List of Crap 128, Top 50 Slapstick Comedians and Teams

[George-2.0]

Ossi was brilliant in Lubitsch's The Doll, The Oyster Princess, and I Don't Want to Be a Man, which featured some of the best comedic performances I've ever seen - I highly recommend checking them out.

[stansimpson]

I feel that I need to confess that early 20th century female comediennes and the more obscure actors are a bigger blindspot than I ever realized. While I do feel guilty for submitting a list that leans more populist and is so male dominated (I included as many women as I could that felt worthy to be in a Top 50) thereby pushing the ranks of these people lower, I also feel like this is continuing to be a fantastic education.

Just needed to share that. Carry on!

[stethacantus]

#38

Benny Hill

20 points, 2 lists, #8 RVR II

Born: January 21, 1924  Southampton, Hampshire, England
Birth Name: Alfred Hill
Stage Name: Benny Hill
Stage Debut: 1940s
Radio Debut: October 5, 1947
Television Debut: 1950
Film Debut: March 30, 1956

Both Alfred's father and grandfather had been professional clowns. So it was only natural that Alfred would want to be a clown himself. However, he preferred to be a stage comedian in Music Halls. He changed his name to Benny as homage to Jack Benny, his favorite comedian. Shortly after beginning his career as an entertainer he was drafted during the Second World War. He served most of the war as a mechanic, but as the war was winding down, got a transfer to the BFBS to entertain troops. When the war ended Benny became a radio performer, gradually moving into television as his fame a s a comic grew. He made his film debut in 1956 in  the mystery comedy Who Done It?. It would be the only motion picture to bill him as the star.as he became too busy with television and making comedy records. His only other films were Light Up The Sky ( 1960 ), Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines ( 1965 ), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang ( 1968 ) and The Italian Job ( 1969 ). His comedy singles were top 40 hits in the U.K., the biggest being Ernie ( The Fastest Milkman In The West. )

Released in 1971, it had actually been written in 1955 as the theme to what was supposed to have been his first movie. One of the odd jobs Benny had during the years he was beginning as a comedian was milkman, and he wanted to do a film based on his experiences. This is one of the reasons Benny lost interest in films, as no studio would produce the script he had written, but would rather have him do a film written by a professional script writer. Television gave him the opportunity to write his own material. In 1955 he began what would become his most famous work, The Benny Hill Show, which aired on and off on the BBC before being picked up by the  Thames network in 1969 where it stayed on the air continuously until 1989. It wasn't exactly a series as each season was comprised of two to four hour long specials that aired randomly through the year.  Thames reedited the episodes as half hour shows for international syndication, a batch of which were shown in syndication in the United States as a single season. In the UK The Benny Hill Show remained the most popular show on television. With him no longer accepting movie rolls, t his fans were getting very little of him. So it was a huge event when he agreed to do a music video for Genesis.

A fan of classic film comedy, Hill  was known for his filmed bits shown during the episodes which were filled with slapstick, and undercranked so the action was sped up. At the time silent films were shown on television sped up, due to the slower film rate silent films being projected at sound film speed without being adjusted. By the 80s film historians like Kevin Brownlow were transferring silent films to video at the correct speed, making Hill's filmed slapstick unique. But he continued filming them that way, calling them "Live animation". These filmed bits usually ended with Hill's character being chased by everyone, which Hill loved to call his "Running Gag", a double meaning joke as it both referred to a term where the same gag is repeated over and over again throughout a series, and because the gag had people running.

