prize Fighter. Conway & Knotts played worms in an early 2000s series of animated Hermie & Friends videos. Late in life, Knotts and Griffith were reunited on Matlock, where Knotts had a recurring role as a jittery neighbor.

In 2004, his home town celebrated Knotts' 80th birthday with a parade, and a Don Knotts Film Festival was held the next summer. He was also honored with the first star in West Virginia's Walk of Fame, in front of the Metropolitan Theater in downtown Morgantown. Knotts suffered from hypochondria and degenerative eye disease, but was otherwise in good health until his death. In his last years, he performed mostly in dinner theater and regional stage productions, and said he enjoyed watching reruns of Seinfeld.

Father: William Jesse Knotts (farmer, b. 1882, d. 1937)
Mother: Elsa Luzetta Moore (homemaker, b. 1884, d. 1969)
Brother: Ralph Lewis Knotts
Brother: Willis Vincent Knotts
Brother: William Earl "Bill" Knotts (d., asthma)
Wife: Kathryn Kay Metz (m. 27-Dec-1947, div. 1964, one son, one daughter)
Son: Thomas Allen Knotts (electrical engineer)
Daughter: Karen Ann Knotts (actress, b. 2-Apr-1954)
Wife: Loralee Czuchna (m. 12-Oct-1974, div. 1983)
Wife: Francey Yarborough (stage actress)

    High School: Morgantown High School, Morgantown, WV (1942)
    University: BA Education, West Virginia University (1948)

http://www.nndb.com/people/750/000022684/

[Libertas]

Seems his father was a bit nuts...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Knotts

...I'd say the fella did alright...if born in this era though, the welfare state would've engulfed them...would he have been the same person he became?

I have my doubts.

[Alphabet Soup]

Growing up I liked most of Don's stuff - especially Barney Fife. Some of the roles were so over the top as to be annoying instead of entertaining.

[Pandora]

Mr. Limpet .......

[Predator Don]

Loved his stuff.....I always liked his attempts to get the girl.

[AlanS]

Loved his stuff.....I always liked his attempts to get the girl.

I always felt sorry for Thelma Lou.