Love in the Rough

Love in the Rough is a B comedy film starring Robert Montgomery before he attempted more serious films. It also features Benny Rubin, a talented Jewish comedian, who was far more successful in burlesque and vaudeville than in early Hollywood films. The plot of an office worker becoming a ringer in a golf foursome is fairly different from the norm, and the filming of the episodes in the open air, rather than a studio, gives it an air of authenticity.

After about forty minutes, however, the film begins to lose its energy, and bogs down quite a bit. The end result is a pleasant, but not too stimulating comedy that captures the mentality of the 1930s corporate mindset for impressing others at the club.

A young, skinny, twenty five year old robert montgomery, in an early role. When the boss drags kelly along to improve his golf game, things get wacky. Kelly goes looking for a girl. This starts with a plain, simple story...it's a good print of a film from almost 100 years ago.. one of the early talkies. Sure, there are a couple of musical numbers, but they move right along and don't slow it down too much. A fun dance number by earl tucker, about thirty minutes in; sadly, he died at age thirty. Co-stars dorothy jordan. The middle part seems to be a bunch of vaudeville bits that don't really go anywhere. Kind of drags for a long time.... the women talk in high, squeaky, little girl voices that must have been desired in 1930. Directed by charles reisner. He had started in the early silents. This was based on the play by vincent lawrence. Honestly, not much of a story, really. It's just ok. I think part of the entertainment was just hearing people talk in films. Although i could do without those high squeaky voices that they seemed to use back then.

Robert Montgomery may be only a shipping clerk, but he's a fine golfer. So boss J. C. Nugent wangles his a one-week pass at his glf club so he can win against Edwards Davis. Montgomery and Davis' daughter, Dorothy Jordan fall in love. But she thinks he's an important executive. What will happen when she finds out the truth?

This sound remake of 1927's SPRING FEVER hasn't aged well, even if you think that snobbery, gold, Benny Rubin's yiddisher comedy and a not-so-sparkling set of songs by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh; judging by its constant repetition, Metro must have thought they had a hit in "Go Home And Tell Your Mother". The acting is actually pretty good, With Penny Singleton, Allan Lane, Roscoe Ates, Clarence Wilson, and Ann Dvorak somewhere in the chorus line.

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.