艾爾西·諾茨Elsie Knotts 做到了這一切ˊ- 兒子 唐諾茨Don Knotts： 唐諾茨：永遠以笨拙為榮 Don Knotts, Ever Proud to Be a Bumbler。Atsuko Okatsuka (岡塚敦子，台灣出身美國單口喜劇演員、演員和作家「十大值得關注的喜劇演員」，金言：Know who you are not. )
The term "Don Knotts nyt" most likely refers to a New York Times obituary for the actor Don Knotts, who died on February 25, 2006. The article, published on February 26, 2006, and in subsequent editions, details his death at 81 and his career, particularly his iconic role as Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show. It also corrected a prior error in a February 27, 2006, edition regarding the number of bullets his character carried.
Obituary: The main source of information is the New York Times obituary published on February 26, 2006.
Cause of death: The obituary details Knotts' death at age 81.
Key role: It highlights his memorable performance as Barney Fife, the bumbling but lovable deputy sheriff on The Andy Griffith Show.
Corrections: The New York Times published a correction on February 27, 2006, to address a factual error about the number of bullets carried by his character, Barney Fife.
Other roles: The obituary also touches on his other roles, such as landlord Ralph Furley on Three's Company.
Previous coverage: Before his death, The New York Times also published articles about Knotts' career, including his departure from The Andy Griffith Show in 1965.
Don Knotts was a high-status comic who played low-status roles. Actors who worked with him almost universally deferred to him as a comedic grandmaster, yet his characters were not jokers but the butts of jokes. He was absolutely flappable. No one had a better tremor or double-take, and with his unmistakable homeliness -- bulging eyes, receding chin, stooped shoulders, broad hips -- he didn't bother to play the wise fool; he wisely stuck to just the fool.
Of Barney Fife, Mr. Knotts's character on "The Andy Griffith Show," Billy Bob Thornton said, "Don Knotts gave us the best character, the most clearly drawn, most perfect American, most perfect human ever."
Mr. Knotts, who died Friday, grew up during the Depression, in Morgantown, W.Va., where his mother leased a house and took in boarders. He slept in the kitchen. His older brothers, Sid and Shadow, were funny, but they also drank and fought, and Shadow died of an asthma attack while Don was a teenager. Their father, who had suffered hysterical blindness and a nervous collapse before Don was born, rarely left his bed.
The Depression was a high time for Mr. Knotts's act. He practiced magic and ventriloquism for the neighbors and the boarders, many of whom were students or jobless and welcomed satire. When World War II came, his friends thought the Army wouldn't take him, since he looked unwell and undernourished, but he ended up serving out his duty as a comedian in the Stars and Gripes, a revue that played in the South Pacific. At first, he performed only with his ventriloquist dummy, Danny, but one day he caught Red Ford, an older Texas comic, staring at him and laughing. "You know something?" Mr. Knotts remembered Ford saying in "Barney Fife, and Other Characters I Have Known," his 1999 autobiography. "You're a funny little son of a bitch."
在這些導師中，就包括安迪·格里菲斯。 1955年，兩人共同出演話劇《沒有時間當軍士》（No Time for Sergeants），由此結識。格里菲斯先生和諾茨先生互相逗樂。幾年後，諾茨先生毛遂自薦，想在格里菲斯先生的情景喜劇中擔任安迪·泰勒的副手，格里菲斯先生欣然接受。安迪那雙佈滿皺紋、深邃的眼睛傳遞出沉穩睿智的氣質，而巴尼那雙凸出的眼睛則流露出純粹的焦慮——一種對平凡生活種種挑戰的恐懼。
諾茨先生主演的幾部熱門電影，如《鬼魂與雞先生》（The Ghost and Mr. Chicken）、《不可思議的林佩特先生》（The Incredible Mr. Limpet）、《不情願的宇航員》（The Reluctant Astronaut）和《西部最弱的槍手》（The Shakiest Gun in the West），讓他一成名。對於喜劇愛好者，尤其是青少年來說，他對60年代超級英雄的戲仿既令人愉悅又令人欣慰。
One by one, Mr. Knotts mocked the pretenses of the comic actor who often has his eye on nobler pursuits. In the nervous man, he reveled in the discomfort that most comics tend to pass off as indignation or savoir-faire. As Barney, he satirized swagger and self-importance. Finally, on "Three's Company" in the late 70's and 80's, he sent up the comedian's hypersexuality, which is often his pride. Mr. Knotts, over and over, was willing to play the desperate, pathetic low-man-on-every-pole. He did it so well -- never forsaking his persona and trying to seize the lead, as nearly all major comedians do these days -- that his talent for abasement became a source, paradoxically, of great authority. By revealing but never indulging these pretenses, he enlightened everyone he worked with, and his audiences.
