Free and Easy

FREE AND EASY (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1930), directed by Edward Sedgwick, like many early sound films, happens to be a musical. And like many early sound films, this one, too, stars one of many from the silent screen era making a transition into the new phase known as "the "talkies." Not counting the all-star musical extravaganza appropriately titled "The Hollywood Revue of 1929" (MGM, 1929), FREE AND EASY marks the talking debut of Buster Keaton. As with so many silent movie comedians, ranging from Harold Lloyd to Harry Langdon being heard on screen for the first time, wondering whether or not their careers would resume in the same capacity as before, only Charlie Chaplin chose to remain silent a little while longer. For Buster, it wasn't how he spoke that slowly declined his promising career, but how the powers that be over at MGM used or misused his talents as both comedian and leading man. The selection of having Keaton's talking debut set mostly inside a movie studio is a sound idea, yet one wonders how the movie in general might have been had it been scripted and completely supervised by Keaton himself.

The basic plot involves Elmer J. Butts (Buster Keaton), a garage owner of Golpher City, Kansas, chosen by the Chamber of Commerce, to act as manager for Elvira Plunkett (Anita Page), winner of the "Miss Gopher City" contest. On their railroad trip to Hollywood, they are escorted by Elvira's overbearing mother (Trixie Friganza) who has a very low opinion of Elmer. Following a farewell committee at the station, Elvira encounters Larry Mitchell (Robert Montgomery), formerly Hymie Schwartz also of Kansas, now motion picture star on his way to attend the premiere of his latest motion picture, "The Love Call" at Grauman's Chinese Theater. Following a series of unexpected mishaps on the MGM lot while movie making is in progress, Elmer somehow is offered a position in the studio while Elvira encounters more than just a possible movie assignment and coping with her mother's constant insults against Elmer.

Song selections by Roy Turk, Fred E. Ahlert and William Kernell include" "It Must Be You" (sung by Robert Montgomery, sequence used in 1974's documentary of MGM Musicals, THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT); "It Must Be You" (reprise), "Penitenary Blues," "Ah King, Ah Queen" (performed by Buster Keaton and Trixie Friganza); "Free and Easy" (sung by Buster Keaton)," "Free and Easy" (sung by chorus); and "It Must Be You."

Though some song interludes weaken the promising concept of the story, FREE AND EASY benefits greatly from its assortment of MGM guest stars appearing as themselves, including that of child star Jackie Coogan, wiseacre comedian William Haines, Dorothy Sebastian (who co-starred opposite Keaton in 1929's SPITE MARRIAGE); Karl Dane in Cave Scene; John Miljan and Gwen Lee in Bedroom Scene. William Collier Sr. Appears acting as master of ceremonies during the motion picture premiere segment. Notable directors participate considerably into the storyline as well, including Fred Niblo; Lionel Barrymore (actor then turned director before returning to acting again); the legendary Cecil B. DeMille and David Burton. A pity that there wasn't consideration for some now prominent names as Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert in cameo appearances as well.

Having watched FREE AND EASY numerous times whether it be on VHS, DVD, or one of many broadcasts from Turner Classic Movies, it's my guess that circulating prints appear to be missing some material mostly during the first half hour. There's really no plot development pertaining to the central characters (though whom they are and their background are briefly mentioned). The film simply opens at a train station with its central characters where the story gets going from there. A train sequence where Elvira talks to her mother about her meeting with actor Larry Mitchell ends abruptly, immediately followed by a movie premiere rather than a logical choice of the trio's arrival in Hollywood and what occurs next. Some sources list this at 106 minutes while other clock it to the current length of 93 minutes.

As much as some may claim the Keaton comedies for MGM cannot compare to those he starred in during the silent era, FREE AND EASY does contain some laughable moments, including one where his Elmer drives to a premiere but is unable to find a place to park his car until miles away near a cow pasture; and another where Elmer tries desperately memorizing his lines for a movie, driving director Fred Niblo and assistant director (Edward Brophy) to a point of mental exhaustion. Had FREE AND EASY been remade in the 1940s, chances are its leading players might have been Red Skelton, Gloria Graham, Frank Sinatra and Marjorie Main in place of Keaton, Page, Montgomery and Friganza.

Final notes: Television prints for FREE AND EASY were changed to "Easy Go," so not to confuse with MGM's non-remake 1941 comedy FREE AND EASY starring Robert Cummings and Judith Anderson. Though TNT and TCM formerly presented this long forgotten Keaton comedy as "Easy Go" in the past, the original title and has been restored. While Keaton played Elmer J. Butts again in WHAT, NO BEER! (MGM, 1933), whether it's the same character or another bearing the same name played by the same actor is anyone's free and easy guess. (***)

If you are looking for a study in early talking film and how MGM simply did not know how to utilize Buster Keaton, this is your movie. If you're looking for competition with Buster's great silents of the 20's look away and elsewhere. It's a 9 if you are in the first category, a 5 if you are in the second. I average the two together to get my rating of 7.

