“People seem to enjoy the idea of me getting scared,” Don Knotts explained in the book Andy and Don. That’s why his first venture into feature films after leaving The Andy Griffith Show was The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, a 1966 comedy scripted by two of the sitcom’s writers and bearing more than a passing resemblance to “The Haunted House,” a Season Four episode that let Knotts show off his bug-eyed, terrified trembling to full effect.
But there’s one scene in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken that would never fly on the sitcom. After Knotts’ nervous character, Luther, is chased away from a cobweb-covered organ by a brood of animated bats, he discovers a painting of a woman who’s been stabbed with bloody garden shears. Luther’s eyes go wide, and then he faints.
If you think that sounds like Barney Fife behavior, think again. The Andy Griffith Show’s creative staff knew they could only take the deputy sheriff’s cowardice so far. One of the show’s co-creators, Aaron Ruben, made it his job to ensure “that perfectly suited material was provided” for Griffith and Knotts, according to The Journal of Pop Culture, as reported by MeTV.
One of Ruben’s rules for Barney Fife? The character could jump out of his skin with fright, but he would never faint. Passing out sounds like perfectly apt Fife behavior, so why put that particular restraint on the show’s writers?
It all goes back to the episode on which The Ghost and Mr. Chicken was based. In “The Haunted House,” Barney’s gun goes off unexpectedly. The director, Harvey Bullock, had the bright idea to have Barney faint at the sound of his own gunshot. Why not? It would work perfectly well in the movie.
Here’s why not: Ruben decreed that Barney shouldn’t pass out on that episode or any other. “If he faints this week, he’ll have to faint funny next week,” Ruben reasoned with Bullock. “Then next time he will have to faint funnier, and soon the credibility of the character is gone.”
The Andy Griffith Show writers followed the rule, but it’s clear they couldn’t wait to break it once Knotts was free and clear. Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, the sitcom writers who worked with Knotts on The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, huddled up with him once again for 1968’s The Shakiest Gun in the West. As you can tell by the title, Knotts is once again a Nervous Nellie who can’t be trusted with a weapon.
The writers get big laughs when Knotts’ romantic interest peppers him with sweet talk. “I think you’re very nice,” she coos. Once again, Knotts swoons into an unconscious heap, proving comedy can be for the faint of heart after all.
