Actors have been known to suffer from many varieties of identity problems, and for the last few years Ted Knight has been a victim of one of the most distressing. Producers, by and large, doubted that he existed.

For example, Arne Sultan, a Hollywood veteran and one of the executive producers of Knight's new ABC series, Too Close for Comfort, admits, "For a long time I didn't really believe there was a Ted Knight. I thought Ted Baxter had swallowed him whole." It was a thought shared from the Universal Tower to the benches at the Hollywood unemployment office.

Knight himself has been known to wonder how any quiet, gentle, middle­aged man (which is how he sees himself) would feel if most strangers he met insisted on mistaking him for a loudmouth buffoon, the sort likely to spill drinks at a wedding reception or mistake the bride's father for a waiter. To put it more precisely, it gets to be a pain to be constantly mistaken for Ted Baxter, the strutting bubblehead, when in reality you are a serious actor capable of a wide range of good work, and also an intelligent, articulate citizen and a world class worrier about Really Important Things. Knight will be the first to admit that the Baxter character, which he fashioned with such loving care, was almost too successful. "No one seems to remember anything I did before The Mary Tyler Moore Show and a lot of people didn't seem to think I could do anything else." A situation that made the last few years more than a little painful.

For starters, according to Knight, the Moore show in its final years wasn't quite as lovey dovey as many supposed. The principals liked each other personally, and still do, but there was intense jockeying for position. "Everyone wanted more to do on the show. but there were only 22 minutes to divide among us. Gavin [MacLeod] fought especially hard for more. We had a sibling rivalry for Mary's attention. She was like a mother hen. You get caught up in this web of involvement, unreality seeps in, you begin to see the ogres galloping toward you." When the show ended in 1977 ("We had simply run out of stories"), each of the principals could hardly wait to strike out on his own, in his own show. As luck would have it-bad luck-Knight quickly got his chance in what he calls the "late, lamented failure, The Ted Knight Show," which was ignominiously allowed to expire after six episodes. "I was glad. It was too soon after Mary. I felt uncomfortable with it from the beginning. The premise of an escort service smacked of an offensive life style." But the fact remained he had bombed spectacularly and the suspicion was reinforced that Knight, minus the Baxter bluster, wasn't a very funny guy.

Knight spent the next years on the sidelines while the other Moore principals went on to resounding personal successes. MacLeod fulfilled the fantasies of every humble news writer by becoming captain of a Love Boat that seems destined to cruise forever, and Ed Asner's Lou Grant has both ratings end baskets of Emmy nominations. Mary herself, after a few stumbles, went on to a critical success on Broadway ("I think Mary's heart has always been on Broadway," says Knight) and in the movies.

Knight found the days without work calls frustrating. "I don't like being on talk or game shows and I wasn't interested in guest shots." There were moments of near paranoia. "Sometimes when I got a little lonely or depressed I would go down to the supermarket in hopes of being recognized. I would squeeze a few melons and look around surreptitiously. Raise my voice if I had to: [in full Baxter cry] 'Are these fresh?' "Of course I could have retired anytime. Dorothy [his wife of 32 years] is a business major and my business manager and we've made some good investments. But retiring would drive me crazy."

One day there was a phone call from Jack Webb, whom he hadn't met. It turned out the producer had comedy in mind. There were meetings and the two found they shared a long list of opinions on what's rotten with the world, but somehow the comedy refused to take shape. Meantime, ABC had decided it was time to go to the British for still another series idea-in the All in the Family, Three's Company and Sanford and Son tradition. Too Close for Comfort is based on a current British comedy, Keep It in the Family, the story of a bright, somewhat pixieish cartoonist who works at home; his loving, link­to­sanity wife; and their two delicious daughters, 18 and 21, who decide to live downstairs in the duplex the couple owns. Nancy Dussault is the wife, Lydia Cornell and Deborah Van Valkenburgh the daughters, and the show has the good luck to be on Tuesday nights, followingThree's Company.

