Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,021
By This is the grave of Ted Knight.
Born in 1923….OK, wait a minute. On the grave, he was born as Theodore Konopka, but online, it says Tadeusz Konopka. Well, whatever, you can’t trust those Poles to get it right. Anyway, he was in a Polish immigrant family in Litchfield County, Connecticut. Just before he was to graduate from high school, the U.S. entered World War II and he immediately dropped out and joined the Army. He was in the 296th Combat Engineer Battalion and did enough in Europe to earn five campaign stars.
Konopka was a funny guy and enjoyed hamming it up so after the war, he went into acting. He was living in Hartford and this was an era where local acting scenes could still matter. He became good with puppets and ventriloquism. That got him work on a Providence TV station hosting a local kid’s show. I am just old enough to remember the local kids show market still existing–in Oregon, we had Ramblin’ Rod out of Portland. He had a long cardigan sweater with a lot of buttons on it and he hosted the cartoon show. Anyway, now going as Ted Knight professionally, he worked in Providence from 1950-55 before getting a similar job in Albany and then another in Burlington, North Carolina. Finally, he was advised to try his act in Hollywood. Even though he was in his mid 30s by this time, he decided to take a shot.
Knight became a working actor in Hollywood. He didn’t get any meaningful roles for many years. But he got steady commercial and voiceover work and he was cast in lots of little bit parts. With the rise of TV and a lot of movies being cranked out still, there was work for guys like this. He even had a very tiny role in Psycho. But for years and years, he was just a guy getting bit parts on Gunsmoke and McHale’s Navy. He did start getting a few more prominent TV roles in the mid 60s. He was cast in The Young Married for a couple of years, which is a show I have never heard of before, but for which there are 214 episodes. Knight was in 20 of them. He also got quite a bit of voice work in these years. This was the golden age of TV cartoons (at least pre-Simpsons) and Knight was a good voice man. He and Pat Harrington (from One Day at a Time) were the main voices on Journey to the Center of the Earth, which had 17 episodes in the late 60s. He was also a voice in 16 episodes of The New Scooby-Doo Movies in 1972.
But of course what made Ted Knight a star was being cast as Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. This was the break he had long worked for. Although not quite among the very most popular shows on television, it was a solidly rated show for its entire run from 1970-77. It was a great cast and that very much included Knight. Baxter played the anchorman, a kind of trial run for Will Ferrell’s Anchorman portrayal decades later. Knight was a buffoon, an asshole, a clown. He was a perfect foil for Moore. He was stupid. He was uncurious. He didn’t know what he was talking about. He is insecure beyond anything known because of this, so he props himself up all the time. At first, he really was someone for Moore and Ed Asner to poke and he played that great. But over the years, the show worked to develop his character and make him seem like something more than an object of ridicule. Knight was acclaimed for what became his signature role. He was nominated for Emmys 6 times for Supporting Actor in a Comedy and he won in 1973 and 1976.
So when The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended, Knight would have options. Unfortunately, Knight had something else–cancer. He was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1977 (get your colonoscopies my friends, I’ve got one scheduled for next month!). But he was determined to work through it. He had a comedy album, did a bunch more cartoon work, guest starred all over the place, and had his own show that didn’t last very long. In 1980, he was one of the stars of Caddyshack. Now, I have to say something here–the appeal of Caddyshack has always been lost on me, going back to when I was kid. Its just not funny! The only film in my entire life I’ve understood the appeal of even less than this is Napoleon Dynamite, which I do not get at all. So for some of you, this is your favorite Knight role. To each their own. I guess.
Also in 1980, Knight would get his other signature TV role–the father in Too Close for Comfort, a show about a conservative cartoonist in San Francisco who lived in a house with his wife and two grown daughters. I don’t know if Knight was a political conservative himself, but the show sure liked to take shots at Oakland, which was of course the city with those people. As I recall, it’s not actually a good show, but between its ABC run and then the first run syndication that kept it going, it lasted all the way until 1986. Two other memorable things about this show. First, it had a running bit where Knight would wear the sweaters of different colleges. It started with the University of Michigan (whether this makes the show a favorite of Paul or not, he will have to say) and nearly every other major school, which for some reason meant a lot of his wearing Oregon State shirts. As an Oregon fan, to burden someone with Beavers material seems wrong.
The other thing about this show–and this I do remember–is that it featured a very obviously gay Jim J. Bullock as a frequent guest but it was the early 80s and it was San Francisco and the show couldn’t have an openly gay character, so there were some ridiculous workarounds on this. And of course Bullock himself had HIV, though because he was diagnosed in 1985, he was able to get medicine to stay alive, but his partner died of AIDS during the show’s run. The AV Club had a long essay on this once. That was a time and set in a very specific place in the public imagination and the show really sums up America’s stupid discomfort with gay people, all while wanting to laugh at/with them, like they had on game shows with Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly.
Anyway, in 1985, Knight’s cancer returned and it spread fast. His doctors tried to get him to stop working. But really, what was the point? So he kept going as long as he could, but he died in 1986, at the age of 62.
Ted Knight is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.
If you would like this series to visit other people from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Mary Tyler Moore is in Fairfield, Connecticut and Gavin McLeod is in Cathedral City, California. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.