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Ralph Furley
Ralph Furley
Don Knotts, who is well known to TV audiences as Barney Fife from the 1960's CBS-TV series Andy Griffith Show arrived on the scene as new landlord Ralph Furley in Season 4 of Three's Company.
Personal Information
Gender: Male
Born: 1924
Died 2006
Occupation/
Career:
Goofily dressed but good natured Landlord/Apartment Manager of Hacienda Palms Apartmets
Related to: Bart Furley (Brother)
Veronica Furley (Niece)
Marc Furley (Nephew)
Character information
Appeared on: Three's Company
First/Last appearances:
"The New Landlord" in Season 4 (season opener)
"Friends and Lovers: Part 2" in Season 8 (series finale)
Episodes appeared in: 112 episodes in 5 seasons in total
Character played by: Don Knotts
Three's Company Script

Ralph Furley is the name of a fictional character from the sitcom Three's Company, played by the late Don Knotts.

Description[]

Ralph Furley is the landlord of a Santa Monica apartment building that is now owned by his brother, Bart, who acquired it from Stanley Roper. It is the home to Jack Tripper, Larry Dallas, Janet Wood and Chrissy Snow (later to Cindy Snow and Terri Alden). Furley fancies himself a "ladies' man" and a "macho man", despite the fact he has not had many dates over the years.

Furley is very subservient and seems to fear his rather mean-spirited, hard-hearted brother Bart, who grudgingly gave him his first job as a landlord, hiring him at the apartment complex in Season 4 when he bought it from the Ropers, and after also having worked for him as a landlord for years previously in some of Bart's many other rental properties.

Like Stanley Roper before him, Furley is also tricked into believing that Jack is gay in order for him to continue living with Janet and Chrissy. Also, like Roper, Furley liked to occasionally crack gay jokes about Jack at his expense. After a few years of knowing Jack and the roommates, and after a confession of Jack about his heterosexuality in a later episode where Jack and Ralph are stuck in a freezer together, Ralph seems to tacitly overlook his liking of girls, having become close friends with him and the other roommates; he even lent Jack the money he needed to finance the opening of Jack's Bistro in the Season 6 episode titled "Jack Gets His", although he almost fainted when the amount of the check he had Mr. Angelino sign and fill out came to $800! 

He often wears outlandish leisure suits in very loud colors with ascots. Usually his shirts are very brightly colored. For his role as Mr. Furley, beginning with midway through the fourth season, Knotts's first with the show, Mr. Furley began donning a toupee.

Although Furley's back-stabbing, hard-hearted brother, Bart Furley, who was played by veteran character actor Hamilton Camp, is frequently mentioned by him, he is only seen in one episode titled "Furley vs. Furley" in season 5, where Bart fires Ralph and attempts to hire Jack, who was trying to lobby to get Bart to rehire his brother, as the manager (Bart hires him back with the roommates help, only after Ralph finally threatens to report him about several building code violations, naturally). Furley defends his decisions as landlord by stating his diminuitive, yet still cruelly intimidating brother, Bart, would (or would not) also approve of the decision, as owner. Many of the characteristics and mannerisms of Ralph Furley are comparable to Knott's other well-known character, Barney Fife.

Three's Company
Characters

Jack Tripper | Janet Wood | Chrissy Snow | Cindy Snow | Terri Alden | Stanley Roper | Helen Roper | Ralph Furley | Larry Dallas | Lana Shields

Actors
John Ritter | Joyce DeWitt | Suzanne Somers | Jenilee Harrison | Priscilla Barnes | Norman Fell | Don Knotts | Richard Kline | Ann Wedgeworth
See also:
List of episodes | Behind the Camera
British TV/Spinoff shows:
Man About the House | George and Mildred | Robin's Nest | The Ropers | Three's a Crowd
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