The Golf Specialist

The Golf Specialist (1930)

At a Florida hotel, absconding miscreant J. Effingham Bellweather goes slapstick golfing with the house detective's flirtatious wife and an incompetent caddy.

Date of release
1930-08-22
TMDB
5.3 / 10 (36)
Runtime
20m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Monte Brice

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Fort Lee

The Golf Specialist is a 1930 pre-Code comedy short subject released by RKO Radio Pictures, and starring W. C. Fields. It was his first talkie. The film was produced at the Ideal studio in Hudson Heights, New Jersey. Many pioneer film studios in America were based in New Jersey, and a few of these production facilities were still being used in 1930.

Production

In late 1929 W. C. Fields, then working in New York, tried to exercise the motion picture rights to his old stage sketch "The Family Ford", only to find that it had already been filmed as a Vitaphone short. Fields, determined that such unauthorized use would not happen again, arranged with nearby movie producer Lou Brock to make a talking picture of "An Episode on the Links." Brock was releasing his films through RKO, assuring national exposure f…

Most of the cast members were stage actors who made occasional films, except Fields and Shirley Grey who pursued full-time film careers in Hollywood. Vaudeville dancer Allan Wood, one of Fields's stooges on stage, played the hapless caddy. Today's viewers may be interested in seeing the first film appearance of Harriet MacGibbon, then a 24-year-old stage actress who achieved TV fame three decades later, as the long-suffering "Mrs.

The golf sketch only lasted 10 to 12 minutes on stage, and involved only four people (Fields, the girl, the caddy, and the showgirl with the dog). Other scenes had to be added to bring the film up to a length of two reels (20 minutes). These additional scenes were staged on a hotel-lobby set, where other cast members interacted with Fields.

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