The Love God? Pt. 2

I Come To Praise Don Knotts, Not To Bury Him

Oh, you know Don Knotts, but do your really know Don Knotts?

During WWII he was in a US Army entertainment troupe, performing shows for GIs just behind the front lines.

Friends and co-workers describe him as soft spoken, a contrast to his typically high strung characters.

He was married three times and reportedly thought of himself as a ladies man in real life.

He was a skilled home handyman and frequently appeared in articles on woodworking and home carpentry projects in various DIY magazines.

His reputation in that area led Chevy trucks to pick him as a spokesperson for their vehicles, aiming their pitch at carpenters and handymen.

He already had a well respected reputation as a comedian and a supporting player before The Andy Griffith Show.

But what cements his identity in our minds in Deputy Barney Fyfe.

He could play nervous, high-strung characters to perfection and with some variety,  He could be a self-important martinet in dire need of deflation, or he could be a sympathetic everyman on the verge of being overwhelmed by the world.

What he couldn’t be was a star.

Andy Griffith wanted him for his TV show but told Knotts they only anticipated a five-year run.  When the show was picked up for several seasons beyond that (eventually morphing into Mayberry RFD sans Griffith), Knotts’ agent already signed him up for five movies at Universal.

We had a term we used back in the day at Ruby-Spears:  “Cahmedy”

It meant simulated humor, something that occupied the space of a joke, something that bore a superficial resemblance to a joke, something that characters reacted to as a joke, ut simply wasn’t funny.

A character told to “take a break” who immediately launches into a badly animated break-dancing routine?

Cahmedy.

Knotts’ on-screen persona was a hard sell when it came to leading roles in feature films.  Universal’s best idea for using him was to cast him in roles better suited for Bob Hope in his prime:  The Ghost And Mr. Chicken is a variant on Hope’s The Ghost Breakers, How To Frame A Figg is in the same genre as Hope’s My Favorite Blonde, and The Shakiest Gun In The West was a direct remake of Hope’s Paleface.

While modestly successful, the films display the wide gulf between Knotts’ appeal as a supporting player and Bob Hope as a leading man.  Hope could play cowardly, craven, easily frightened characters, too, but exuded a confidence and charm that Knotts couldn’t.

Knotts’ character could think they were charming and confident, but fooled no one.  Hope’s characters could pull it off even if later exposed.

Knotts’ five Universal films reflect part of the problem the studio faced at that time – and not just Universal but all the other major studios as well.

They had no idea what audiences wanted.

The three Knotts films cited above show what a significant part of Universal thought would work:  Good, wholesome, old fashioned “Americana” entertainment.

I put “Americana” in quotes to distinguish it from the modern acoustic folk / blues / bluegrass / country blend, and from works that genuinely reflect the country.

“Americana” is Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post illustrations, all sugary surface, no solid core.  There’s nothing wrong with that sort of thing, but it’s the cultural equivalent of cotton candy:  Consume it and it melts away.

Ironically, Universal need only look to television to see examples of real Americana. Series like Route 66 or The Fugitive or Then Came Bronson captured the true American experience far better than shows like Andy Griffith’s or Petticoat Junction.

What Universal wanted from Knotts was a series of films that would appeal to middle class, middle American audiences.  Nothing challenging or thought provoking, just good, clean fun.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But by the same token, there’s nothing exceptional about it, either.

Knotts’ two other films worked much better for him even though they faltered at the box office.  The Reluctant Astronaut featured Knotts as an acrophobic janitor launched into orbit to just to score points over the Russians.  Unlike the other three films, it actually touched on real current events and very gently poked fun at the space race.

Chopped down to classic two-reel comedy length, it probably would work quite nicely.  It isn’t bad, it just isn’t very good.

But the fourth film on Knotts’ contract is the one that arrived full bore with perfect timing to hit a contemporary issue square on the head, examining it with a surprisingly complex point of view.

The Love God?

We need to start with Nat Hiken, a nice Milwaukee lad who landed steady if not spectacular work in Hollywood writing short subjects for the studios and skits for radio.

Hiken had an ear for comedy and a heart for humanity.  This was reflected in his political views, particular along the lines of racial equality, and nearly earned him a spot on the infamous anti-communist blacklist.

Fortunately he dodged that bullet and in 1955 finally hit the big time with a show originally called You’ll Never Be Rich but more often called Sergeant Bilko or The Phil Silvers Show.

While the comedy was broad, the characters Hiken created reflected a broad swath of humanity.  He followed this with Car 54, Where Are You? about two bumbling police officers played by Fred Gwynne and Joe E. Ross.  While the show lasted only two seasons compared to Bilko’s four, it enjoyed a long afterlife in syndicated reruns.

Hiken’s last project was The Love God?, arguably his masterpiece, which he wrote and directed.

