The Reel Life Of Bobby Jones

It is a bright, still morning on the well-kept grounds of the Bel-Air Country Club. We see the famous golf champion, Bobby Jones, moving over the fairway. A mysterious stranger trudges awkwardly a little behind him. Could it be Dr. Fu Manchu? Yes, it is he—the sinister Oriental villain of The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, with his long, downward-sloping mustache and expression of inscrutable evil, though now he appears somewhat ill at ease because he is carrying a golf club instead of his opium pipe.

Bobby Jones leads the way to an undulating grassy area bordered by huge oak trees. Birds are singing. It looks like the beginning of a pretty good mystery movie. But Jones merely selects a golf club. It turns out that he is teaching Dr. Fu Manchu how to play golf, and in this episode he is demonstrating the right way to hold the club. Jones takes a flawless swing and the ball jets off into the sunny distance as though it were carrying an urgent message to the green. Dr. Fu Manchu looks unhappy.

Meanwhile, off in the woods a short distance away is one William Claude Dukinfield, better known as W. C. Fields. He has been attempting to improve his pathetic golf game while far from observation. Fields stares in astonishment at the flight of Jones's ball. "Land o' Goshen," he says. Sound films had only recently come in, and Hollywood moviemakers could not resist the opportunity to have actors speak lines of deep significance. Jones now sees Fields in the shrubbery and hurries toward him, greeting him with warmth, only to have Fields say he has decided to give up golf after watching Jones's drive.

"Oh, you can't do that, Bill," Jones says, and Fields, Dr. Fu Manchu and Jones sit down to talk it over. In a moment Fields begins to juggle golf balls. After he has three of them flying through the air he reverses their flight in a sort of syncopated pattern, meanwhile complaining that his golf game never improves.

"You do that pretty well," says Jones, staring at Fields in astonishment.

"Well, I've devoted a lot of time to it," says Fields, in his nasal drawl, which prompts Jones to suggest that devoting time to golf might improve his game. 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...."

All of this really happened, insofar as anything that happens in front of the cameras in Hollywood can be said to be real. For several months in 1931 and 1933 Bobby Jones was a familiar and popular figure in Hollywood, where he filmed 18 reels on the fundamentals of golf. These movies are now unobtainable—only one copy is known to exist—and almost forgotten, though they were perhaps the best motion-picture instructional ever made of any sport.

The films certainly had the most celebrated cast of any short subjects ever produced. Appearing in the 18 reels and playing inexpert golfers—an easy role for most of them—were Fields, who had recently starred in Tillie's Punctured Romance; Warner Oland, the Swedish-born star of the Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan movies; James Cagney, one of the new box-office attractions in Hollywood after the success of Sinner's Holiday; Edward G. Robinson, Cagney's main popularity rival because of Little Caesar; Loretta Young, 23 years old and a delightfully spontaneous girl noted for such features as Loose Ankles; Walter Huston, a distinguished actor on the legitimate stage; Leon Errol, the superb rubber-legged comic who had come West from the Ziegfeld Follies; Richard Barthelmess, Frank Craven, Louise Fazenda, Joan Blondell, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Richard Arlen, Claude Gillingwater, Joe E. Brown, Warren William, Guy Kibbee, Glenda Farrell, Charles Winninger, Evalyn Knapp, Zelma O'Neal, Huntley Gordon, William Davidson, Harold Goodwin, John Halliday and a large collection of since-forgotten child stars, butlers, show girls and cowboy actors who were merely extras and bit players in the superproduction that Hollywood made of the Bobby Jones golf instructionals. All of these stars worked in the Jones films for nothing. "We had a wonderful time," recalls Director George Marshall. "The top actors and actresses donated their time. Ail the stars were eager to take part. It was a privilege to have Jones work on their game."

"Did I enjoy it?" says Jones. "Hell yes. I'll never forget it. There was a story line in each episode, but we didn't have a script—they made it up as we went along. The plots wound up at the end of each 10-minute short, and there was a lot of horseplay and comedy, with the instructional business woven in."