Man, don't you sometimes just want to escape the upset, violence, political BS, and the stress that seems to be a part of our everyday lives, not to mention, of course, the theme of most every TV and movie we watch?

A lot of us do like to go back and binge some of the shows our parents and grandparents watched where everything seems so calm and

happy. But surprisingly, some of the biggest stars of the good old days had stress in their

lives as well. I'm Patty Steele, the painful life of Barney Fife. Next on the Backstory.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

The backstory is back. I don't know about you, but sometimes I just get tired of the end-of-the-world dystopian, violent nature of the stuff we stream on TV, right?

I just want to laugh at the goofiness

and smile at the sweetness of life on TV of the mid-20th century. One of the biggest shows

was the Andy Griffith Show, still huge in syndication. In its eight years on TV, show is never

lower than number seven in the yearly ratings,

and it was number one for its last season.

The only other shows to call it quits while they were number one, I Love Lucy and Seinfeld.

Now, one of the reasons the show was such a huge hit was the relationship between its biggest stars,

Andy Griffith, who played Sheriff Andy Taylor,

and his deputy, Barney Fife, played by Don Knott's. The support and kindness between the two was actually a reflection of their decades-long friendship. Griffith understood that he needed to be

the straight man to Knott's goofball, and they

supported each other in that dynamic. But based on Knott's past, it couldn't have been easy.

Don Knott's was born in 1924 in the small Appalachian town of Morgantown, West Virginia. It was a typical

American small town, but inside the Knott's household, it was

anything but. His dad, William Knott's, was a struggling farmer who suffered from severe

mental illness and alcoholism. It was miserable, and as Don grew up, his dad became even more

unstable. He was often violent and sometimes completely detached from reality.

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