Ted Knight

Ted Knight, born Tadeusz Wladyslaw Konopka on December 7, 1923, in the Terryville section of Plymouth, Litchfield County, Connecticut, was an American actor whose Broadway credits include Some of My Best Friends in 1977. The son of Polish-American parents Sophia, née Kavaleski, and Charles Walter Konopka, a bartender, Knight left high school to enlist in the United States Army during World War II. He served with Company A, 296th Combat Engineer Battalion, in the European Theater of Operations, earning five campaign stars.

Following the war, Knight pursued acting studies in Hartford, Connecticut, and developed skills in puppetry and ventriloquism that led to work as a children's television show host at WJAR-TV in Providence, Rhode Island, from 1950 to 1955. He then relocated to Albany, New York, where he joined WROW-TV, hosting The Early Show and a children's variety program in which he portrayed a Gabby Hayes-type character called Windy Knight. He also worked as a radio announcer for sister station WROW radio and briefly for WFNS in Burlington, North Carolina, before departing the station in 1957 after being denied a raise. Station manager Thomas Murphy, who would later serve as chairman of Capital Cities, advised Knight to take his talents to Hollywood. Through the late 1950s and 1960s, Knight built his résumé through commercial voiceovers and minor television and film roles, including a part in the western series The Lawman in 1959 and a small role as a police officer in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in 1960. He also played Phil Buckley on the ABC soap opera The Young Marrieds in the early 1960s.

Knight's most celebrated work came through his portrayal of the vain and untalented WJM newscaster Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The role earned him six Emmy Award nominations, and he won the Emmy for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in Comedy in both 1973 and 1976. In 1975, he recorded an album of mostly novelty songs titled Hi Guys on the Ranwood label. A guest appearance in the October 26, 1977, episode of the sitcom Busting Loose, in which he played escort service owner Roger Dennis, led directly to The Ted Knight Show, his first starring vehicle, which ran for six episodes in the spring of 1978. That same year, 1977, marked his Broadway appearance in Some of My Best Friends. Knight also appeared in multiple episodes of The Love Boat, including one in which he played a rival cruise captain. His final film role came in the 1980 golf comedy Caddyshack, where he played Judge Elihu Smails opposite Rodney Dangerfield. Also in 1980, he was cast as curmudgeonly cartoonist Henry Rush in the television series Too Close for Comfort.

Knight married Dorothy Smith in 1948, and the couple had three children: Ted Jr., Elyse, and Eric. In January 1985, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to television, located at 6673 Hollywood Boulevard. Knight was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1977, shortly after the conclusion of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The cancer returned in 1985 and spread to his bladder and gastrointestinal tract. Complications from surgery prevented him from returning to Too Close for Comfort, and he died on August 26, 1986, at the age of 62. He was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, where his grave marker bears the name Theodore C. Konopka and the inscription Bye Guy, a reference to his Ted Baxter catchphrase. His hometown of Terryville, Connecticut, honored him with a dedicated bridge on Canal Street over the Pequabuck River, marked with a bronze plaque bearing his likeness.