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.
Lillian Brown (1874-1956) appeared in more than 250 films in a career that began in 1910 in Chicago, working with the Selig Polyscope Company. She made her final film in 1937.
Most of Leighton’s pictures were silent (she even provided the stories for some of them in the early years). In the sound era, she tended to be credited in low-budget films, but uncredited in those with bigger budgets.
One such was Call of the Flesh, in which she played the shawl seller.
Lillian Lawrence (dates unknown) is frequently mistaken for Lillian Lawrence (1882-1926), who was a well-known stage actor.
The screen Lawrence was a bit-part character actor between 1924 and 1953, rarely credited in over fifty appearances. The stage Lawrence made occasional screen appearances, with credit, and mostly in the last two years of her life: she played the Mother in Buster Keaton’s Three Ages (1923).
It was the little-known screen Lawrence, of course, who played a nun in Call of the Flesh, her namesake having died four years earlier.
She was in some very good pictures–Footlight Parade (1933), Judge Priest (1934), Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Easy Living (1937), The Grapes of Wrath (1940)–but always in a very minor role.
IMDb wrongly claims that Ethel Sykes (1906-61) made her screen debut in Into Society and Out (1914). She would have been eight years old at the time, making this unlikely.
Sykes’s actual first film was The Complete Life (1926), a Fox short based on an O Henry story. The busiest period in her career was 1934-35, when she was in seventeen pictures, including the two John M Stahl classics Imitation of Life (1934) and Magnificent Obsession (1935). Most of her appearances were without credit.
Sykes played a chorus girl alongside Marion Davies in The Florodora Girl.
Mary Marie Sittlow (1904-88) appeared in a couple of dozen pictures between 1927 and 1936. She played a couple of leads for minor studios in 1929, but was generally uncredited.
In 1930, Caron played one of the Florodora Girls in The Florodora Girl.
