Roscoe Blevel Ates (1895-1962) was working in vaudeville as a comedian when he made his screen debut in 1929’s South Sea Rose.
The following year, after an uncredited appearance in Marianne and a small part in Love in the Rough, Ates had a strong supporting role in King Vidor’s Billy the Kid (1930). He appeared in many further westerns, including a run as a character named Soapy Jones for PRC.
Ates had a speech impediment as a child, which he revived to good effect in a number of pictures playing stuttering characters.
Roscoe Ates’s other Metro musicals were Ziegfeld Girl and Meet Me in Las Vegas.
Cader Edwards Davis (1867?-1936) was an ordained minister who enjoyed the showmanship of pulpit oratory so much that he gave up the church and became an actor. (Although arrests for drunkenness and associating with loose characters may have been contributing factors.)
Davis wrote and performed in both vaudeville sketches and full-length plays. He wrote a tragedy which one newspaper described as “simply gross”, but which he performed around one thousand times.
Davis worked on Broadway and was respected enough by his colleagues to be elected president of the National Vaudeville Artists Association in 1919.
Edwards Davis made about 70 film appearances from 1915 to 1936, always in character parts. In 1926, he was third-billed to Harry Langdon and Joan Crawford in Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.
Davis’s parts in the 1930s were mostly uncredited, including in Love in the Rough and as Henry VIII in Madam Satan.
The International Pageant of Pulchritude was held annually in Galveston, Texas from 1920 to 1931, and took upon itself the responsibility for choosing ‘the Beauty Queen of the Universe’. Or Miss Universe, for short.
The winner in 1926 was Catherine May Moylan (1904-69), and this led to her being invited to be part of the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927, and then to a role in the original stage production of Whoopee! in 1928.
Moylan made half a dozen brief film appearances before returning to obscurity. One of these was a credited role in Love in the Rough.
Readers of a certain (advanced) age will recall the voice, though not the stage name, of Harry Leonard Albershardt (1909-73) as that of the talking horse in Mr Ed (1961-66).
Before that, he had spent many years on top of horse in dozens of ‘B’ westerns, including 39 pictures in which he played Sheriff (or Marshal, or Lieutenant) Rocky Lane. He also gave flesh to the comic strip character Red Ryder in seven films.
Lane had made his debut in a leading man role for Fox in 1929, but his career quickly foundered, which led to him doing small parts in Love in the Rough and Madam Satan. Fortunately, a career in oaters lay ahead.
Some confusion surrounds Harry Burns, who played the gardener in Love in the Rough.
IMDb asserts confidently that he was born in 1887, died in 1948, and in between was married to actor Dorothy Vernon. It says he was an actor who made 15 films between 1915 and 1920, took a ten-year break, then made another 39 appearances between Love in the Rough and 1948, two of which were in Music for Millions and It Happened in Brooklyn. IMDb also claims Burns was the father of Bobby Vernon, even though Bobby was only ten years younger, but we will not go there.
According to the AFI Catalog, Harry Burns acted in a couple of pictures in 1923-24, but was mainly a director at that time, notably of a series of films starring Joe Martin the Chimp (no space here, but Joe is worth looking up).
As a further complication, the New York Times reported, in 1939 (not 1948), the death of “Harry Burns, former film director for William Fox and other early film producers and one-time publisher of Filmograph”. It notes that, at the time of his death, he had been working as an extra and was a champion for better treatment for extra players, and that his widow was Dorothy Vernon.
Which leads to a second IMDb entry, for director Harry Burns (1882-1939), also married to Dorothy Vernon.
It seems pretty clear that there were two men called Harry Burns making films in the same period and, probably the 1887-1948 version who made appearances in two MGM musicals. The silent pictures attributed to him by IMDb must belong to the 1882-1939 Harry Burns (especially given that one of them starred the aforesaid Joe Martin the Chimp.
He was also the one married to Dorothy Vernon. He may well have been the father of Bobby Vernon, but, if so, was a father at the age of 15.
British actor Harry Davis (1902-70) performed in the West End and on Broadway before making his first film for Pathe Exchange, shortly after the company’s restructuring by Joseph Kennedy.
Davis’s screen career only lasted ten years, but he squeezed in 38 films, one of which was Love in the Rough.
It has been suggested that Davis’s portrayal of a dance instructor in George Cukor’s Our Betters (1933) established the Hollywood template for the flamboyant gay man.
