Spring Fever

I always think I am going to be bored with Miss Crawford's early Silents; however, in this film with the popular William Haines, Miss Crawford shows us she has been a good student at MGM and is progressing in all areas of her acting life. Here, she may just be a foil for Haines (most of her scenes are just reacting to him), and the role of Allie (a rich society girl who hangs out at the country club in search of love) might not offer that much of a challenge, but she does make her character explore a wide range of emotions---and simply lets the camera love her.

The film might be formula and hokum, but for an audience seeking a light, entertaining Haines comedy, it is harmless. Director/writer Edward Sedwick (in films since 1920, including a few Buster Keaton films; his last job was directing an I Love Lucy episode in 1953) might be bland, but he knows how to make a story run its course. Spring Fever is predictable, but it does also keep you rooting for the hero and heroine.

Haines (Jack Kelly) and his father (Pop Kelly, played by Burt Woodruff, who also appears in Joan's Laughing Sinners), both work in the same shipping factory for industrialist George Fawcett (Flesh and the Devil 1926), an avid golfer who's not very skilled. When the boss sees Jack goofing around on the factory floor and hitting some wild golf shots, he offers him a 2-week membership at his fancy country club so Jack can help him improve his swing. Thus begins the male version of Cinderella(also similar in theme to the beginning of Joan's later The Bride Wore Red).

Once at the country club, Haines does a lot of slapstick and clowning, which irritatesthe other club members, who think he is the nephew of the boss. He also irritates Miss Crawford's "Allie," who puts off his persistent, aggressive flirting. She might be amazed at his Harold-Lloyd-esque scaling of a building and hanging off a ledge in attempts to impress her, but Allie also has her own secret: She's not wealthy, either; her father has lost all of the family's money. So her own sights are set on a wealthy man (George K. Arthur) who seems more of a sure thing.

Most of the film's action comes from Jack's attempts at keeping his secret while living a double life. He loves the high life and the golf life---the clothes and sophistication and beautiful girls, and everything else the country club embodies for him. Once he gets a taste of it, he certainly doesn’t want to go back to the factory, and to being just a shipping clerk and living with his poor old dad. Jack also loves the attention of the club members, and his expertise at golf makes him a show-off, with an ego knowing no bounds. Once he wins a big match and his proud (but rather decrepit-looking) father shows up to congratulate him, the dichotomy between charade and reality is finally breached, and an ashamed Jack finally has to confront his real circumstances and future.

Can he tell Allie the truth that he is poor, but that he loves her? Will Allie admit her own poverty and agree to marry him? Or will she marry the actually wealthy man she doesn't love? There is a lot at stake here, for everyone’s lives. Which is more important----love or money?

The beginning of Jack and Allie's final scene in a hotel room hasn't yet answered these questions, although their mutual bravado has now been reduced to shyness, and there are some clever and charming hints of possible romance to come. AND...one more big golf match to play! (It's an MGM film, after all---what do you think happens in these final love and golf matches?!)

After immediately becoming suspicious in the first couple of minutes of viewing, and then doing only a tiny bit of online research: Yes, in the pre-Crash mid-1920s in the USA, there was a golf vogue in middle-class America and in the nation's press. Why else this mostly tedious film, in which a business owner compares his local golf triumph to Lindbergh's famous May 1927 trans-Atlantic flight, and where women's breasts (including Joan's) literally heave while watching a golfer's swing? Or where the supposed high point of the plot is when the hero's girl has his favorite driver ("spoon") delivered to him so he can beat the course record?

Aside from the blatant attempt to cash in on that year's current golf trend, there's also the dumbed-down film plot (still prevalent today) of a down-to-earth working-class guy who mocks the system while still somehow managing to conquer it (you know---the "comfortable at the opera AND at a baseball game" stereotype). I always dislike such blatant kow-towing to the masses (whether middle- or lower-class), which is why I pretty much disliked this film. Every reviewer today seems to hate Joan's "The Boob," released a year earlier, but I'll at least give THAT film credit for being actually funny and weird, and even original (in the use of the new technology). "Spring Fever," on the other hand, is mainly a bore. (Director Sedgwick was previously known primarily for his MGM Buster Keaton films---I haven't seen most of Keaton's films, so I can't compare Sedgwick's Keaton work with this throwaway film.)

