By Charlene Lattea
In the fall of 1947, Don Knotts entered the stage at Reynolds Hall and spoke his first words as the star of a play at WVU.
“I may vomit,” he said.
He was portraying acid-tongued radio personality Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner. His performance “kept audiences howling from curtain until his final line,” according to a review in the Daily Athenaeum.
In the play, Whiteside slips on the ice at an Ohio family’s doorstep and, having broken his leg, must live with them for several weeks. The invalid takes over the household like gangbusters, making the living room his own personal domain and creating complete mayhem. It was a situation that could have come out of his own life.
Jesse Donald Knotts was born in Morgantown in 1924 and grew up on University Avenue in Sunnyside. His father was an invalid who seldom got out of his bed, and Don’s mother kept boarders to support the family.
She let rooms to WVU students or anyone else who could pay the rent. Two of Don’s three older brothers, Sid and Shadow, still lived at home, and spent much of their time playing cards with the boarders. Don, who slept on a daybed in the kitchen, had a front row seat for all the action.
“My mother had her hands full with the sometimes rowdy college students who occupied our rooms,” he said later. “My youth was shaped not only by my family, but also by the hundreds of roomers who came and went while I was growing up.”
At age 12, he taught himself ventriloquism and began performing at civic affairs, churches, and clubs around Morgantown. A WVU professor friend made a professional-looking dummy for him that he named “Danny.” In high school, he teamed up with classmates Jarvis Eldred, who played the musical saw, and Richie Ferrara, who played the violin and mandolin, to form an act that included music, comedy, ventriloquism, and sometimes a little soft shoe.
Don enrolled at WVU in the fall of 1942 to study speech and drama. He had a work study job in Stewart Hall, working for Ward Stone, the dean of men. He brought his lunch every day and ate with friends from the Registrar’s Office. They sat behind Stewart Hall where Don kept everyone laughing with his antics. Phi Sigma Kappa, located on north High Street, offered him a free membership if he would entertain at their parties.
“Don didn’t live at the fraternity house, but he would come up as much as he could,” said lifelong friend and fraternity brother Jack Feck. “He did stand-up and also worked with his dummy.”
The summer after his freshman year Don was inducted into the U.S. Army. He was assigned to Special Services, where he performed in a revue called Stars and Gripes. Don toured with the show for two years, entertaining troops in New Guinea and the Philippines.
When he rejoined the University in January 1946, he put together a stand-up comedy routine, again working with his high school friends Jarvey and Richie.
Don joined the speech department’s University Players and began appearing in plays, including The Philadelphia Story in the fall of 1946. In May 1947, Don appeared as Hansel in the children’s play Hansel and Gretel and wrote an original comedy spot for the University Variety Hour, a radio program broadcast statewide from Reynolds Hall. That November, he gave a hilarious performance in The Man Who Came to Dinner.
In May 1948, Don performed the lead in Arsenic and Old Lace. A few weeks later, Don received his diploma at the University’s 81st commencement. He had a B-plus average for four years and graduated near the top of the class.
On a whim, he borrowed $100 and hitched a ride with some people who were driving to New York City. Within a few weeks he appeared on live TV on the Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts and began a successful career on the radio. Don’s acting career erupted and his characters endured him to fans everywhere, making Morgantown and WVU proud of their hometown comedian.
Don Knotts died on February 24, 2006, at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles from complications related to lung cancer. He was buried at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles. Don is survived by his third wife, Francey Yarborough, and his two children, Thomas and Karen, from his first marriage. He visited Morgantown and WVU many times through the years, and his devotion for his hometown and his alma mater never faded. 