Betty Lynn remembered her first time playing Thelma Lou with Don Knotts

Knotts would read Lynn his poetry.

Thelma Lou and Barney Fife were a match made in heaven, and it's so much sweeter to watch these two characters love each other onscreen knowing that in real life, the actors were just as close.

In Karen Knott's book Tied Up In Knotts: My Dad and Me, Knotts' daughter was able to get the inside scoop on the beginnings of Thelma Lou from the woman herself, Betty Lynn. Lynn recounted her beginnings on The Andy Griffith Show and said, "I was kind of shocked when I got called in to read the part."

Karen wrote that Lynn and her father became fast friends when they first met, though Lynn had seen Knotts' previous work in other roles. Lynn said, "I had seen his performances in other things. He was very quiet, very smart."

In her earlier moments on the show, Lynn had what's called a "hold" placed on her as an actress, which simply meant that Lynn had to clear her schedule just in case the creators decided to include her character in the episode and offer her a chance to come shoot an episode on set.

Lynn recalled her and Knotts' working together, and said, "I loved doing it!" She said, "I had never studied acting, and your daddy hadn't either. Both of us, here we are, playing side by side, and neither one of us had gone to acting school."

Lynn also remembered moments on set between scenes when Knotts read some of his original work to her. Lynn said, "Sometimes when we were waiting for them to set up a shot, Don would visit with me. He would tell me he was a poet; he had some poems he'd written, and he would read them to me."


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16 Comments

JHP 2 months ago
thel deserved better than Big Barn - heck even Opie would have been better

I truly believe in reincarnation - Barn was a Poodle
PappyC 11 months ago
I watch this show everyday. In hope of simple times life was so much better back then . And since then the world got little worse everyday til well yall see where we're at today..
Runeshaper 11 months ago
Sounds like they had a nice relationship 🙂
MrsPhilHarris 11 months ago
She could have done better than Barney.
PappyC MrsPhilHarris 11 months ago
What was wrong with barney? Did you want her with
A.Otis
B.Floyd
C.Goober
D.Gomer
MrsPhilHarris PappyC 11 months ago
None of the above. A sweet little thing like Thelma Lou should have had a man that treated her like a Queen. Barney did not.
MrSchwamp MrsPhilHarris 11 months ago
Indeed!
She could have had me! (Mr. Schwamp).
MrsPhilHarris MrSchwamp 11 months ago
No one seems to know who you are MrSchwamp. 😉 You are a man of mystery.
JHP PappyC 2 months ago
I'd say Werry Willie
Andybandit 11 months ago
I liked Thelma Lou, better than Helen Crump.
FrankensteinLover 11 months ago
Love reading this, was lucky enough to meet Betty several times in Mount Airy and she was a Bird in this World.
I know Andy said that once but I don’t know what it means. 🤔
Basically like shes a one in a million, nobody else like her. She was the sweetest person you could ever meet.
JHP FrankensteinLover 2 months ago
unless she became child-ish
JHP MrsPhilHarris 2 months ago
nope she said that when Big Barn was chasing the woman (from the couple that had the breach of promise suit and then Big Barn was this whiny little kid that got stuck in the mud and had no one 'cept ANGE (the dope) to fix things). The woman called BARN a "squirt" and she was dead on.

But BARN was the comedic actor riding the wave of the laugh track
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