"We were thinking of Ted," Sultan recalls, "but there was that problem- is there really a Ted Knight? A lot of people said there wasn't. I called Ed Weinberger [one of the producers of The Mary Tyler Moore Show] and he said, yes, there really is a Ted Knight. At almost the same time I happened to be watching an old movie one afternoon and there was Ted Knight doing a serious role and he was splendid. That was all I needed to know." Henry Rush, the cartoonist Knight plays, is a slightly more complex character than the bombastic anchorman, but Sultan notes, "There are little moments when Ted Baxter seeps through. His voice sinks down ... there's a momentary expression." Knight admits, "Ted Baxter is an extension of Ted Knight. I'll never completely divorce myself from that guy. But Baxter was limited, he only reacted, he couldn't resolve a critical situation. In Too Close, I retain little things I developed as Baxter but in more subtle ways."

Actually, if producers were to tailor a TV character to the real Ted Knight, they would probably come up with a bit of a curmudgeon who walks warily through life expecting to encounter menaces around every corner--menaces who flaunt such dastardly vices as smoking, telling Polish jokes, bombarding him with endless questions about Mary Tyler Moore ("I don't see Mary more than once a year") or forgetting to say please or thank you. Ed Asner, who has been a Knight watcher for more than 10 years, savors the opportunity to sum up his friend and occasional shouting­match opponent. "Ted is," he begins, letting the words drop slowly, "refreshing, capricious, amazingly honest and an occasional pain in the behind. He is one of the biggest talents-bright, witty and he can charm the pants off you. We had violent arguments and he can be an s.o.b., but he was always awfully easy to forgive. He taught me so much about humor and I still find myself imitating him. 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."

MacLeod first encountered Knight in 1957. "He was playing the Mencken character in Inherit the Wind and I've never seen it done as well before or since. It turned out we had the same agent and we've been close ever since. I'll never forget the day he read for Mary's show. He got a script, studied it, went out and bought a blazer and came back as Ted Baxter."

"He created the character," in Asner's opinion. "They weren't sure what they wanted, a romantic lead who could get involved with Mary, a simple clown, a straight man. Ted settled all that. What he devised was a slick, white­haired, noble­profiled, handsomely dressed Uriah Heep." In Knight's opinion the Baxter character owes a lot to William Powell, "the best light comedian who ever lived. I studied every move he made, every inflection. I combined him with a few more vulnerable types, the kind that weren't above groveling."

(Knight admits he also studied some of the flamboyant personalities that abound on Los Angeles TV. One night at a banquet, veteran commentator George Putnam, a colorful figure on the TV news scene for more than 20 years, shouted at Knight, "Hey, Ted, why don't you get your own act?") Mention of Powell sets Knight off on a great wave of recollection of the days when movies had real actors, life was more calm and pure, and small home towns like his own Terryville, Conn., offered great gobs of the good life. He can, and will, if the company is congenial, do a series of exquisite imitations of the great Barrff and Harrumph character actors of the early movies the Thurston Halls, Eugene Pallettes and Edgar Kennedys who mean so much more to him than current actors. "Which of today's young stars can you imitate? None. They have flashing teeth and bright eyes, and they get out the lines and that's all."

For a successful actor with a new series and so much ahead, isn't he dwelling a lot in the past? "Yes. That's because I prefer what I remember to what is going on today. I don't like what I see today, the irresponsibility, the lack of moral values, permissiveness, lack of respect for the elderly, irresponsibility toward society. It depresses me." His family includes Dorothy ("She can make me see the folly of my paranoia"); son Ted Jr. ("He's 26, a CPA and owns his own home. Can you imagine?"); daughter Elyse, 20, a drama student at UCLA; and son Eric, 17.

Knight says he's 47, "and I have been for seven years-it's a good age." He feels secure with the new show and believes he is finally coming out of the shadow of Ted Baxter. Anyway, "I'm healthy, I've got a wonderful wife, happy kids, money in the bank. I'm one of the luckiest guys in the world." But a bit later, "There are ogres and black beasts out there; you have to be constantly on guard." Especially against creating characters so strong that they may try to swallow you alive.