The original script was apparently a blistering satire on freedom of expression, pornography, and the sexual revolution -- apparently a little too blistering for Universal who requested it be toned down for Don Knotts.

I’d love to see the original script, because the theatrical version is still a pretty biting take-no-prisoners approach to modern (well, late 1960s) mores.

The idea was perfect for Knotts:  As Abner Peacock, publisher of a failing birdwatching magazine called Peacock’s, he’s duped into a partnership by a sleazy pornographer (Edmond O’Brien).  The pornographer sends Abner off on a wild goose chase (well, not actually a goose, but a rare bird) while he turns Peacock’s publication into a cheap porn mag.

When Abner finally makes his way back to civilization, he’s promptly arrested for obscenity but is defended by James Gregory as a Clarence Darrow-like lawyer who defends him on freedom of expression grounds.

Anne Francis is an upscale editor who sees the potential in exploiting Abner’s notoriety by turning the once birdwatching / now skin magazine into a glossy Playboy-like publication centered around Abner as a super-hip leader of the sexual revolution.

Abner, of course, is no such thing, just a simple, repressed small town boy who wants to marry his long time fiancé but can’t because of competing pressures of trying to help his partners turn Peacock’s into a successful lifestyle publication and his future father-in-law, a straightlaced pastor, demanding Abner renounce his hedonistic public image if he wants to marry the pastor’s daughter.

And holy shamolley, it works!

Better than any other film Knotts made, The Love God? clicks along, skewering all positions in the issue.  Abner himself gets corrupted by the lifestyle imposed on him by Francis and others, coming to enjoy the image of a swinging hipster.

When he finally works up the nerve to propose to his long suffering fiancé, her father demands Abner publicly acknowledge he’s a virgin, and the film examines the hypocrisy of our culture which demands brides be pure and virginal but expects men to have some experience before they marry.
Hiken’s script also skewers the legal industry, showing Gregory and the prosecution as good close personal friends who dramatically overstate their respective cases just because they’re paid to do it (Gregory’s character also finds Abner to be a repulsive smut-monger but knows successfully defending a repulsive smut-monger will bolster his career).

Anne Francis’ upscale version of Peacock’s is far more explicit than O’Brien’s cheap & sleazy version, but as the movie points out, money can buy class and respect.

And Hiken’s ending is intriguingly ambiguous.  Francis uses knockout drops to render Abner unconscious and fool him into believing they slept together, Abner responds by insisting they get married which prompts the Mafioso secretly funding the Peacock empire to threaten to kill him (he already threatened to kill him if Abner revealed he was a virgin).

The wedding takes place, but Francis has contacted Abner’s fiancé and father-in-law, explained he’s still pure, and brings her to New York for the ceremony --

-- but Abner never publicly admits he’s a virgin.

Did Francis persuade fiancé and father it make$ more $en$e to let Abner continue as the swinging hipster figurehead of the empire instead of sending everything down the garbage chute?  Hiken wisely doesn’t give us an answer, letting viewers decide for themselves instead.

The movie is inexpensive but tone perfect, using a number of clever ideas to depict Abner’s embrace of his role as America’s #1 sex symbol such as rear projected backgrounds that help depict the transition in more metaphorical terms.  One set doubles for The Peacock Club in several different locations around the country, and those familiar with Universal’s product of the era can spot other sets repurposed from other Universal productions.

So what happened?  Why didn’t The Love God? become a ground breaking hip / hit new comedy?

Several things.  First, Nat Hiken died of a heart attack shortly after principal photography finished but before starting work on the final cut, delaying release of the film by nearly a year.

When one sees the final film, one can tells certain ideas and characters appear underdeveloped or forgotten by the editorial team that came in to finish the movie.

There’s a couple of scenes where mismatched shots indicate either two scenes were compressed together or Universal hastily reshot parts to get their vision of the film across.

The already watered down original script was further diluted by Universal’s cut, but still retained a sharp, biting edge.

Then outside forces came into play. 

First was the Motion Picture Association of America’s brand new rating system.

Originally comprised of G / M / R / X ratings (which make sense, the further into the alphabet one goes, the stronger the film’s content), the bulk of American movies still garnered G ratings for lack of sexual content, M rated films could talk about sex, R rated films could show topless females and rear views of either sex.

Any producer could self-rate a movie X, so that rating quickly became the almost exclusive purview of pornographic pictures, legitimate masterpieces such as ///A Clockwork Orange/// and ///Midnight Cowboy/// not withstanding.

The theatrical cut of The Love God? garnered an M rating.

Middle class / middle American audiences of 1969 might accept a shoot ‘em-up like True Grit with an M rating, but a Don Knotts movie?  No way.

As a result, The Love God? did less business than his three films that proceeded it, playing in fewer theatres and to smaller audiences.

It seemed to taint Knotts’ last film for Universal, How To Frame A Figg, though that film’s convoluted story also worked against it.

© Buzz Dixon