Ted Knight Comes Home

Tadeus Wladyslaw Konopka will come back to the Terryville section of Plymouth today to judge some floats, act as grand marshal for the parade in his honor and greet relatives and old friends.

Outside of Terryville, of course, few would recognize him as Tad Konopka-but a lot of folks would instantly recognize Ted Knight, who plays bumbling news broadcaster Ted Baxter on the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Knight has been with the show six years and is just beginning his seventh and last year with the program. Despite its Emmy­garnering success, the show will go off the air in the 1977­78 season because of financial problems.

"The first episode this year will be about Georgette-she's pregnant you know-having her baby in Mary's living room assisted by Lou Grant while Ted Baxter is collapsed on the couch," said Knight in an interview Friday. "I don't know how they're going to wind the series up, though."

Knight doesn't mind being "type cast" in the egotistical, ineffectual Baxter mold.

"It doesn't bother me," he said "It's been pure gold."

"It's funny," he said. "For some reason you need four years of a successful show before the cast achieves 'star' status. One or two years won't do it."

His image as the all­American boob makes people laugh, he said, and that's the idea of the whole thing.

When he first saw a script for the Mary Tyler Moore Show, he said, he decided he must have the job.

He wasn't hard up for work and had turned down other pilots, but this one took his fancy.

"I was a good, working­slug actor before this came along," he said. "I was quite successful and did a lot of voice work and cartoons."

He also played "a great Nazi," he said, and had been cast as the heavy in several war shows and films.

"When you go in for war show casting, they ask you: 'Can you speak any German?'" he said. "And I would give them this." He rattled off a long string of Germanic jabber, full of umlauts (vowel changes) and expletives.

"They were always very impressed," he said. "Know what it means? It means: 'I am very tired, I have a headache and I want to go home and go to bed' in German."

Despite his success free­lancing, however, he decided he wanted the job as newscaster for the Moore show. It felt right. So he asked to take a pilot script home for the weekend to study.

His years as a radio station announcer and television newsman stood him in good stead. He remembered the style of a pompous broadcaster he had seen once and copied it. It went over well.

"They (the show's producers) really didn't know what they wanted at that time," he said. "They weren't sure if they wanted a sharp, authoritarian sort of guy who made the staff jump or what. Everybody and his brother read for that part."

But Knight's interpretation struck home. He had created the character that was to make him a star.

After the show goes off the air, then what?

He's not sure. He's working on a special for one of the networks and he's performing on the state fair circuit this summer.

But he's not worried about getting work.

"Once you become a celebrity you've got it made in this business," he said. "It's all sort of a personality thing, anyway."