Jack Kelly and his friend Benny, a Russian immigrant, work in the shipping department of Waters Department Store. After they are both fired, Jack asks Waters why he has stopped being a regular guy and become one of the biggest crabs in town.
Jack (Robert Montgomery) and Benny (Benny Rubin), working hard for Mr Waters
Waters confesses that he is terribly worried, not about the stock market but about his golf game. Upon discovering that Jack is the Municipal Golf Champion, Waters asks for coaching, to get him ready for his club’s forthcoming tournament. He will arrange for Jack to have two weeks’ membership at the club. The club is very exclusive, so he tells Jack not to reveal that he is Waters’s employee.
Jack agrees to take Benny with him as his valet, partly because Benny has $84 in savings. At the Oakmont Country Club, Jack struggles to stop Benny being a cheapskate who will not tip properly.
Jack and Marilyn Crawford see each other in the corridor and it is love at first sight. Marilyn is the wealthy daughter of Crawford the Wheat King.
On the terrace, Marilyn meets her friends, including Harry Johnson and Virgie [I’m Doing That Thing (Falling In Love)]. Jack looks down from his window and he and Marilyn exchange looks.
Marilyn (Dorothy Jordan) and chorus boys dance en plein air
Jack realizes that Benny knows nothing about golf and tricks him into being a caddy. Jack and Marilyn meet again out on the course, to the obvious annoyance of Johnson. At the 8th hole, Jack interrupts Harry by unexpectedly reaching the green in two, which Harry and Virgie recognize is a spectacular shot. Jack joins them for the rest of the round.
Benny discovers that the other caddy, C Wesley Rappaport, is from the old country. Benny hires a car from a local farmer, so he can carry the clubs around the course more easily, but crashes into a tree.
The next morning, Jack wriggles out of playing with Waters so that he can join Marilyn and Virgie on the practice tee. Benny also turns up, having a crush on Virgie. Jack gives Marilyn a golf lesson [I’m Learning a Lot from You].
While Jack, Marilyn and Benny are out on the course, there is a lightning storm and torrential rain. Jack and Marilyn shelter together and kiss for the first time [Go Home and Tell Your Mother].
The evening before the tournament, Benny pretends to be sick so he can get out of caddying for Jack, who has been selected to go out in the top flight after setting a course record.
Jack tends to Benny in his ‘sick bed’
Downstairs, at the pre-tournament dance, Johnson challenges Marilyn about a $3000 bet on Jack to win.
Following Waters’s instructions, Jack had told people he worked in shipping, but there is now a widely-accepted rumour that he is the president of a major shipping company. Waters hears the rumour and accuses Jack of fortune hunting. He accepts Jack’s denial, but says that it is still not right for someone in Jack’s position to be courting Marilyn. Jack agrees to leave immediately after the tournament.
Jack tries to tell Marilyn the truth, but she will not listen. He then tries to end their relationship but, after they dance [One More Waltz], he asks her to marry him right away. They rent a room for the night at the house of the Justice of the Peace who marries them.
Marilyn gets ready for bed, but Jack is compelled to tell her he is not rich. Jack sees that she presumes he is a fortune hunter. He tells her he loves her, but that she should get the marriage annulled. He then leaves. The next morning Jack and Harry tee off for the tournament title, but Jack is not playing at his best.
Back in her room at the club, Marilyn watches from her window. Mr Crawford arrives and is very opposed to the marriage until he learns that Jack is a great golfer. He then chases Marilyn outside to support her husband. Crawford introduces himself to Jack.
It is all even at the 18th hole, and Harry’s ball blocks Jack’s. But Jack performs a trick shot, sinks the ball and wins the tournament. Crawford offers Jack a job. Jack and Marilyn leave on a train for their honeymoon, with Benny still acting as valet.
Adolph Milar (1895-1950) was born in Switzerland, but had a career in American films that lasted over 25 years.
From 1919, Milar played featured supporting roles in many silent films, but tended to be restricted to ethnic roles with the coming of sound, owing to his accent. He made an auspicious start with his first talking picture, Bulldog Drummond (1929). Later, he came to specialize in nazis, notably in Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt (1941) and in The Hitler Gang (1944), by which time he was usually uncredited.
Milar appeared as a police officer in Call of the Flesh.
