“You got a uvula.”
What’d he say?
“They got a uvula.”
Pardon me?
“I got a uvula — all God’s children got a uvula.”
Karen Knotts never knew what she would hear from the other side of the door when her dad was going over his lines for “The Andy Griffith Show.”
Her famous father was Don Knotts, the comedic actor from Morgantown who won five Emmys for his portrayal of bumbling Barney Fife on the landmark 1960s sitcom.
“In a lot of ways, he was like a classical musician,” she said of her dad, who died in 2006.
“He would rehearse and rehearse,” his daughter told The Dominion Post.
“He would drill those words until he got the right inflection and the right nuance.”
That word, “nuance,” was the watchword for the actor who went on to movies while doing stage plays and other television after his star-turn in Mayberry.
Sure, she continued, her dad played it broad.
Not too broad, though.
While he often trafficked in slapstick, he was never silly, she said.
Behind all that bug-eyed mugging, she said, were expressions of vulnerability and a longing for simple acceptance — no matter the depth of the character or the quality of the script.
“You just had to root for this nervous, jittery guy,” she said. “You wanted him to succeed.”
Next week you can root for him all over again, while also paying homage to the city’s landmark Metropolitan Theatre, on High Street.
Center stage
It all hits in celebration of what would have been his 100th birthday. The Met’s turning that same age, also.
Knotts was born July 21, 1924, in Morgantown.
Three days after his debut, The Metropolitan Theatre opened its doors as a then-vaudeville palace in the University City.
Morgantown is marking both milestones July 20-24.
Four of Knotts’ films, “The Incredible Mr. Limpet,” “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken,” “Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo” and “The Apple Dumpling Gang” will flicker across The Met’s big screen, in special showings.
Knotts’ nephew, Bill Knotts, also an actor, will talk about his uncle’s life and times, both in Morgantown and Hollywood.
Daniel de Vise, a writer who is Don Knotts’ brother-in-law, will discuss the actor’s career, followed by a question-and-answer session.
And Knotts’ cousin, performer Josh Knotts, will present a family friendly revue of magic and illusions from the very stage trod by his family member, when the then-Morgantown High student was honing his act as a ventriloquist.
Visit The Metropolitan Theatre online at morgantownmet.com/ for the full schedule and particulars of the tribute hosted by the City of Morgantown and Morgantown Magazine.
One couldn’t ask for a better venue, former Morgantown mayor Charlene Marshall said.
The Met over the years has hosted performers as diverse as crooner Bing Crosby and bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley.
Those vaudeville shows back in its beginning were the stuff of showbiz legend.
When brothers and city restauranteurs George and John Comuntzis built the place, they wanted big — and they got it.
The Met boasted ornate amenities and acoustics that wouldn’t quit, but by the 1980s its shining-light days were seemingly done.
Despite its standing on the National Register of Historic Places, it was also in ill-repair.
A groundswell rose up to save it, however, and the aforementioned Marshall got to be part of the chorus.
In 1994, she stood on its stage as mayor to accept a $1 million federal Housing and Urban Development check for its purchase and refurbishing by the city.
“I had chills just being up there,” she remembered, “because I knew what it was going to mean to Morgantown to bring The Met back.”
Getting laughs — seriously
“The history is in the air,” seconded Larry Nelson, the Morgantown entertainer and radio personality who has emceed shows there and performed in musical productions there.
“I walk the whole place whenever I’m in there,” he said. “The balcony, the green rooms. It’s special.”
So, too, was Don Knotts, he said.
Nelson has kinescope-kinship with Knotts.
The Morgantown radio guy grew up in show business as the son of Jimmy Nelson, the ventriloquist who was part of Milton Berle’s madcap staple of players in the baby-step days of live TV in the late 1940s and early ’50s.
At the same time Jimmy Nelson was becoming a star with Berle, so, too, was Don Knotts, with Steve Allen — where he worked out the intricacies of his famous “Nervous Man” character, also live, in front of the camera lens, while the studio audience howled.
After serving in the South Pacific in World War II and graduating WVU on the G.I. Bill, Knotts lit out for New York City with $100 in his pocket, just to see what might happen.
“Don Knotts and my dad were true entertainers,” Nelson said.
“They were talented and they were craftsmen. It wasn’t about them. It was about the audience.”
Knotts, Nelson said, was a serious actor — who just happened to do comedy. It was in that element where Nelson first met him in the 1970s.
Nelson was living in Los Angeles at the time, making a go as a stand-up comedian while working in the typing pool at CBS, the network that helped make Knotts a star.
He met up with a friend there from WVU who also knew about Knotts’ hometown history.
The actor was performing in a play, and the two went and then sent word to the house manager that some people from that hometown wanted to say hello. Would it be okay if they met after the show?
“Don, of course, said yes,” Nelson remembered.
“We’re waiting, and this little guy, in a suit and with a briefcase, walks in. He was smiling. The first thing he said was, ‘Fellas, how’s Morgantown?’”
True to your school
Knotts’ love of the city wasn’t an act. He would come back for visits, even at the height of his stardom, unheralded and unannounced.
There were just as many dark moments as there were comedic ones during his growing-up years here.
His family struggled with poverty. His father battled mental illness.
But he had Morgantown High and his speech classes, where gangly Jesse Donald Knotts found out he could make a whole room laugh — and get a pretty girl to go out with him as a result.
On a warm June evening back in 2002 in Morgantown, Knotts was the one doing the laughing.
It was the 60th reunion of Morgantown High’s Class of 1942.
The actor wore a dark suit and sported a name tag that read, simply, “Don Knotts, Los Angeles, Calif.”
Not one of his classmates fawned over him, as he sauntered around the groups to enjoy a story while adding a memory or two of his own.
“Hey, this doesn’t have anything to do with me,” he told a guy with a notebook.
“Everyone here has just managed to stay friends for all these years. That’s pretty amazing.”
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