The Golf Nut

Found a good quality print of this short on an OLDIES. COM collection----not up to Laurel&Hardy's SHOULD MARRIED MEN G O HOME?(1928) or The Three Stooges' THREE LITTLE BEERS(1935)---but there ARE some laughs .Harry Edwards was the director--the man who eventually wore out his welcome with every comedian in show business.

A telegram at a posh country club says Billy Divott is coming and he "talks a great game of golf"> "Talks" is about all he does---things deteriorate rapidly as teh Sennett short concentrates on golf balls landing in the unlikeliest of places--sand traps,water hazards,sewer pipe entrances---and richochet shots destroying valuable crockery.

Memorable opening title card-- "Some men chase golf balls when they become too old to chase anything else".

A family is enjoying a day at the country club. And, the father (Vernon Dent) seems thrilled when he learns that a golf lover (Billy Bevan) will be there to play with them. Too bad they don't know that this guy is a major pain in the butt--in more ways than one.

During the course of the golf game, Bevan screws up and cheats a bit. However, the big laughs come when Billy accidentally knocks a bee hive into Dent's pants. Not surprisingly, Dent runs amok and spreads bees everywhere. While none of this is especially brilliant, it is enjoyable and reasonably fun. Also, if you care about these sort of things, you can see a young Eddie Quillan playing Dent's son.

The Golf Nut (1927)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Set at a fancy golf club, at first everyone thinks Billy Divott (Billy Bevan) coming to play it is going to be a major event but they soon realize that he's quite annoying and obnoxious and soon everyone is just wishing he'd go away. THE GOLF NUT certainly isn't a classic and it's not going to make you forget the work of Buster Keaton but at long as you don't take it too serious or expect too much from it you should at least get a couple laughs and that makes it worth sitting through. Unlike so many Mack Sennett comedies from this era, this one here is actually just a one-reeler so it certainly helps that it runs just ten-minutes. The lack of laughs would really be more obvious has this thing been stretched out another ten-minutes or so. There are some funny moments to be had including one where Bevan goes to get behind a camera curtain but doesn't realize he's actually pulling up a woman's dress. Another funny sequence has a golf ball sitting on top of the water and a golfer trying to hit it without much success. Bevan really doesn't give the type of performance that one would come to expect from him as he really stays rather low-key and never tries to go over-the-top. The supporting cast is decent, although no one really stands out.

My father used to like to watch golf on television during the weekend. Actually, he enjoyed napping while the commentator would whisper his thoughts on the subject. Presumably people like Sam Snead had hearing so acute that they could hear a broadcaster talking inside a building about them several hundred miles away. Then the player would swing his club and everyone would look to the right and applaud lightly to avoid deafening anyone. The camera would pan down the fairway and everyone would walk on. You could never see the ball in flight although, as in baseball, everyone pretended you could.

That's as much sense as golf ever made to me, so it seems tailor made for Mack Sennett's studio to take a whack at it. Although Larry Semon had been doing the occasional golf comedy for a decade, businessmen dressed in baggy shorts and a tam on the weekend at a country club were just made for Sennett's base audience of people who went to the neighborhood movie theater. Billy Bevan takes the lead as a man trying to play through and Vernon Dent is his nemesis. The jokes are up to Sennett's usual good standard. Over all, it looks more like a Fox Sunshine Comedy from the era and I believe they turned out a similar short subject under George Marshall's supervision. Anyway, this is a good one.