Ted Knight - Career

Career

During the postwar years, Knight studied acting in Hartford, Connecticut. He became proficient with puppets and ventriloquism, which led to steady work as a television kiddie-show host at WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island from 1950 to 1955. In 1955, he left Providence for Albany, New York, where he landed a job at station WROW-TV (now WTEN), hosting The Early Show featuring MGM movies and a kids’ variety show, playing a "Gabby Hayes" type character named "Windy Knight". He was also a radio announcer for sister station WROW radio. He left the station in 1957 after receiving advice from station manager (and future Capital Cities Chairman) Thomas S. Murphy that he should take his talents to Hollywood.

Knight spent most of the 1950s and 1960s doing commercial voice-overs and essaying minor television and movie roles. He was the cop guarding Norman Bates at the end of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). He also guest starred on the TV show Sea Hunt during the 1961 season in the episode titled "The Defector". In the 1962-1963 season, he appeared as "Haskell" in the short-lived drama and situation comedy The New Loretta Young Show on CBS. He played Phil Sterling on the ABC soap opera the Young Marrieds in the early 1960s. He appeared frequently in television shows such as Highway Patrol, How to Marry a Millionaire, Peter Gunn, The Eleventh Hour, Bonanza, The Man and the Challenge, Combat!, McHale's Navy (including one episode as boy Admiral "Go Go" Granger), Get Smart, The Twilight Zone, Gunsmoke (as Mr. Rabb, esq.) and The Wild Wild West. His final movie role was in the golf comedy Caddyshack, where he played a judge fed up with the shenanigans of a guest at the golf club, played by Rodney Dangerfield.

Knight's distinctive speaking voice brought him work as an announcer, notably as narrator of most of Filmation studio's superhero cartoons as well as voice of incidental characters. He was narrator of the first season of the Super Friends, while other animated television series featuring his work included the voices of the opening narrator and team leader Commander Jonathan Kidd in Fantastic Voyage.