The story is a simple one - Anita Page is a small-town beauty contest winner from the Midwest - Elvira Plunkett. She and her mother (Trixie Friganza) along with Elvira's agent, Elmer Butts (Keaton) are taking the train out west where Elvira will seek a career in movies ... with no contacts ... and no name recognition. What follows are their adventures on the train and in Hollywood once they arrive at their destination. Probably nothing would have happened if not for the fact that Elvira and her mother wind up running into movie star Larry Mitchell (Robert Montgomery) on the train. Larry takes a shine to Elvira and thus gets her invited to his studio - MGM of course - for a look at how films are made.

This is the fascinating part. You get to see the actual MGM movie factory during the transition to sound. You see a completely inane and awful musical number - maybe intentionally so but I doubt it - that is exhibit A in why audiences rebelled against the early musicals. Poor Robert Montgomery is forced to dress up like a cossack and sing a duet. As Buster is chased through MGM by security guards you get a look at Lionel Barrymore directing a film - he did so for just a few years at MGM - complete with the camera blimps that allowed the cameras to emerge from the static booths and enabled more fluid motion in movies. You also get to see some of MGM's prominent directors of the time in conference, including Cecil B. De Mille who was employed there briefly at the dawn of sound.

Now for the bad part. Buster is forced into a grueling "who's on first" kind of verbal comedy scene at the middle of the film that simply didn't suit him, is generally depicted as a bumbler when he had always been the innovative problem solver in his silent films, and during the finale musical number his beautiful face is covered in ridiculous clown makeup. The finale musical number is actually pretty good with a catchy tune and Keaton dancing about like a pro, doing his familiar "Highland Fling" if you've seen some of his silents. However, at the very end of the number he emerges as a puppet on a string - emblematic of Keaton's career at MGM. At least the studio let Keaton speak his first film words in front of a train - his favorite film prop.

If you see this make sure you watch the documentary "So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton & MGM". It really helps put Keaton's MGM career in context and explains, as narrator James Karen says, "how Buster Keaton came to MGM as one of the greatest comics in the whole world, and ended up being regarded as totally unemployable just five years later."

As a twist on the old 'innocent makes it big in the movies' theme, it's not a bad plot: a pretty blonde beauty queen from a sleepy provincial town comes to Hollywood in the chance of a lifetime... only, instead of Elvira winding up as a star, it is her Olympian harridan of a mother and incompetent booby of a would-be manager who end up with contracts -- as comic relief.

Trixie Friganza provides a wonderful performance as the stage-door mother from hell, with the bonus of some very attractive costume routines in the film-within-a-film. Anita Page is naive and sweetly shy as the unambitious Elvira, establishing sympathy and character in a relatively small part. Robert Montgomery is competent but unremarkable as the caddish movie star she falls for, and who ultimately repents and offers her the prize of every good girl's virtue: marriage.

But the question one is inevitably left asking concerns the casting of Buster Keaton as 'Elmer Butts', the shambling idiot. Nominally, this is a "Buster Keaton Production"; but in fact, his character is probably the biggest reason not to watch it, since most of the time Elmer is just embarrassing. Once you hide 'the great stone face' under sad-clown makeup, so that he can't use it to act with, and conceal the trained grace and expression of his body under tent-like trousers or padded tights, so that he can't act with that either, and then give him semi-moronic dialogue to recite so that he can't even act with his voice -- you have to ask yourself: why hire the talents of Keaton, of all people, in the first place?

Presumably, given a scene in which the character gets repeatedly hit in the face and flung to the ground by a succession of muscular ladies, it helps if you employ an actor who can take a fall without getting hurt. Keaton manages to work in a few trademark variations on the basic tumble during this tedious sequence, and elsewhere in the film there are a couple of acrobatic moments of note: when Elmer launches himself straight into a horizontal tackle at neck-height at Elvira's seducer, and the illusory dive into a shallow tank of water. In the final dance sequence he forgets to shamble, and gives us a glimpse of crisp vaudeville steps despite the obliterating handicap of the costume. Otherwise, the part doesn't appear to demand his particular skills at all.

The song and dance numbers raised a few -- I suspect not all intentional -- laughs, but tended to drag, an ongoing problem. Many of the dialogue scenes outstay their welcome, including the seduction sequence with its repeated cuts back to the chase, and almost all Elmer's allegedly amusing stand-up exchanges: I suspect you could shorten at least ten minutes out of this film and it would only be an improvement.