On May 1st, 1989, the final episode of Brittan's favorite television show aired. Soon after, Benny Hill publicly announced that after 21 years with Thames television, he was voluntarily quitting his show and taking a year off. Which seemed a bit unusual considering how few episodes were produced a year. Eventually the truth came out. Benny didn't quit. He was fired. The man who made the decision was John Howard Davies, the man who had produced and directed episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, The Goodies and Steptoe and Son, all classics of British television, and would later go on to produce and direct Mr. Bean. But in 1989 he was not producing shows, but working as the head of light entertainment for Thames. When asked why he had cancelled The Benny Hill Show, his response was "the audiences were going down, the programme was costing a vast amount of money, and he was looking a little tired." Actually, his health had been in decline at the time and he was looking a little weak. After his year off, he made a backdoor pilot for what would have been his next series, Benny Hill's World Tour, the first episode shot in New York City with the other episodes to be shot in other cities. Shortly after the special had been completed, Benny had a mild heart attack. His doctors warned him that he was dangerously overweight, and he would need bypass surgery. Benny ignored his doctors advice and returned home. On April 22, 1992, after days of not answering his phone, police broke into his house for a wellness check and found him dead in his chair with the television on. He had been dead for about two days before they found him. Six months after he was buried, grave robbers dug up his coffin. The rumor was that with no close  living relatives, he had put in his will tat he was to be buried with his fortune, consisting of gold bars and jewelry, which wasn't true. Distant relatives took his estate. The nations favorite comedian was reburied, this time with a heavy slab of concrete covering his grave so no one would try digging him up again.

STATUE!

[RVR II]

I remember catching some of the Benny Hill show late at night in the 80s when I was a kid and was fascinated by all the scantily clad women on his show

[Cyrusso]

I remember catching some of the Benny Hill show late at night in the 80s when I was a kid and was fascinated by all the scantily clad women on his show

I love that one episode of Benny Hill where the women's clothes are torn off and they're running around in their garters, bras and panties and... what? That could be ANY episode? Hmm, I guess you're right.

[stethacantus]

#37

Paul Reubens

21 points, 1 list, #5 Pak-Man

Born: August 27, 1952 Peekskill,  New York, U.S.A.
Birth Name: Paul Reubinfield
Stage Names: Paul Reubens/Pee Wee Herman
Stage Debut: early 1970s
Television Debut: mid 1976
Film Debut: February 8, 1980

When Paul was young his family moved to Sarasota, Florida where his parents opened up a lamp store. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus had their winter headquarters in the town, which Paul visited regularly.  It was there he decided he wanted to be a performer.  In high school and college he studied theater and drama, but upon graduation decided he would rather be a comedian. He began performing at small comedy clubs around Los Angeles, and in the mid 70s formed an act with friend Charlotte Mcginiss called The Hilarious Betty & Eddie. They were contestants four times on The Gong Show before their act broke up. Paul joined The Groundlings where he met Phil Hartman, and they quickly became best friends and writing partners. Together they developed a character based partially on Pinky Lee, a comedian who hosted kids shows during the 1950s.

In 1979 Hartman and Reubans decided to try the Pee Wee Herman character out on an episode of The Dating Game where apparently the producers did no background check on contestants.  Obviously the immature sounding bachelor who was too young to drink and wanted to take the bachelorette back to his home so they could play with his toys didn't win. But the debut was a success.  Everyone believed Ruebens character was for real. Pee Wee would need some more fine tuning, but Hartman and Reubens thought they had the character they needed to get jobs on Saturday Night Live. Producer Lorne Michaels was leaving the show,  and all the original writers and cast members were leaving with him. The sudden vacancies had comedians from all over the country auditioning to be the next cast members and writers.  Having a repertoire of characters to bring to the show was essential to being hired.  Or at least it was when Lorne ran the show. The new producer Jean Doumanian didn't seem to care if any new cast member could do characters. Rubens was close to being hired when she decided to give his slot to a friend of hers, Gilbert Gottfried.

Having been rejected, Hartman and Reubens decided to take the Pee Wee Herman skit that would have aired on SNL and expand it into a full length show, which would include their fellow Groundlings members. The Pee Wee Herman Show was an episode of a fictitious children's show with Phil Hartman playing one of the show's many characters Captain Carl.  The show quickly grew in popularity, and was eventually moved to the Roxy Theater where it's performances were sold out for five months.  There was a clean version of the show which was performed on Saturday afternoons for children,  and the raunchy version that was performed at night for adults.  Cheech and Chong were fans and had Reubens guest star as his Pee Wee character in Cheech & Chong's Next Movie ( 1980 ) and Cheech & Chong's Nice Dreams ( 1981 ). Just before it closed, HBO recorded the Pee Wee Herman Show and aired it as a special.

