He was (and is) such a beloved actor, why can’t we pay tribute to him the way we do for The Rocky Horror Picture Show ?
My favorite Don Knotts movie is The Ghost and Mr. Chicken , and there are lines in that film I still remember today:
"And they used Bon Ami! "
“The electrician must be a Democrat”
and the ever popular
“Attaboy, Luther!”
So the studio needs to re-release Ghost and send it across the nation so that we, the audience, can yell out those lines along with the actors on the screen.
Any mention of Don Knotts brings to mind the famous episode at our house when my father was reading me part of “Red Lobster, White Castle and The Blue Lagoon.” This normally unemotional guy looked like he was going to piss himself; you know when you are so convulsed with laughter you can’t even take the next breath. The line that put us over the edge:
“If you see Don Knotts, can Tim Conway be far behind?”
The line was repeated somberly on the occasion of Mr. Knotts’ recent death.
Thank you for sharing that part of your life with us, gigi . After reading what you wrote, I am wondering if the OP was in good taste, and I am concluding that it wasn’t.
I just love that self-effacing guy so much. I know that Barney wasn’t just an act, he must have been really that way, and we are the poorer for having lost him.
Please don’t take it that way. If anything, I was being a lot more irreverent than you were, as I have mixed feelings about Mr. Knotts, to put it kindly. Darn this print medium where my intent gets lost!!
Whatever your “mixed feelings” about Don Knotts, I did not take what you wrote in a “bad way”.
I just wondered if I had jumped on the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” theme too soon, allowing for the fact that he has not been lost to us for that long a time.
Also allowing for the fact that I used to be in radio and sensationalizing anything was the rule, and I hated myself during those SNL “copy days” just for the sake of a joke.
It was a cheap joke at the expense of a waste of band-width, and I regret having made the OP. That really is not my nature. If it were, I guess I wouldn’t be taking care of sick people, but spending my time on stage spouting sarcasm.
But one thing in your reply made me smile: Tim Conway and Don Knotts. If there ever was a genius in casting, that was it!
Two “dead-pan” expressions with one suddenly “getting the picture”, too late!
