Radio Kenneth

One of America’s greatest comic character actors, Don Knotts, has died. He was 81, and his voice was quivery and nervous right up until the end. Doing nervous was Knotts’ best thing. He’s even listed as ‘Nervous Motorist’ in It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963). And Knotts himself once said: “if you had to sum me up in a word, it would be nervous.”

The universe will best remember Knotts for his quivery and nervous cameo in Cannonball Run II (one of three movies selected in July 1997 to be sent in a capsule into outer space – alongside Bonfire of the Vanities and Rear Window). Knotts’ own space travels began in 1967, with his space caper The Reluctant Astronaut – a film which is summed up by this continuity error, posted on IMDb:

Goofs: Continuity: When Fleming respools the capsule’s programming tape, he has accidentally gotten the peanut butter mixed in with it. The tape reels are so clogged, they cannot play. Later, when Fleming looks out the capsule window at Hawaii, the tape reels are seen in the background running normally. The peanut butter then returns in subsequent shots.

An interesting fact about The Reluctant Astronaut is that it features Leslie Nielsen in a comic version of the serious roles he was already used to playing: some 13 years before Airplane!, in which he supposedly played against type for the first time.

Knotts’ last major work was to provide the voice of Mayor Turkey Lurkey in Chicken Little, which makes me think that Chicken Little might have something to do with Chicken Licken and that fills me with dread.

For me though, Don Knotts with his heavy lids and hollow cheeks will always be the nervous and quivery-voiced Doc Brown of Back To The Future:

 

“Why Marty, I outta kill you!”