Love in the Rough

Only three years before "Love in the Rough", MGM made "Spring Fever" with William Haines. Why would they remake a film so quickly? Well, Hollywood OFTEN did remakes only a few years later...but most importantly they did it in this case since the original was a silent and this Robert Montgomery version had sound. In fact, because it was a sound picture, a few songs were added as well to take advantage of the new technology.

When the story starts, Mr. Waters is being a very grouchy boss and starts firing employees for the littlest things. Soon you learn why....he's angry because his golf game stinks. However, when he learns that the employee he just fired, Jack (Robert Montgomery), is an excellent golfer, he re-hires him and begs him to help him improve his game.

Jack and his friend, Benny (Benny Rubin), arrive at the club to play some golf. And, instead of focusing just on his golf game, he's entranced by a lovely lady who is also there. Now, instead of putting all his attention on golf, he's obsessed with Marilyn (Dorothy Jordan).

In many ways, the original film, "Spring Fever" is a better film. Sure, it's a silent but it as also an exceptional silent...one of Haines' best movies. This remake, however, suffers for many reasons. First, the songs don't help the film and the people singing really were NOT singers but were being forced to be. As my daughter said..."they kinda sucked"! Second, and the biggest problem, is that the father-son relationship of the first movie was completely removed from "Love in the Rough". It's a shame, as it was the best aspect of the first film and really gave the film depth...and depth is NOT something you'd notice in "Love in the Rough". To make it worse, Benny Rubin was strictly added as comic relief...again, something they didn't have nor needed in the original. Overall, it's very slight and lightweight....not bad but also not all that good nor memorable.

Love in the Rough initially resembles the legendary disastrous early talkies which almost brought down the heavily indebted film industry in the early '30s. Based on a Broadway flop play with music seemingly added on by hiring top song writing team of Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh, it had all of the elements that the movie moghuls though would add up to boffo box office but, because of the depression's arrival following the Oct. 29 stock market crash, people didn't have a taste for stories about people in evening dress or college hi jinks. The failure at the box office was always blamed on the static camera imposed by the crude and clunky sound equipment but this film exposes that canard.

The outdoor shots, seemingly with direct sound, are airy revelations. The camera work is fluid with out calling attention to itself with flashy moves. The musical numbers are imaginative, but, considering the work of Busby Berkeley to come, these are merely a stone age precursor. Maybe they didn't know enough at the time to shoot strictly in the studio with back projection process shots and post dubbed music but this is enjoyable for nothing else than its atypical uniqueness. The static scenes are embarrassing, as in did anybody find the opening scene with broken porcelain funny at any time? Likewise the racial 'humor', Jewish, Italian and African-American, is highly cringe worthy. The plot is nearly non existent, a reminder of the pre-Showboat musical which was virtually a series of scenes, songs and routines from a Vaudeville review.

This is an early performance by Robert Montgomery (his sixth of seven releases in 1930) in which he apparently sings, if, as I suspect, the music was recorded direct. Dorothy Jordan looks pretty, at least for the standards of the time but doesn't project much personality, unlike her support one Dorothy McNulty who pops from the screen. Jordan was a star in late silent and early sound times but retired to become Mrs. Merian C. Cooper.

After returning to vaudeville and radio, McNulty returned to films and modest fame as Penny Singleton of the Blondie series. An interesting trivia item is the fact that both Montgomery (Screen Actors Guild) and Singleton (American Guild of Variety Artists) were union presidents.

Montgomery's support was Benny Rubin, a dialect comic and a huge star in vaudeville. It was Benny Rubin who people like Jack Benny and Bob Hope aspired to become, and, years later, when they became big stars, they would always throw Benny a featured bit on radio and TV. Most of his comedy here is from hunger except for a laugh out loud two spot where Benny is acting as Mongomery's caddie and he meets Allan Lane's (as Harry Johnson) caddie going by the name 'C. Wesley Rappaport' and they conduct a hilarious dialogue in Yiddish. Even if it could be translated the subtitles wouldn't be able to keep up, and, with the timing lost, the humor would be lost. 'Rappaport' is not credited but as he appears later leading a harmonica quartet perhaps it could be Borrah (Boris) Minevitch, Russian born leader of the Harmonica Rascals. The tune introduced by the Harmonica quartet provides an excellent opportunity for an eccentric duet dance with Rubin and Singleton, one of the more delightful examples of what was lost with the demise of vaudeville.