In 1982 a five minute second episode of The Pee Wee Herman Show with Steve Martin guest starring as an organ grinder aired as part of a one shot sketch comedy special on NBC called Twilight Theater. David Letterman began asking Reubens to be a guest on Late Night as Pee Wee. Reubens made several appearances,  where each time Pee Wee would show Dave the unusual toys he had collected since his last appearance.  Since 1978 Reubens had been acting in small roles in movies and television,  but soon decided to exclusively be Pee Wee on stage and in film, and no longer accepting screen credit as Paul Reubens.  Meatballs Part II ( 1984 ) was the last time in the 80s he was credited as Paul Reubens or played a role other than Pee Wee. The popularity of Pee Wee Herman peaked in 1985 with Pee Wee's first feature film Pee Wee's Big Adventure. To promote it Reubens hosted SNL as Pee Wee Herman, just four years after being rejected as a cast member.

Pee Wee's Big Adventure earned a respectable $40 million which meant there would be more Pee Wee films. However, he didn't have the time. CBS wanted him to bring The Pee Wee Herman Show to Saturday mornings. Suddenly his fictitious kids show was real. Retitled Pee Wee's Playhouse, it reunited most of the cast from the live shows, including Phil Hartman as Captain Carl, until he left to  join the cast of SNL later tat year. Pee Wee's Playhouse was another success., not just attracting his old fans, but finding a completely new generation of fans. Since he was putting out 10 episodes a year, there was no time for a sequel to Pee Wee's Big Adventure. He just barely had enough time for a guest appearance in the film Back to the Beach  ( 1987 ). He had promised CBS three seasons, but asked for a hiatus in 1988 so he could finally make a sequel to ....Big Adventure  called Big Top Pee Wee ( 1988 ) CBS had promised the sponsors a new season for 1988, so made a compromise with Reubens. He could do a two episode third season along with a prime time Christmas special as long as he agreed to a full fourth and fifth season. Big Top Pee Weeonly made $15 million, costing the studio $5 million for it's $20 million budget. He returned for the two promised seasons of Playhouse, but in 1990 decided that it was time to retire the Pee Wee character. After 45 episodes of a television show ( including the stage sow and Christmas special ), two movies, and numerous guest appearances, Reubens had run out of fresh Pee Wee material and had burned out on the character. CBS had only expected three seasons and got a little more than four seasons, which meant they had enough episodes they could repeat to keep the series on the air for years. In 1991 Reubens was arrested at a pornographic theater in Florida because an undercover detective witnessed him masturbating. Because in Florida  it's illegal to do in a porno theater what you paid to do in a porno theater?  CBS immediately cancelled the reruns of Pee Wee's Playhouse and withdrew the series from syndication. A plea bargain deal was worked out where Reubens was required to do an anti drug PSA as Pee Wee. He finished the summer with an appearance by Pee Wee on the MTV Video Awards then planned to retire the character for good. 

He returned to taking roles credited as Paul Reubens, playing the short role of Penguin's father in Batman Returns ( 1992 ). That same year he was in the vampire Amilyn in  Buff  the Vampire Slayer. For the next decade he played a variety of minor but memorable characters in movies, most notably Professor Spatz in Buddy ( 1997 ), The Spleen in Mystery Men ( 1998 ), and Derek Foreal in Blow ( 2001 ) of which he got critical acclaim. He also was the recurring character Andrew J Lansing III in the series Murphy Brown, and was the host of the short lived game show You Don't Know Jack. He began to mainly work as a vocal actor in cartoons in the 00s and 10s, but would still show up in the odd movie or television series. Such as paying the penguin's biological father in the series Gotham. In 2010 Reubens revived Pee Wee Herman in an episode of WWE Raw. The next year he brought the stage show back for a limited run on Broadway, which was once again filmed by HBO and shown as a special. In 2016 a third Pee Wee movie, Pee Wee's Big Holiday was made for Netflix. He continues to show up in the odd role, his most recent credit on a 2019 episode of The Connors

[PsychoGoatee]

Cool stuff, as always! I enjoy these looks into a lot of things I never saw, like the Benny Hill show. Just watched that Runaway video... pretty cool!

