Ted Knight

 The rowdy, improvisational atmosphere during the shoot of "Caddyshack" (1980), created by Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase and Rodney Dangerfield, didn't sit well with all the members of the cast. Ted Knight, widely regarded as a very nice man, got fed up with the constant shenanigans.

Michael O’Keefe says in Chris Nashawaty’s book “Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story,” that “cocaine was everywhere” on the set. He described his 11 weeks there as “a permanent party.” Instead of responsible producers making sure everyone played by the rules, producer Doug Kenney led the charge of much of the cast and crew’s rampant drug use. “The eagle has landed; the eagle has landed! Get your per diems in cash, the dealer’s here,” he would yell, running through their motel hallways. Chase described that cocaine would just “materialize” on set, much to the annoyance of Knight, who always got to bed early, showed up for call time early, and didn’t appreciate the looser, more improvisational approach to filming.

By the time "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" ended, in 1977, Knight was a six-time Emmy nominee for playing the cluelessly pompous, word-mangling anchorman Ted Baxter—but he was also so desperate to break out of his gilded cage of dopiness and land a starring role in a feature film that he probably would have paid Orion to play "Caddyshack"’s often-apoplectic presiding club majordomo, Judge Elihu Smails. What no one knew was that Knight had been diagnosed with cancer. He was convinced that working on a movie set would be the best medicine. It’s been rumored that Jason Robards was also considered for the part, but casting director Wallis Nicita swats that notion away: “That would have been so tonally odd.”

Happy Birthday, Ted Knight!