The two-reeler ALL TEED UP was more than doubled in length to create expanded export versions for the Spanish and French-speaking markets (making this subject only the second American movie, after Laurel & Hardy's BLOTTO, to be filmed in a French version). Golfers in Los Angeles could spray errant shots year-round, so production for these three films -- made simultaneously -- ran from January 3 through February 1, 1930. (Chase had been recovering from the effects of his alcoholism and resultant operation throughout most of December.)

At forty-seven minutes, running five reels, LE JOUEUR DE GOLF is probably too much of a good thing. But this may be the lone opportunity for most of us to see this truly rare and odd-length film. Unfortunately Thelma Todd appears in only the English prototype. (Leading lady Georgette Rhodes was leading lady opposite Buster Keaton and Laurel & Hardy in French versions of their comedies during this period.) Plus watching golf on TV puts even sports fans to sleep, and Chase threatens to drag us around all eighteen holes here.

There are compensating benefits, however, such as fresh views of the studio administration building serving as the clubhouse, just as it did for Laurel & Hardy’s links adventure in SHOULD MARRIED MEN GO HOME? The golf course is Lakeside, near Toluca Lake in the San Fernando Valley, where Chase, Kennedy, Oliver Hardy, directors Leo McCarey, Bob McGowan and so many other studio roster names were members. Our Gang’s DIVOT DIGGERS was shot there later. There are some clever gags, and the most elaborate of these could be more carefully crafted back at Roach’s Arnaz Ranch, disguised as various golf hazards.

Chase offers an acerbic characterization (“trickster” he’s called often in the seven-page script) in line with what he did during SONS OF THE DESERT and THE HECKLER. And there is wonderful wall-to-wall incidental music scoring, though surprisingly not drawn from either Marvin Hatley or LeRoy Shield compositions. The score components heard here were later and more famously associated with Laurel & Hardy’s HOG WILD. The two most prominent cues in each film, however, played over and over in both, actually originated in the Chase comedy, despite information to the contrary offered by the fine Beau Hunks Orchestra: GOLFERS’ BLUES (which he sings under the titles in ALL TEED UP), and SMILE WHEN THE RAINDROPS FALL. Each was written by the team of Will Livernash and Alice Keating Howell. The orchestrations and arrangements were recorded in different sessions and do vary from the more familiar and seemingly less impromptu versions heard in HOG WILD.

Since there are no subtitles, it helps to know our hero in the story does not play golf, but only professes to in hopes of impressing an attractive lady. She invites and sends him to play at the country club where her father is president. On his own, Chase goes to the wrong course, where this neophyte violates all the rules of golf etiquette. (The president of this other country club is the golfer with the beard.) Charley creates a bad impression on everyone, including, eventually, the girl’s real father, Edgar Kennedy. Making conversation without being mindful of the recent Wall Street crash, Charley mistakenly inquires about Edgar’s success in the stock market.

Chase was actually an expert golfer. His brother, Jimmy Parrott, played often as well, and starred for Roach in an earlier short called THE GOLF BUG.

This print-down was manufactured from a rather flat nitrate composite dupe negative. Notice how many outdoor scenes were shot with the benefit of reflectors, either because it was winter and overcast, or it got late in the shorter days, as shown by so many scenes with long shadows.

Tony Campanero, who lived on and managed the studio’s Arnaz Ranch on Robertson Boulevard, appears here in a rare speaking part and gets to converse in his native Italian. During the studio bankruptcy in the 1960s, many Roach properties and other film-related treasures were stored at this location ranch, and then in typical Hal Roach Studios fashion, shrewdly entrusted by Campanero’s widow to Robert Blake. I saw them at Blake’s unconventional home, now sold, after the unpleasantness surrounding the demise of his wife.

Finally, several evidently sedentary film buffs who don’t follow golf have incorrectly written or repeated to others that during the concluding scenes of ALL TEED UP in English, Chase utters an expletive. The supposed offending word in the dialogue Chase speaks can be found in most dictionaries: “I’ll never play another game of golf as long as I live! You can take these shinny sticks (as he breaks them over his knee) and you can use them for fire wood.”

Richard W. Bann