Don Knotts Dies

Don Knotts, who won five Emmys for portraying the bungling deputy Barney Fife on the hit television program "The Andy Griffith Show," has died at age 81, a spokesman said on Saturday.

Knotts died on Friday night at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, California, of pulmonary and respiratory complications, said Paul Ward, a spokesman for the TV Land cable network, which airs old television programs including "Andy Griffith."

His former co-star Andy Griffith was at Knotts' bedside when he died, as were Knotts' third wife, Francie, and his children, Thomas and Karen, an actress, Ward said in a statement.

Knotts' bug-eyed, high-strung character helped make "The Andy Griffith Show," a sitcom about a folksy sheriff in small-town America, one of the most popular U.S. television shows of the 1960s.