Hear Now Ted Knight

Some years back, a young disc jockey/announcer at a small radio station in New England used to introduce himself thusly on the air: "This is Tadeus Wladyslaw Konopka bringing you five minutes of the latest news." Finally the station manager had to step in.

"Tad," he said, "by the time you tell people your name, there's no time left for the news."

Tad took the problem home to his wife. Dorothy. They sat down to look through the telephone directory and, by morning, Ted Knight was born.

The new moniker did not exactly bring newsrooms around the country to a boil until Knight emerged in the early 1970's as Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. But as fast as you can say, "Hear now the news," Baxter became a watchword for six­o'clock preening and pomposity, causing not a few TV anchormen to wince in embarrassed recognition.

[Knight and Nancy Dussault on Too Close for Comfort: Stories underlined with love and concern.]

[With wife Dorothy: Their fingers did the walking, and a star was born.]

And now, after briefly flopping in 1978's The Ted Knight Show (a series about a New York City escort service; the fiasco lasted one month), Ted is back in benighted gear. This time as Henry Rush, the classic beleaguered father in ABC's new hit sitcom Too Close for Comfort.

"Mainly, I'm just glad to be back in a regular job," says Ted of his latest TV success. "I'm at my happiest when I have something to complain about regularly. And my family doesn't suffer as much, since I'm out of the house most of the time."

In a role popularized well nigh to death a generation ago by Fred MacMurray and Robert Young, Knight plays an illustrator of children's books who moonlights as the manager of his San Francisco apartment building. He is also the father of two delightfully wayward daughters (Deborah Van Valkenburgh and Lydia Cornell); and, for a wonder, his wife (Nancy Dussault) is alive and still married to him. When an apartment on a lower floor is vacated by a transvestite tenant, the girls decide to move in downstairs, and the generation­gap merriment proceeds according to Spock, Freud and Knight's own sturdy sense of decorum.

"I believe in the simplicity of the family unit," says Knight, 57, himself married for 32 years and the father of three (Eric, 17, still living at home; Ted, 26, a C.P.A.; and Elyse, 20, an actress studying at U.S.C.). "We're trying to portray the family cell structure in an accelerated society, and doing it without the usual jiggle so prevalent these days. I think there are too many negative relationships glamorized on television, and we want to try to underline our stories with love and concern."

And perhaps just a touch of Baxter's priggish narcissism? Before the series opened, Knight promised that Rush would be nothing like gaffable Ted. But Sure enough, the first laugh in the series's premier came when Knight stepped into the transvestite's all­mirrored bathroom and suddenly smoothed his patented silver hair.

Knight cheerfully confesses, "At least during the early episodes, I resorted to some Baxteresque stuff, if only to wean myself from Baxter. But I'm also giving Henry Rush some bits of business that are entirely his own [e.g. facing the stark truth that Baxter would never have admitted]: I'm 51. I'm as old as Donald Duck."

[Lou, Mary, Ted on MTM: Turning pompousness into an art.]

Indeed, Ted Knight himself may exist between the points where Ted Baxter and Henry Rush merge. Gavin MacLeod, the long­suffering Murray on MTM, once called Ted "a delightful Polish ham." Said MacLeod, "Look at him when he gets into his car to leave the studio. There's Teddy combing his hair in the mirror before he starts the motor. Who knows how many fans will spot him and wave on the freeway?"

And like Baxter, Knight watches his pocketbook very closely. Good friend Ed Asner once quipped, "I don't know how many dinners we had together, and I remember two things about all of them. He was tons of fun, and I always got the check."

Such a tight fist surely derives from a tough childhood as the son of Polish immigrants in Terryville. Conn., a factory town 20 miles west of Hartford. Young Tad's father was a bartender and the now affluent Knight recalls sleeping three brothers to a bed during the Depression-and speaking no English until he started grade school. "I remember no money, and not even owning a bike," he says. "But I prefer to remember the family gatherings and the stuffed cabbage and duck's­blood soup and the weddings, which were like a Polish Playhouse 90, full of drama and excitement and music and relatives and the smell of food cooking."

After serving in World War II, Ted enrolled in a Connecticut drama school, going on to find work all around New England as a newscaster, talk­show host and even puppeteer. Then over the next 20 years he made appearances in a variety of films, stage shows and radio and TV series, everything from Lux Video Theatre to Gunsmoke.

Still, Knight was basically just another silver mane until the The Mary Tyler Moore Show came along. Within the first few episodes, it became obvious that Ted's puffed chest and swollen head were one of the show's main drawing cards and, over the course of the show's seven­year run, MTM's producers and writers played Knight for all he was worth. His popularity even caused Mary to lightly crack, on location one day, "Never try to top children, dog acts or Ted."

The remark was meant in good fun, but it hit right at the heart of Ted's role-a combination of spoiled child and barking seal. Knight showed a keen eye for satire and even self­parody, as in the episode when Ted Baxter got into hot water for telling the Polish jokes Ted Knight has been listening to all his life. As Ted once reflected: "...They're the same jokes that have been told for years about other nationalities. and some of them are pretty funny. I'm tired of them now, but I'm not offended.

"What the jokes don't tell you about, though. is the real substance of the Polish character," he continues. "We're a very proud, stubborn and sentimental people. We also hold a tight reign on our emotions, which may be why there aren't too many Polish actors. Even now, a part of me is still guarded and inhibited. The walls are still up, and I can't give total release to my feelings. So, I pick the easy way out-I hide behind a funny character."