William Haines is "Jack Kelly," a warehouse clerk who gets invited "for two weeks only" to his boss's country club after he shows the boss a few fancy golf shots. Kelly is a "man of the people": He makes faces behind his boss's back and, when notified by phone that a chauffeur will pick him up for the country club, replies, "Send the car with that horn that sneers at people." (Kelly also lives with his father in a tenement and is an old-school sentimental Daddy's boy: He helps his decrepit old father, his co-worker at the warehouse, and apologizes for being tetchy about Dad touching his "spoon." He later hates to disappoint Daddy about his life choices.)

Joan is "Allie Monte," a regular at the country club, whom Kelly meets about 1/3 of the way into the movie upon check-in for his "two-week membership" and immediately comes on to. Other country-club regulars introduced here, for plot purposes, are a bland "Harry Johnson," who's in love with Allie; a bland, ennervated Brit "Eustace Tewksbury," played by an unusually (thankfully!) subdued George K. Arthur; and a horny "wealthy widow," who has "married in haste and repented at Reno." Joan is notable in these early scenes only for her diaphanous golf skirt and legs, which are ogled by all.

After some rather meaningless golf plot points (in a too-early head-to-head contest, Kelly quickly dispenses with the hapless Harry Johnson---but...Will Kelly beat the COURSE RECORD?!), the victorious Kelly declares at the after-party: "I'm going to marry for money!," thus disappointing both his boss and Pa, who has embarrassed him by showing his tattered old face...and supposedly setting up the tepid latter gist of the film: Will Kelly and Allie get together? And for love or money?

The last segment of the movie features Jack and Allie at a ritzy hotel, where Joan gets to display a bit of acting: Does she or does she not know that Kelly is not rich? Here, she's still contorting her mouth, but her eyes are rich and luminous, and some of her facial expressions are what we'd come to recognize, and very much enjoy, in future films. (The highlight of this scene, and pretty much the only even-partially witty thing in the whole movie, is the complete blackout of the screen and then "Whatever did I do with my nightgown?")

Haines is the star here, but he's not particularly engaging. There are his mildly funny faces made behind his boss's back; the poke-in-the-butt he gives his male co-worker (and, later, Allie); the early too-long scene in the apartment hall where his pants have fallen down; and then his slapstick tumbling about on the ledge outside Allie's window. And the scenes where he's coming on to Allie are risque for the period: At one point, he's lying on the floor looking at her legs and up her skirt, plus there are the various scenes of him holding her close while teaching her how to golf. But ultimately, for me at least: Who cares if Kelly wins the golf tournament OR gets the girl? The stakes seem, at all times, extremely low.

In short: "Spring Fever" seems like a blatant attempt at drawing in a lowest-common-denominator audience. It's a throwaway for the working class, as well as for trend/sex-seeking college students and their middle-class parents who had read recently in press hype that "golf" was the latest thing.

Spring Fever (1927) is Billie Haines' first starring role, per IMDB. He plays a golf "bug" who endears himself to his boss through his acumen on the links. As with many of his silents, he's a dashing-but-charming rogue who needs to be brought down a peg, the latter usually arising from the love of a good woman.

George Fawcett plays his boss and "uncle," and he's good here like in every film of his I've seen. (He played Don Jose in The Tide of Empire, 1929, a movie initially planned for Joan. He was the older Hugh Porteous in The Circle (1925) and also had a role in The Merry Widow, also 1925, in which Joan had a bit part.) The scene where Billie pantomimes Fawcett as the latter walks through the factory floor is very funny.

William Haines as Jack Kelly is his usual irrepressible self. I think Haines could have been one of the great silent comedians if he had wished, and if he wasn't so handsome! His timing and mannerisms are spot on. The scene in which Haines answers the phone in his skivvies---the phone is in the hallway of their tenement---is comedy gold. Likewise, the scene where he destroys his caddie's pocket watch because he's distracted by Joan's lovely gams is very amusing.

Joan (Allie Monte) doesn't appear until 18 minutes into this 78 minute movie. She's radiant. To paraphrase Conrad Nagel from The Hollywood Revue of 1929, she's the personification of youth and beauty. Jack is immediately smitten with Allie. I can't blame him! Joan catches him in a fib, and down Mr. Haines goes in flames. You know that's not going to slow Billie down, and eventually they'll fall out of and then back into love.