艾爾西·諾茨做到了這一切。
She raised four boys during the Depression while her husband's mind unraveled. Nobody would remember her name—but millions would laugh because of what she survived.
Elsie Knotts woke up every day not knowing which version of her husband she'd face. William Jesse suffered from severe mental illness in an era when "treatment" meant asylums and shame, when families hid their struggles behind closed doors and suffered in silence.
Her youngest son, Don, was born into that tension in 1924. He'd later describe his childhood in one devastating phrase: "frightened all the time." Not because of violence, but because of the unpredictability—the mood swings, the episodes, the constant walking on eggshells, never knowing if today would be a good day or a nightmare.
Elsie became the shock absorber for all of it.
She cleaned houses. Took in laundry. Worked any job that would help her feed four growing boys when the Depression had already crushed stronger families. There was no government assistance for mothers with mentally ill husbands. No support groups. No understanding neighbors. Just Elsie, holding together a household that threatened to collapse every single day.
But here's what she did that mattered more than anyone realized at the time:
She gave young Don just enough safety to imagine escape.
That frightened little boy learned something profound in that chaotic house—he learned to defuse tension with humor. To transform anxiety into jokes. To make people laugh when everything felt heavy. Comedy became his survival tool, his way of processing fear that had no other outlet.
Years later, when Don created Barney Fife—the twitchy, nervous, desperately insecure deputy on The Andy Griffith Show—he wasn't inventing a character. He was channeling everything he'd lived. Barney's shakiness, his need for approval, his anxious vulnerability—all of it came from that frightened kid in Morgantown who'd learned to turn fear into something people could laugh at instead of run from.
When Don's father died during Don's teenage years, Elsie found herself raising her youngest son alone. Don talked about wanting to be a ventriloquist, an entertainer. He wanted to chase show business—the most unstable, unlikely career imaginable.
Elsie had every reason to push him toward something safe. She'd survived impossible circumstances. She knew how cruel the world could be to dreamers.
But she'd already done the impossible. She'd held her family together through mental illness and poverty. She'd protected her children when she had nothing left to protect them with.
If her son wanted to chase an impossible dream, she wasn't going to tell him dreams were foolish.
Don served in WWII, performing in Pacific theater entertainment units. He used the GI Bill to attend West Virginia University. He moved to New York and struggled, performing wherever he could, slowly building something from nothing.
Then came 1960 and a new TV show called The Andy Griffith Show. Deputy Barney Fife was supposed to be minor comic relief—a few episodes, maybe a season.
But what Don brought to that character was magic that came from somewhere real. The physical comedy, the nervous energy, the vulnerability that somehow made you love him more, not less—it was authentic because it came from survival, from transformation, from a childhood that could have destroyed him but instead became his gift.
Five Emmy Awards. Cultural icon. One of the most beloved characters in television history.
Every time Barney Fife made someone laugh, Elsie's influence was there—in the resilience her son learned from watching her refuse to break, in the humor he developed to cope with fear, in the vulnerability he could portray because he understood it intimately.
Don worked until shortly before his death in 2006 at age 81. In interviews, he spoke about his childhood with understanding, not bitterness. He recognized his father's illness wasn't a choice. He honored what his mother had done with almost nothing.
Elsie lived long enough to see her frightened little boy become someone who made millions smile. She watched him win awards, make movies, become beloved.
She died knowing that somehow, against every odd, her son hadn't just survived—he'd transformed his pain into something beautiful.
She never got famous. No one wrote her story until her son's obituaries mentioned her in passing. She was just a West Virginia mother who worked herself exhausted, protected her children from chaos, and somehow found strength to support a son's impossible dream.
But every laugh Barney Fife ever earned carried her legacy—the resilience that comes from watching someone refuse to quit, the humor that comes from learning to cope with fear, the humanity that comes from understanding that vulnerability isn't weakness.
Behind every person who transforms pain into art is someone who gave them just enough safety to believe transformation was possible.