[stethacantus]

#36

Marion Davies

22 points, 1 list, #4 George-2.0

Born: January 3, 1897  Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.A.
Birth Name: Marion Douras
Stage name: Marion Davies
Stage Debut: 1914
Film Debut: December 23, 1897

Marion Douras dropped out of high school at age 17 to follow her older sister Reine into showbusiness. Reine had been married to Broadway producer George Lederer, so Marion had a connection who could get her work. Reine had changed her last name to Davies after seeing it on a billboard,  so Marion did the same. With her connection in the business,  she soon moved up from dancing in the chorus line, to being a featured player in the Ziegfeld Follies. However,  she would get nervous and stutter when reading her lines, so was eventually only allowed to do dancing routines. One day a fan began stalking her. He would buy tickets for the same front row seat and would show up for every performance to stare at her. He would have gifts left for her in her dressing room.  One day she was hired to be photographed modeling clothing.  She became suspicious when the clothes were various costumes.  Then she suddenly realized someone was sitting in the darkened end of the studio and had been watching her the whole time. It was her stalker.  She immediately fled the studio and locked herself in the dressing room,  refusing to open the door until he had left.

George Lederer decided to get into movie production in 1914, and in 1917 cast Marion as the lead in a drama he was directing called Runaway Romany. It didn't do so well, and it was the last film Lederer directed. For a while it looked as if Marion's career in motion pictures were over, when her stalker returned. He offered to finance any film Marion wanted to star in. Well, if he was going to do that, then she was willing to date him. Even if he was still married. He had tried to buy stakes in United Artists but was turned down, so he formed the Cosmopolitan Production Company which by 1919 had a distribution deal with Paramount Pictures. And for the next 17 years would finance over 40 feature films for her.

The stalker's name was William Randolph Hearst, multimillionaire, owner of Hearst Communications, and now movie mogul. Because he owned 28 newspapers across the country, Cosmopolitan,, Good Housekeeping, Harper's Bazaar, Town & Country and the Hearst Metrotone Newsreel,  he could use them to promote Davies and all of her films. He had a reporter from the Los Angeles Examiner  assigned to write an article about her every day. With all of that publicity Davies soon became Americas #1 actress. While primarily a dramatic actress, Davies began making comedies. At first light romantic comedies. But as her career progressed she began to drift towards physical comedy. Hearst was always tying to control her career, and did his best to keep slapstick gags out of her films. The closest she came to a pure slapstick movie was Show People ( 1928 ). In it Marion plays a girl who wants to be a movie actress, so travels across country to Hollywood. At first finding it impossible to break into the movie business, she has a chance meeting with actor Billy Boone, who tells her he wants her to be in his next film. Marion arrives on the set and is immediately sprayed in the face with seltzer. She suddenly realizes the film studio she is now working for makes slapstick shorts. She decides to stay with the studio, and soon becomes a very popular screen comedian. But with her fame comes an contract offer from a major studio who wants to star her in full feature dramas. Marion takes the offer, abandoning her friends at the slapstick studio, as well as Billy who has fallen in love with her. The plot of Show People allowed Marion to perform slapstick.  But Hearst was still meddling behind the scenes. The script called for Marion to have a pie thrown in her face. Hearst demanded that it be removed from the script because it was undignified for an actress of Davies stature to be hit with a pie. Director King Vidor agreed to remove it, but didn't tell him he had replaced the pie gag with a seltzer bottle gag.  Hearst would have preferred Marion stuck to drama. Only 40% of her films were comedies, and at least half of those were light romantic comedies. Only a small fraction could be called screwball comedies. And yet, Davies was so good at physical comedy that she is remembered for it, despite the fact that her most successful films were he dramas When Knighthood Was In Flower ( 1922 ) and Little Old New York ( 1923 ).

