Spring Fever (1927) is a low-key comedy, one of seventy-nine films (mostly B movies) Edward Sedgewick directed from 1920 to his death in 1953. Sedgewick got decent performances from William Haines and Joan Crawford, who used subtle facial expressions to show emotion. There is at least one experimental scene in this silent film where Haines and Crawford are getting undressed in a hotel just after their marriage and the screen goes completely black and one can just see the written words of what they are saying. There is a theme of class consciousness as Haines becomes a golf champion at a ritzy resort, even though he is a mere shipping clerk in an elitist sport.
I would expect this to be a film that appeals to the gay community, not only because of the young Joan Crawford but because Haines was one of the few gay actors who refused to deny his homosexuality and was fired from MGM by Louis B. Mayer in 1933 when he refused to be part of a sham marriage. Haines started his own design firm with his partner Jimmie Shields; Shields and Haines were together for 47 years until Haines's death in 1973.
Turner Classic Movies also recently showed the 1930 remake Love in the Rough, directed by Charles Reisner. It starred Robert Montgomery and Dorothy Jordan, who lated played Martha Edwards in John Ford's The Searchers (1956), and included an unfunny Benny Rubin as Montgomery's caddy but also some amateurish singing and dancing that was actually rather charming. Again a man who marries acts dishonestly by pretending to be rich but wins the father-in-law and the girl by winning a golf tournament!
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