The Golf Specialist

1930 Comedy 20 minutes Directed by Monte Brice

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About The Golf Specialist

At a Florida hotel, con man J. Effington Bellweather tears up a note from Deep Sea McGurk demanding $40 and offers to teach the house detective's wife golf. On an indoor course he never hits the ball. A squeaking shoe, blowing paper, and a pie the caddy set down keep stopping him. The sheriff and the detective arrest him for a list of absurd charges, clapping on the cuffs as he shows her how to hold the club.

Cast & crew

More about The Golf Specialist

Monte Brice directed. W. C. Fields wrote the short from his stage sketch An Episode on the Links. Lou Brock produced it, and RKO released it on August 22, 1930. The golf was played on imitation grass in front of a lakeside backdrop, not on a course. Frank Zucker photographed it. Russell G. Shields edited it.

Themes

  • A con man's golf lesson
  • Interruptions that stop the swing
  • An arrest in the middle of a demonstration
  • W. C. Fields
  • golf
  • hotel detective
  • caddy
  • handcuffs
  • pre-Code short

Background

A few of the old New Jersey studios were still working in 1930. This short was made at the Ideal studio in Hudson Heights while Fields was based in New York.

Making

In late 1929 Fields found that his sketch The Family Ford had already been filmed as a Vitaphone short. He went to Lou Brock, who was releasing through RKO, so that An Episode on the Links would be filmed under his own control.

Look

Frank Zucker shot the two reels inside the Ideal studio, with the links played on a carpet of imitation grass.

Preservation

Prints survive. Copies are on the Internet Archive and Wikimedia Commons.

Notes

  • It is Fields's first talkie.
  • The stage sketch ran 10 to 12 minutes with four people. Hotel-lobby scenes were added to make two reels.
  • Fields had already done the golf routine in the silent So's Your Old Man (1926) and later reused lines in The Dentist (1932) and You're Telling Me! (1934).
  • Allan Wood, a vaudeville dancer from Fields's stage act, plays the caddy.
  • Harriet MacGibbon, later Mrs. Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies, walks a dog through the scene in her first film.
  • The arrest sheet includes eating spaghetti in public and possessing a skunk.

Scenes

  • Bellweather steps into the pie the caddy brought onto the carpet.
  • The sheriff handcuffs him while he is showing the grip.

Influenced by

  • W. C. Fields's stage sketch An Episode on the Links

Also available

  • Internet Archive (Golf_Specialist_1930)
  • Wikimedia Commons (The Golf Specialist (1930) .webm)

Quotes

I would never hit a woman, not even my own mother.

Stand clear and keep your eye on the ball.

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