Perhaps it s a good thing anyone is even remembering any of her films. Her scandals were remembered long after he films were out of circulation. Not just for being Hearst's mistress, or for possibly having Hearst's love child and having her sister adopt it, but for something  that never happened. The murder of director Thomas Ince.  He had been at a party in 1924 Hearst and Davies threw on their yacht The Oneida along with several celebrities. Ince got sick and left the party, and returned to his home where his condition worsened until he died. A story began spreading, mostly among those who did not attend the party,  that Ince died of a gunshot wound. The story goes that during the party Charlie Chaplin hit on Marion. An enraged jealous Hearst grabbed his gun out of his cabin and shot Ince, mistaking him for Chaplin. Hearst ten had everyone at the party swear not to say what happened, had the late Ince driven home, and a doctor claim he had died from indigestion. There was an official autopsy, so Ince didn't die from being shot as the story claims. But the rumor persisted for decades. But it didn't  end her career. Nor did sound film. What ended it was Hearst. By the sound era Cosmopolitan Pictures was being distributed by M.G.M. but after a disagreement over roles not being offered to Davies, he cancelled his contract  with M.G.M. and signed a deal with Warner Bros. to distribute films for Cosmopolitan. Then after a few films Hearst got into an argument with Warner Bros. and cancelled his distribution contract. He tried to find another distributor but after two years of no studio wanting to work with Hearst, Davies announced her retirement. In 1943 20th Century Fox offered Davies a role in Claudia, but Hearst would not allow her to take it because he didn't want her doing any supporting roles. By tat time Cosmopolitan Productions was out of business, leaving Hearst $126 million in debt. It was gradually paid off via profits from Hearst's publishing empire. Davies stayed with Hearst until his death in 1951. Davies died ten years later, on September 22., 1961 of jaw cancer.

[stansimpson]

Paul Reubens! Dang, that's a solid choice I totally forgot about. He would probably make my Top 25. Maybe even Top 20.

[stethacantus]

#35

Bruce Campbell

23 points, 1 list, #3 linszoid

Born: June 2, 1958  Royal Oak, Michigan, U.S.A.
Film Debut: October 15,1981
Television Debut: 1982

Do the Evil Dead films count as slapstick? Lets see... a lot of violence tat is meant to be funny... I guess so. At least someone here though Campbell  was slapstick enough to have on his list as the third greatest slapstick comedian of all time. But I haven't seen everything he was in, so as far as I know his sole contribution to the art of slapstick is cutting demons in half with his chainsaw arm.  He is the actor with one of the greatest cult followings in the history of media. He is the Where's Waldo of Sam Raimi films. He is Ash, Jack, Brisco, Autolycus, another Jack, and Ronald Reagan. He is the one and only Bruce Campbell.

He began his showbusiness career in the 70s with Sam Raimi and other friends shooting cheap short films on super 8. Raimi wanted to turn one of his shorts, a horror film called Within The Woods,  into a full length  feature, raising money from local investors for a film under the working title Book of the Dead. Campbell agreed to act as the lead character As he was the only actor willing to spend the months needed to completely film it. A distributor was found who insisted they change the name to Evil Dead and it quickly became a cult hit. So a sequel was made, Evil Dead II ( 1987), and another sequel, Army of Darkness ( 1992 ). In the meantime the cult following of the original Evil Dead got Bruce work in other low budget horror films such as Maniac Cop ( 1988 ). He also did small roles in major films like Congo ( 1995 ) and Fargo ( 1996 ). When Sam Raimi's career took off, he made sure to give Bruce cameo rolls in all of his films.

He has had far more success on television, beginning as the lead in the series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.,in 1993. The series was an odd mix of science fiction fantasy and old fashioned movie serials, purposely made in the style of the Indiana Jones films. The series was initially a ratings hit, but was soon sabotaged by FOX executives. The series premise had lawman Brisco County, Jr.  hunting down members of the outlaw gang who murdered his father, along wit the gang's leader John Bly. Each week had Brisco going after a different gang member, or going after Bly who was the main villain of the series and usually escaped after each encounter with Brisco. Thrown into the mix was a second plot surrounding a mysterious orb discovered in a mine which gives whoever touches it temporary powers. The government wants to study it, and Bly wants to steal it. 20 episodes into the first season FOX executives wanted the story arc, which was supposed to last the entire series, wrapped up. So an episode was written where the last of the Bly gang is captured, Bly is killed, and the mystery of the orb is explained. Meanwhile FOX ordered 7 more episodes for the first season. The central arc was no more, and the writers didn't  plan on the extra 7 episodes which they needed to plot out and write within a few weeks. The writing quality was off, and the series lost viewers. So FOX cancelled the show.

