"Try to Hit One With My Swing!"
After yesterday's flirtation with Beckett and Joyce, there were many paths I could have gone down but in the end I opted to follow on with the golf aspect of Pitch 'n' Putt with Joyce 'n' Beckett.
So we end up on a grassy mound on a golf course, sitting with a certain William Claude Dukenfield (a.k.a W.C. Fields), who is joined by the first superstar of golf, Bobby Jones, Warner Oland, the Swedish actor best known as Charlie Chan or Dr. Fu Manchu, and the now-forgotten Hollywood leading man William Davidson. Fields is showing off by juggling golf balls and Jones comes to console him about his golf game, familiarly calling him "Bill," while Oland laughs at Fields' lack of ability with a club. Though this is very clearly a highly orchestrated situation, it's remarkable how natural and spontaneous everyone acts. Unfortunately the clip ends before we see Fields' awkward demonstration of his swing, which is described elsewhere thusly:
At last Fields takes a swing at a ball so that Jones can give him some pointers. He waggles one knee, jiggles the club in an agitated fashion, then suddenly crashes it downward as though driving a stake into the ground.
Fields looks crestfallen when the ball hops only a few feet away, and Dr. Fu Manchu smirks evilly. "The immediate cause of your troubles, Bill," Jones says in a kind and professional fashion, "is the way in which you swing the club through...."
The clip comes from Hip Action, one of a series of 18 shorts made by Jones during 1931 and 1933, when Jones was almost untouchable in the sport — in 1930, he became the only golfer ever to win all four major championships, which were then the U.S. Open, British Open, U.S. Amateur and British Amateur. 12 How I Play Golf and 6 How to Break 90 shorts were shot at the Bel-Air Country Club and featured a supporting cast of stars and character actors that included James Cagney, Richard Barthelmess, Joe E. Brown, Guy Kibbee, Walter Huston, Loretta Young, Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Joan Blondell.
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