Sometimes that someone is working three jobs during the Depression, holding together a family that should have shattered, protecting children from circumstances she never deserved, and still finding the strength to say: "Chase your dream. I believe in you."
Elsie Knotts did all of that.
And the world is kinder, funnier, and more human because she refused to let fear win.
Elsie lived long enough to see her frightened little boy become someone who made millions smile. She watched him win awards, make movies, become beloved.
She died knowing that somehow, against every odd, her son hadn't just survived—he'd transformed his pain into something beautiful.
She never got famous. No one wrote her story until her son's obituaries mentioned her in passing. She was just a West Virginia mother who worked herself exhausted, protected her children from chaos, and somehow found strength to support a son's impossible dream.
But every laugh Barney Fife ever earned carried her legacy—the resilience that comes from watching someone refuse to quit, the humor that comes from learning to cope with fear, the humanity that comes from understanding that vulnerability isn't weakness.
Behind every person who transforms pain into art is someone who gave them just enough safety to believe transformation was possible.
Sometimes that someone is working three jobs during the Depression, holding together a family that should have shattered, protecting children from circumstances she never deserved, and still finding the strength to say: "Chase your dream. I believe in you."
Elsie Knotts did all of that.
And the world is kinder, funnier, and more human because she refused to let fear win.
Jesse Donald Knotts (July 21, 1924 – February 24, 2006) was an American actor and comedian. He is widely known for his role as Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife on the 1960s sitcom The Andy Griffith Show, for which he earned five Emmy Awards.[1]: 18 He also played Ralph Furley on the sitcom Three's Company from 1979 to 1984. He starred in multiple comedic films, including leading roles in The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964) and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966). In 2004, TV Guide ranked him number 27 on its "50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time" list.[3]
Knotts was born in West Virginia, the youngest of four children. In the 1940s, before earning a college degree, he served in the United States Army and in World War II. While enlisted, he chose to become a ventriloquist and comedian as part of a G.I. variety show, Stars and Gripes.
After the army, he got his first major break on television on the soap operaSearch for Tomorrow, where he appeared from 1953 to 1955. He gained wide recognition as part of the repertory company on Steve Allen's variety show, where he played the "extremely nervous man" in Allen's mock "Man in the Street" interviews. In 1958, Knotts made his film debut in the adapted version of No Time for Sergeants.
諾茨出生於西維吉尼亞州，在家中四個孩子中排行最小。在1940年代，在獲得大學學位之前，他曾在美國陸軍服役，並參加了第二次世界大戰。服役期間，他選擇成為一名腹語表演者和喜劇演員，參與了名為“明星與抱怨”（Stars and Gripes）的士兵綜藝節目。
退伍後，他在電視上獲得了第一個重要機會，出演了肥皂劇《明日之星》（Search for Tomorrow），從1953年到1955年。他作為史蒂夫艾倫綜藝節目的常駐演員而廣為人知，在艾倫模仿“街頭採訪”（Man in the Street）的環節中，他扮演了“極度緊張的男人”。 1958年，諾茨在電影《沒有時間當軍士》（No Time for Sergeants）的改編版中首次亮相銀幕。
While attending community college in Valencia, Okatsuka found that her interest in comedy and performing was something that she wanted to pursue seriously.[10]
I was never really good at school, but I always performed in some aspect throughout my life… whether it's dancing, cheerleading, theatre. When I was in community college [in Valencia] I was like, I like making people laugh. How do I take that and make that into a thing I can start doing? At the time the only way I knew how to learn something was through the guidance of a class. I looked up stand-up comedy classes on Craigslist and found "Pretty Funny Women". It's an all women's stand-up class. At the time I signed up for the class, they were filming a documentary for it. I didn't have to start off just by going to open mics, which were pretty much dangerous if you were a woman. It still is now, but ten years ago, it was like walking into wolves. I still did it after the class was over, but I didn't have to start off that way, which I feel lucky.
— Atsuko Okatsuka, Atsuko Okatsuka Is the Joke Slinger America Needs
Atsuko Okatsuka is an American stand-up comedian, actress, and writer based in Los Angeles. She was named one of Variety's "Top 10 Comics to Watch" in 2022 and is the second Asian American woman to have a standup special on HBO. She started the viral #Dropchallenge with her grandmother. Wikipedia
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