Comedy-wise, it's effective from time to time. I was surprised into a few genuine laughs, including a couple where Keaton gets to slip in a dry sotto-voce aside -- an acting style that would clearly have suited him much better than the verbose mumbling and misunderstandings he has to labour through in this script. I'm not familiar enough with Buster Keaton's voice to tell how much of the slurred delivery here was produced for 'comic' effect and how much was his natural vocal range... but frankly, in a number of scenes he sounds quite simply drunk, an effect that can't possibly have been wanted!

The ending, meanwhile, appears to lack effective resolution, and left me somewhat up in the air as to what message it was supposed to convey. Elvira marries her actor, as Elmer's stumbling attempts to confess his own love inadvertently contrive to bring together the estranged pair; but the film, mis-paced as ever, doesn't end at this point. Instead Elvira, still innocently unaware of Elmer's feelings for her, kisses him in gratitude, laughs at him, and sends him back out in front of the cameras to be comic (which, as ever, he fails in any noticeable degree to achieve)... and then we have yet another musical number, with the two love-birds caught up in each other's eyes, and Keaton just standing there immobile, grotesquely painted and (presumably) heartbroken.

Is it supposed to be funny? Is it trying for some ironic depth hitherto unheralded by the rest of the film? Are we supposed to feel sorry for Elmer -- and if so, just what sort of a comedy ending is that?

(Plus, an unpalatable point: if one of your actors has a mutilated forefinger, then don't have him fidgeting with the stump throughout in the foreground of a dialogue scene! In Buster's own films, spot-the-finger is an endearing game to be played by those in the know, with a complicit wink; here, it's painfully obvious.)

There were moments, at the beginning, when I thought this film might have potential; it was never going to be a classic, but it might have been an unpretentious contemporary spoof. The script needs tightening up throughout, often wasting its laughs by labouring the point instead of cutting out a line or two in favour of a reaction shot. But the outcome is basically doomed from the moment that the plot starts dressing the miscast Keaton up: he might just have carried Elmer off as a deadpan role in ordinary clothing, but in third-rate pier end farce he hasn't got a hope. And no amount of proclaiming on screen that the result is the biggest thing in comedy is going to help.

BUSTER KEATON and ANITA PAGE are saddled with some lame dialog and tacky situations in this hokey comedy about an aspiring beauty contest winner (Page) who travels to Hollywood with her mother in hope of becoming America's next motion picture sweetheart. It's a look at early Hollywood and for that reason alone it's fairly entertaining.

ROBERT MONTGOMERY is featured as Larry Mitchell, a movie star who takes an interest in Page after a chance meeting on the train to Hollywood. Keaton is his usual bumbling self but the script is a mess with dialog that is painfully unfunny. Nobody can really save the comedy/musical from being way less than ordinary. Keaton with stilted lines is less funny than when he's pantomiming it up in silent films.

Robert Montgomery is dubbed for a couple of awkward musical numbers, all done in the early style of MGM talkies before a word like "finesse" could be assigned to them. The tinny sound recording is no help.

Best excuse for watching is to see how things improved rapidly in the late thirties and forties, but this one has to be regarded as strictly a curiosity piece for fans of Buster Keaton and early sound films.

Painfully unfunny in an amateurish kind of way for a film from MGM. Interesting only for a glimpse of early Hollywood pioneering.

Not really that bad but very bizarre. Buster Keaton in his starring talkie debut had talent and charm to spare, but the film is so weird. MGM had taken control of Keaton as had the Talmadge family, but he's game here as a hayseed manager accompanying Miss Gopher City (Anita Page) to Hollywood along with her stage door mother (Trixie Friganza). Some really funny stuff among the not-so-funny. MGM tosses in some guests stars like William Haines, Robert Montgomery, Lionel Barrymore, Dorothy Sebastian, Karl Dane, Gwen Lee, John Miljan, William Collier, and directors like Fred Niblo and Cecl B. DeMille, who chats up yes men about his future leading lady: Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Marion Davies, or Bebe Daniels. Lots of MGM name dropping and studio in jokes. Keaton is actually very good in his transition to sound, but the film meanders away and around the bend. He's surprisingly good in a dance number with an excellent young woman (is she Marion Shilling?) to "Free and Easy," which I like more every time I see it. Keaton could DANCE! And Ann Dvorak is in the chorus. Friganza steals several scenes. Page is beautiful. Montgomery gets his voice dubbed in a singing number. Niblo is hilarious as himself, but Buster Keaton, the great and wonderful silent comic, is the reason to watch Free and Easy. He's funny and light and tragic all at once. Was there anyone EVER like Buster Keaton? Around the time of filming he was being screwed by ex-wife Natalie Talmadge and her family as well as by MGM--the same studio that screwed William Haines, John Gilbert, Lillian Gish, Bessie Love, Anita Page and scores of others. See this film. Give it a chance and just watch BUSTER KEATON.