We Bet You Didn’t Know Some of These Things about the Life and Career of Don Knotts

Cracking Jokes, Even on his Deathbed

Karen, Don Knotts’ daughter, said that she could help bursting out in laughter even while Don lay on his deathbed, as he never stopped making them laugh. She said, “Here’s the thing about my dad. He had this funniness that was just completely, insanely natural. When he was dying, he was making us laugh in hysterics.” Karen said later that she sometimes left the room to laugh because it felt inappropriate while he was lying in bed on his last days, especially when he cracked jokes about dying. But she said that she actually really regretted doing so, because now she knows that as a real comedian he would have much preferred to hear his jokes land. At the end of the day, he became a comedian as a method of laughing through the pain of a hard childhood, so it would’ve been quite normal for him to share laughter with his daughter while having to face the tradgedy of his own imminent death.

Rest in Peace

Don Knotts passed away on February 24, 2006, at the age of 81. He had been receiving treatment at Ceders-Sinai Medical Center in Los Ageles, California, for lung cancer, and reportedly was feeling much better and went home. Sadly he had to go back in when he was suffering from pulmonary and respiratory complications to pneumonia related to the lung cancer, and he died at the hospital. In 2011 Don’s family decided to give his tomb a headstone with a brone plaque which features a number of his most popular characters.