Ted Knight

Ted Knight, Born Tadeusz Wladyslaw Konopka (December 7, 1923 – August 26, 1986)

He was best known for playing the comedic role of Ted Baxter in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Henry Rush in Too Close for Comfort, and Judge Elihu Smails in Caddyshack. Knight spent most of the 1950s and 1960s doing commercial voice-overs and essaying minor television and movie roles. He appeared in such TV shows as The Invaders, Highway Patrol, Peter Gunn, Bourbon Street Beat, The Donna Reed Show, Pete and Gladys, The Eleventh Hour, Bonanza, Combat!, and Get Smart, among others. In the 1970s, his role as the vain and untalented WJM newscaster Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show brought Knight widespread recognition and his greatest success. He received six Emmy Award nominations for the role, winning the Emmy for "Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in Comedy" in 1973 and 1976. After MTM, he had a short-lived series, The Ted Knight Show, which lasted only 6 episodes. Knight's next success came with Too Close for Comfort in 1980, when landed the lead role as the kind, curmudgeonly cartoonist Henry Rush in the series. In 1977, Knight was diagnosed with cancer for which he received various forms of treatment over several years. In 1985, the cancer returned as colon cancer which, despite rigorous treatment, eventually began to spread to his bladder and throughout his lower gastrointestinal tract. Ted Knight died of complications from surgery in 1986 at age 62, and is buried at Forest Lawn-Glendale.