Again this is not anywhere near what might be considered a 'good' film but specialists will find it more than just a historical curiosity. The plot is a swiss cheese. Montgomery is a golf champion working as a shipping clerk in Walter's Department Store and is enlisted by the golf mad proprietor to help him in the country club championship. This gets Montgomery to the country club and meets the millionaires daughter whereby the "mentoring the boss" is just dropped. The rest is just poor boy/rich girl bla bla bla.

At least LOVE IN THE ROUGH attacks the groundless convention that it was the staticness of the early sound films which nearly drove the Hollywood studios to the wall in the early 30s.

"Love in the Rough" is a cute little comedy-musical with a golf club setting, starring a callow Robert Montgomery (who sings and dances!). The first hour is quite winning, though the plot bogs down a bit in the latter reels. There is a nice visual fade at the very end, so keep watching. The film has a surprising immediacy since it was filmed open-air on a real golf course rather than being studio-bound. And it provides a nice portrait of innocent courtship (just holding hands is considered pretty erotic).

The film is really a showcase for the comic talents of Benny Rubin, who is hoodwinked into being Montgomery's caddy. A lot of movie history books state that Rubin could not find work in the movies after the early 30s because he looked "too Jewish". Probably what they really mean is that his stereotypical Yiddish character (God-given looks included) was offensive. Of course, Chico Marx, Henry Armetta, Mantan Moreland, etc., got away with coarse ethnic stereotypes for years, so maybe he was really offensive to the moguls. Anyway, he has plenty of entertaining shtick to display in this picture, the highlight being a hilarious Yiddish palaver with another Jewish caddy. He's also menaced by a crude Italian greenskeeper. The politically incorrect portrayals are trumped by Roscoe Ates's incredible take on stuttering. In this movie, he takes his "art" to the extreme (he even gets Young's character to catch the bug). The dancing – much of it comedic – is fine, especially an interlude by one Earl "Snake Hips" Tucker.

One thing that really gets my goat is the writers' obvious ignorance of golf. They think that yelling "fore" means to be quiet, and that if an opponent's golf ball is blocking your putt, you have to putt around it! The latter leads to the climax, where the hero cleverly finds a way to overcome the obstacle.

Jack Kelly (Robert Montgomery) and his buddy Benny Leibowitz get in trouble with their boss, Mr. Waters. They get fired until Waters reveals that he desperately needs help with his golf game. Jack volunteers to help. Jack and Benny arrive at the country club. Jack is completely taken with wealthy wheat heiress Marilyn Crawford.

With the switch to talkies, there is a flood of musicals for the obvious reason. Not all of them are good. I really can't tell if the songs are any good. The white people do their white bread singing and flapper dancing. A few black folks add a dash of coloring. Well, the club is real and the exterior shots at Lake Norconian Club are grand. The comedy between Jack and Benny is mostly fine for old material although I'm not actually laughing. It's hard to grade sometimes. The romance is not much. I don't like when the actors become stationary. This is a lot of borderline takes.

Love In The Rough casts a young Robert Montgomery as a shipping clerk in J.C. Nugent's department store who happens to be a greatamateur golfer. Just the man to help Nugent with his game so he brings Montgomery alongt to his country club. There Montgomery meets and romances Dorothy Jordan who assumes he's as rich as all the others there.

This s a remake of William Haines's silent classic Spring Fever and it would have been a whole lot better without an incredibly insipid score from Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields. Made worse by the fact that neither Jordan or Montgomery could sing a lick.

No doubt that MGM saw in Montgomery someone wh could eplace Bill Hines and at the begnning of his career Montgomery was playing smart aleck parts like Haines. Either those or cads or punks. Montgomery was also safely straight in the studio's eyes and Haines was beginning to rebel against the studio enforced closet.

Love In The Rough would have been somuch better without the music.