He was then cast as the recurring character autolycus on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and it's spinoff Xena: Warrior Princess. From there he began working for Disney in 1997, starring in two movies made for the Disney Channel, Goldrush: A Real Life Alasken Adventure and a remake of  The Love Bug. In 2000 he was the star of a syndicated television series, Jack of All Trades, where he played a secret agent in the 1800s. The show was unusual as it was only a half hour long, shown in an hour block with another half hour adventure series  Cleopatra 2525.  Both shows were cancelled midway through their second seasons. He continued guest starring on television shows and making the occasional television movie for the Sci-fi Channel until 2007 when he became a costar in the series Burn Notice on te USA Network, which is one of those series everyone has heard of, yet very few have actually watched it. SNL did a great skit about the series where contestants on a game show must guess what Burn Notice is about. Video of the sketch can be found on the NBC website.
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/burn-notice-game-show/n12712
Burn Notice lasted 7 seasons. In  2015 he played Ronald Reagan on the Fargo television series. The same year returned as Ash Williams in the series Ash vs Evil Dead which ran for three seasons on Starz. Most recently he was the host of a reboot of Ripley's Believe or Not on the Travel Channel.

[George-2.0]

Marion was so, so good with physical comedy, one of the very best, and excelled as an impressionist (all done with expression and movement of course) as seen in hilarious "The Patsy".

"The Red Mill" allowed her to let her goofy, fun side out, and again she shines with the slapstick (the race on skates). While she could handle some drama, with a mix of comedy, as in Little Old New York (the scene where she gets in a fight with some boys was a hoot), heavy drama was not a strength. 

She struggled with talkies in my opinion. The timing was off in "Bachelor Father" (the pregnant pauses and stepped on lines were an issue). And "Blondie of the Follies" was not a good fit for Davies. While she's okay when she's allowed to be kooky and interact with her onscreen family, she's not up to scratch with the dramatic bits. In those moments I found her over-wrought, screechy and hammy. Her best talkie was the comedy "Page Miss Glory" where she was paired with Patsy Kelly and allowed to be silly - while I liked that movie I think it would have been better had the story unfolded through their perspective - heck, Davies and Kelly could have been a great comedy team.

Funny, Hearst wanted her to be this dignified, serious actress, but she was at her best when she was anything but dignified and was allowed to go crazy and act the fool. He supported her career, but he should have let her be her best self.

[stethacantus]

#34

Don Knotts

23 points, 1 list, #3 ColeStratton

Born: July 21, 1924  Morgantown,  West Virginia, U.S.A.
Birth Name: Jesse Knotts
Stage Name: Don Knotts
Stage Debut: 1941
Radio Debut: 1950
Television Debut: 1953
Film Debut: May 29, 1958

Jessie Knotts began performing his ventriloquist act at church and school functions.  Deciding he was talented based on the polite response of his friends,  he headed out to New York City to become a stand-up comedian.  It didn't work out, so he ended up returning home and attending college. He left to enlist in the army after his freshman year in 1943 to fight in WWII, but when his superiors found out he was a comedian,  was ordered to join the entertainment unit. He spent most of the war touring the Western Pacific Islands as part of a variety show called Stars and Gripes where he performed his ventriloquist act. He began to resent his dummy was getting  all the laughs, and finally threw it overboard when he was traveling to their next destination. 

