Ted Knight

Ted Knight (December 7, 1923 – August 26, 1986) was an American actor and voice artist well known for playing the comedic roles of Ted Baxter in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Henry Rush in Too Close for Comfort, and Judge Elihu Smails in Caddyshack. 2Early years Knight was born Tadeusz Wladyslaw Konopka in the Terryville section of Plymouth in Litchfield County, Connecticut, to Polish-American parents, Sophia (Kavaleski) and Charles Walter Konopka, a bartender. Knight dropped out of high school to enlist in the United States Army in World War II. He was a member of A Company, 296th Combat Engineer Battalion, earning five battle stars while serving in the European Theatre. 2Career 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-TV 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 Murphy that he should take his talents to Hollywood. Knight spent most of the 1950s and 1960s doing commercial voice-overs and playing minor television and movie roles. He had a small part playing a police officer seen guarding the room where Norman Bates, now in custody, sat wrapped in a blanket at the end of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960