Some Thoughts
The 1925 play Spring Fever was made into a silent film comedy in 1927. Three years later it became the first film musical about golf, just beating Paramount’s Follow Thru (1930) into cinemas.
Perhaps a more significant first for Charles F Reisner’s film is the fact that it contains a production number, admittedly quite a small-scale one, shot out of doors on a real location. MGM had made musicals with location sequences before. Hallelujah, for example, opens with characters singing in a genuine cotton field. And in Montana Moon, Joan Crawford sings to some real trees while on horseback. But in Love in the Rough, Dorothy Jordan and the Biltmore Trio deliver a full song-and-dance number filmed on location at California’s Lake Norconian Club.
Dorothy Jordan had made three period musicals with Ramon Novarro in the previous twelve months, becoming increasingly virginal and irritating in each one. She is clearly much happier in a modern setting, and gives a much more engaging performance. The dance skills she had honed in Broadway shows come to the fore in the aforementioned ‘I’m Doing that Thing (Falling in Love)’ routine, before giving way to a brief display by Earl ‘Snakehip’ Turner.
‘I’m Learning a Lot from You’ is an interesting number. Performed by two romantic couples–one serious, one comic–it represents an early example of the courtship-through-dance trope that musicals would use so effectively later on; think, for example, of Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen singing and dancing ‘Main Street in On the Town.
Love in the Rough, despite being about golf, remains an enjoyable eighty-four minutes. Benny Rubin’s ethnic schtick (Russian-Jewish this time) is pretty good, aided by a pairing with bit-part player Jack Raymond as another caddy from the Old Country and some sparkling Yiddish patter. It is also fascinating to watch veteran J C Nugent as Mr Waters, the protagonist’s boss. In the early scenes in particular, he genuinely seems to be making up his dialogue as he goes along. Either that, or no one had thought to show him the script until just before saying Action.
But Love in the Rough also points towards one of the problems that contributed to the public tiring of musicals. Robert Montgomery and Dorothy Jordan are pleasant enough singing ‘Go Home and Tell Your Mother’, but they are still giving the performances of amateur singers. MGM had not yet learnt that the musical was a form that required professionals who could really dance and sing (or be dubbed to make it appear they could sing).
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