After the war Jessie completed college.  He then moved back to New York City, and after adopting his middle name as his stage name, attempted standup again.  Only this time he had connections who he met while performing for the troops who helped him get gigs. He began finding work on radio, landing the role of the comic relief character Windy Wales in the long running western series Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders. This lead to him finding work on television, where he spent two years on the soap opera Search For Tomorrow as Wilbur Petterson.  In 1956 he became one of the comedy players on The Steve Allen Show where he finally gained national recognition for being a comedian.  Around the same time he was in the Broadway play No Time For Sergeants which also featured Andy Griffith in the cast. In 1958 the play was turned into a theatrical film with both Andy and Don reprising their roles. When Andy was offered his own sitcom, he asked Don to be his co-Star. On The Andy Griffith Show Don played his defining role of deputy Barny Fife.

Working on The Andy Griffith Show for most of the year left him little time for a movie career.  He appeared in minor roles in comedies, most notably an extra minor role in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in 1963. In 1964 he found a starring movie role that fit into his schedule.  The Incredible Mr. Limpet only required Knotts to film a few scenes,  after which his character falls off a pier and into the ocean. From there his character magically turns into a cartoon fish. Knotts was only required to record his lines for the cartoon fish during his breaks from the set of his sitcom. 

The Incredible Mr. Limpet was a big enough success that Universal offered Knotts a five picture deal. Not wanting to pass up being the star of his own movies, he left [/i]The Andy Griffith Show[/i].  His first film under the Universal contract was The Ghost And Mr. Chicken ( 1966 ), followed by The Reluctant Astronaut ( 1967 ) and The Shakiest Gun In The West ( 1968  ).  And after a successful run of G rated critically acclaimed comedies,  Universal decided it was time for Knotts to do his first R rated comedy The Love God? ( 1969 ) which ended his streak when the film bombed.  Don decided to take a break from Universal while he personally wrote the treatment for his next film, and accepted an offer from NBC to do his own variety show, original called Don Knotts' Nice Clean, Decent, Wholesome Hour, the title of which was shortened to The Don Knotts Show after the pilot aired. The series only lasted one season, after which Don's treatment for Universal was turned into How To Frame A Figg ( 1971 ).

In 1975 Knotts signed another multiple picture deal,  this time with Walt Disney Studios so there would be no chance of him being assigned anything other than G rated comedies.  There he made such films as The Apple Dumpling Gang ( 1975 ) and it's sequel, Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo ( 1977 ) and Gus ( 1976 ). In the films he was often paired with Tim Conway,  so New Line offered Don and Tim a two picture deal where they would be a comedy team. Both films, The Prize Fighter ( 1979 ) and The Private Eyes ( 1980 ) were successful,  but aside from a cameo as motorcycle cops in Canonball Run II ( 1984 ), Tim and Don were never teamed again. 

In 1979 ABC thought it would be a brilliant idea to take the landlord from their hit sitcom Three's Company and spin them off in their own series.  Don was cast as the new landlord Mr. Furley, and would remain with the series another five years. After Three's Company's cancellation,  Don kept busy with guest appearances in other networks shows and the occasional small movie roll. In 1986 he revived his role of Barney Fife in Return to Mayberry which reunited the entire cast of The Andy Griffith Show in what was both a one shot reunion movie, and a long overdue series finale. In 2005 Don Knotts was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was undergoing treatment when he developed pneumonia. He died on July 23, 2016.

STATUE!

[stansimpson]

I live in the South where Don Knotts is only known as Barney Fife. It's such a shame, because his 60s comedies are some of the best of the decade. Sure, they maybe weren't the best movies. But his comedic timing and commitment in movies like How To Frame A Fig, The Shakiest Gun In the West, and especially The Ghost And Mr. Chicken turn your average forgettable pablum to falling-on-the-floor-laughing hilarity. And it's only because of Don Knotts.

And I somehow forgot him on my list. (－‸ლ)

We need to share some clips of all these geniuses. I like this scene from Shakiest Gun In the West that I think really shows off both the broad highs and the low quiet subtleties of his slapstick (don't let the obvious stunt double take too much away from him):

[CJones]

I considered putting Don Knotts on my list. When I was little I really liked The Apple Dumpling Gang for some reason. Haven't seen that in at least 35 years. God I'm old....

[The Lurker]

Kind of amusing that Disney's The Little Mermaid has two Mr Limpet Don Knotts references, one in the film and one on the Disney ride.