That’s the role Knotts has in The Love God? (1969) — a mocking romp of magazines, obscenity law, and the sexual revolution.

Don Knotts As The Love God

In the film, Don Knotts plays the prim & proper publisher of The Peacock (a nature magazine devoted to birds — of the feathered variety) who mistakenly becomes the pigeon to a smut publisher has lost his own mailing rights due to obscenity. Now that he’s unwittingly traded birds for chicks, he becomes the publication’s reluctant & geeky publicity tool. While he enjoys the attention, he quickly is forced to choose between the playboy’s lifestyle & fame and the only “bird” he wants in his hand, his true-blue girl back home. (Awwww!)

The Love God? is a cheeky film, full of retro fashions & fun, but it also seems to capture the contrasts of the 60′s — affectionately mocking both the conservative & the liberal, the hip & square. Forty years later, the irony is that most of these “sides” are still at odds with one another. That, and Hugh Hefner now looks a lot like Don Knotts *wink*