Joan and Billie have great chemistry on screen. They were, of course, life-long friends. The nervous wedding-night scene, particularly the little vignette where intertitles are projected in what is supposed to be a blacked out room (Joan is too shy to disrobe and change into her nightie in front of new hubby), is both funny and adorable.

Minor characters are populated by familiar faces from other Joan silents. George K. Arthur is a dweeb, as usual. (He was in early Joan movies Lady of the Night and The Boob, 1925 and 1926, respectively.) Edward Earle, her beau from 12 Miles Out (1927), plays the club pro and Jack's rival for Allie. Eileen Percy plays a rich widow, whose main role appears to be comic relief. (She also acted with Joan in 12 Miles Out.)

The titles are witty, thanks to Ralph Spence, who also did the intertitles for Joan's first starring role, The Taxi Dancer (1927), the contemporary reviews of which seem to suggest Mr. Spence had a knack for this sort of thing.

Per IMDB, some exteriors were shot at the Jewett Estate in Pasadena, which featured in other silents. See links below. Nice spread!

https://silentlocations.com/2015/07/05/groucho-buster-and-noir-at-the-pasadena-jewett-estate/

https://www.redfin.com/CA/Pasadena/1145-Arden-Rd-91106/home/7012135

This is another formula Billie Haines picture, but the public seemed to like them. Joan is clearly developing into a better actress (she made this film right after The Unknown [1927], in which she says that she started to learn the difference between acting and standing in front of the camera from Lon Chaney).

And, with this review, Spring Fever is the last of Joan’s extant silents I can find to review. Let’s hope with the great diva’s Hollywood reign soon to enjoy its 100th anniversary there is renewed interest in finding her “lost” silents that laid the foundation for one of the greatest careers in film, and in making them available to her adoring public.

Yay! I’m the first one to review this film on this website! This is another one of those Crawford films I avoided for the longest time because I thought it would be really bad, but when I ran out of Joan films that I had not seen I eventually made it to this one. Actually, this was the last Crawford film I hadn’t seen that was easily obtainable. Joan said in CWJC [Conversations With Joan Crawford] about Spring Fever: “God, golf is dull on film,” so I was immediately turned off; however this is not a film about golf, rather a comedic love story with a golf background. I’ve come to find out that many of the films that Joan talked bad about in CWJC I actually really like. She was a very harsh critic of herself.

The film itself is in pretty bad shape, with lots of celluloid damage you’d expect from a film of this age, but that shouldn’t deter any Crawford fans from watching this. It’s worth the time, trust me, and it’s amazing that this film even exists at all. It’s an interesting watch for fans of Crawford who want to see a very young and inexperienced Joan finding her way in front of the camera, and a cute little film for anyone interested in Old Hollywood really. It’s not her most entertaining silent film (for me, that one is The Unknown with Lon Chaney), but it’s not her worst either. Despite the fact that this is a William Haines film, Joan is actually a primary character who is integral to the plot, and once she’s on screen she’s a part of the film to the end, unlike West Point and Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, where she has very limited screen time.

Plot and substance are very thin to say the least, but nevertheless entertaining. Joan plays Allie Monte, the frumpy socialite who hangs around the country club with the other aristocrats, and whose father eventually loses all his money, forcing her to “marry for money” if she wants to keep her social standing. Don’t expect to see any of that beautiful flapper-Joan-look in this film. Unfortunately, it’s simply not here. Haines plays Jack Kelly, the light-hearted funny man who works as a clerk in some nowhere shop and never takes anything too seriously, even his job. The two come together when Haines gets to spend 2 weeks in the country club for showing his boss how to golf, giving him an opportunity to “marry for money." I’ve only seen Haines and Crawford in one other film together (West Point), and their time together in that film was very limited, but here you can really see the chemistry between the two! They work wonderfully together! It’s a shame what eventually happened to Haines’ career.

The film is full of hilarious and witty intertitles. A few of my favorites are when the film starts off with the line, “Golf was invented by the Dutch in an effort to make the Scotch forget bagpipes,” and when Haines compliments Crawford with the lines, “You’re so beautiful, I feel like I’m wasting my time when I’m not looking at you,” and “You look like a million right from the mint!” In all, this is an entertaining film that anybody can enjoy.