Revealingly, Andy never let his deputy carry more than one bullet-and in his shirt pocket at that! Nonetheless, Knotts racked up an impressive winning streak of Emmys for 'Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Comedy,' taking home the statuette for 1960/61, 1961/62, 1962/63, 1965//67. Knotts' high-pitched whine provided comic counterpart to the soothing cracker-barrel homilies delivered by Griffith's Sheriff Andy Taylor for five seasons. His Deputy Barney Fife, a bumbling but basically benign braggart, provided many of the laughs on the hugely successful rustic sitcom 'The Andy Griffith Show' (CBS, 1960-68). Nevertheless, the small screen proved the more hospitable home. After great success in the 1960s as a TV second banana, Knotts spent much of the second half of that decade as a feature comedy star. With his ungainly, frail-looking physique, bulging eyes, weak chin and prominent Adam's apple, he confounded traditional notions of what a screen star should be, but that's exactly what he was for the better part of three decades. In a typical Hollywood paradox, Don Knotts proved quite adept at securing steady work playing the frantically nervous and incompetent.
