If SwitchtoSchwepps and PeterPiperPickedaPeckofPickledPeppers is mere child's play on your doublejointed tongue, this one may tie it into a bow: CommanderKidFantasticVoyageSuperboy'sBadGuysAcquaman's EvildoersandBeastsofJourneytotheCenterofthe-EarthareTadeus WladyslawKonopka.
"I don't go crazy over Polish jokes," said Tadeus W. Konopka, "but I really can't stand it when my name is misspelled. After all, it isn't THAT bad." But when TWK decided to become an actor, he thought it wise to change his name. Now he's Ted Knight, bumbling newscaster of the Mary Tyler Moore Show on television and many of those familiar voices you hear on the radio and tube in cartoons and commercials.
"It kills me. They even misspell my new name," he sighed.
There's a special dart board in Knight's California home in Woodland Hills. It has a photo of him with a big smile with hair parted in the middle. One side is his natural white and the other dyed jet black. That photo was part of a television commercial and was plastered over magazines and newspapers for months for a men's hair dye campaign.
"They auditioned a million actors for that commercial but I got it. 'You know why? I was the only guy who could read the cue cards with one eye covered.
"Making the commercial wasn't so bad. What drove me nuts was the two weeks it took to get the dye off half my head. They had this sweet group of male hairdressers constantly hovering over me, playing with my hair, purring and even patting my cheek once in a while. It really scared me because after about nine days I started to get used to it," he laughed.
"Before I took the part on the Mary Tyler Moore Show," remembers Knight, a native of Terryville, Conn., "I made a good living as a voice expert and mimic on hundreds of radio and television commercials, along with playing voice parts for a lot of cartoons. The cartoons were lots of fun." (For those who wonder which comes first, the chicken or the egg, first the voice is recorded for cartoons, then the animation is done.)
Knight remembers his days in Terryville as happy times, with a big Polish family, delicious food and lots of friends, some of whom he still sees.
"Everybody made a big deal out of birthdays in a Polish home, but the Japanese chimed in to make mine extra special. Right after high school, they celebrated my birthday by bombing Pearl Harbor. "
Knight promptly reciprocated by joining the army. He served with the First Army Group's combat engineers as a radio reconnaissance operator and was with the first American troops to enter Berlin. He returned to Terryville with five Bronze Stars.
It isn't easy to come home to an industriallyoriented town and tell your family you don't want to punch a clock like your six brothers and sisters. But Knight's family said dowhatyouwanttodoandbehappy, so he obliged.
"Do you know the Randall School of Dramatic Arts?"l he asks. "It was in Hartford. That's where I went to school."
Instead of punching a clock in a Terryville factory, Knight discovered he had to punch a clock somewhere or starve to death. Waiting for the big break, he was a disc jockey, singer, master of ceremonies, even a ventriloquist, puppeteer and pantomist, working in North Carolina, Rhode Island and New York.
By this time. he was married to Dorothy Clark of Niantic and the father of one son, Ted. Things weren't moving fast enough and the big break didn't happen, so the family decided to move to the West Coast, where the action was. That was 1957.
Things didn't go haywire when money started rolling in. The Knights stayed married. They had two more children. "We've been married 23 years and that's almost a record in this town. I'm not sure whether we are fortunate or that there might be something wrong with us," he says uneasily.
The Knight kids, Ted 17, Elyse 12, and Eric 9, enjoy the luxuries of living in California. but they don't overdo it because the family tries to lead a normal life minus the glitter of Hollywood. "Oh, they have a pool and stuff like that," admits Knight. One thing bothers him, though. "My son has a better car than I do." (That makes the family pretty average.)
Knight hasn't forgotten his early days in Terryville. He doesn't get back to his home town very often, but some of his family now lives in California. His 82yearold mother stays with his sister in Burbank.
"I was pretty lucky. We didn't starve. Things started to pick up for me, and I began getting parts in television and radio shows," he says with a grin.
Since those early days in Hollywood, Knight has played more than 300 roles and hundreds of radio and television commercials. He has kept his stage presence sharp by working The Players Ring, Omnibus Theater and the Pasadena Playhouse, Los Angeles. He has kept in shape physically by knocking himself out in all kinds of sports.
Knight enjoys being old butterlips Ted Baxter on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. It's obvious everybody likes everybody else on the CBS set, Los Angeles, because they work so well together.
"We get along like a family. I'm not just saying that," he said. "You know, I took a cut in income when I took this part because I had to drop all the cartoon and commercial work to concentrate on this. I've never been sorry. Every show we do together is a pleasure.
"The hardest feeling to overcome is uneasiness. As an actor, I am always geared to finishing one thing and having to use initiative to get the next part. It's an insecure feeling that's hard to shake. I don't have to worry, but do anyway out of habit."
Ted Knight plays the uptight, vain newscaster on the show to perfection, but he's not like that at all. Easy going, smiling and relaxed, he's always ready for a joke. Just don't misspell his name. Tadeus Wladyslaw Knopka . . . or is it Tadeus Wladyslav Kinoka . . . No. It's Tadeus Wladyslaw Konopka. Or Ted Nite.
[The Hartford Courant, Sunday, October 1, 1972]