Fuzzy Knight

American character actor primarily of Western "sidekick" roles. Born John Forest Knight in Fairmont, West Virginia, Knight joined a traveling minstrel show as a musician at age 15. He attended The University of West Virginia as a law student, supporting himself as the drummer in his own band. Finding music more rewarding, he left school and played on the vaudeville and cabaret circuits. He appeared in Earl Carroll's Vanities of 1927 and on Broadway as a musical performer in "Here's Howe" and "Ned Wayburn's Gambols. " He also played drums for the Irving Aaronson and George Olsen big bands.

He appeared in a few short films for MGM and Paramount from 1928 to 1931, performing his "Little Piano" act.

Mae West saw Knight in vaudeville and championed him for her film She Done Him Wrong (1933) and gave him his first substantive film role. His comic style and the soft voice which had given him his nickname stood him in good stead in movies, and he appeared in nearly 200 films over the next thirty years.

His singing was a memorable part of the films The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936) and The Shepherd of the Hills (1941), but it was as a Western sidekick that he gained his greatest fame.

He played the comic pal of Johnny Mack Brown and other cowboy heroes in scores of Westerns, and was listed among the Top Ten Money-Making Western Stars in 1940.

In the 1950s, he gained new audiences with his sidekick role on Buster Crabbe's TV series Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion (1955).