Chef d'orchestre malgré lui

This 1936 short from Educational Pictures is often held up as an example that Buster Keaton, now being given a chance to write his own material again, still had it in the sound era. Well it should be, not just because just about every joke and sequence lands dead-on and hilariously, but because the whole two-reeler is a kind of comic riff on sound itself.

The wonderful "So Long Elmer" song parody at the start, the sequence of Elmer keeping the girl downstairs (who is involved in a perfectly-developed running-gag) awake with his practicing, his impromptu dance to the medley, his wonderfully non-radio-appropriate novelty acts, and his disruption of the orchestra, all depend on and relate to sound in order to work. It's appropriate that the first talkie short that Keaton really had control over should be a kind of meditation in comedy form on sound itself, not to mention set around a radio station (and the satire of Major Bowes is dead-on without being too much).

Buster himself is great. He style-changing dance is truly impressive and athletic as well as being funny, and one-hundred per-cent physical and non-verbal while still one-hundred per-cent dependent on the sound medium to work. Keaton said in interviews that most early talkies bothered him because there was unnecessary talking -- characters should speak to each other when they have something to say. He puts that principle into effect here and appropriately says nothing, but still carries the scene off completely, while alone in his room, but delivers his dialogue with panache as well. I got a laugh from his delivery alone when he assures the announcer "I made sure of that!" after being asked if his prop whiskey bottle was empty. His problem was never that he couldn't deliver dialogue well. Of course, there are visual gags too, such as when Diana Lewis disappears behind the bus, that bear Keaton's hallmark completely.

"Grand Slam Opera" is really satisfyingly funny all the way through, and it has that unmistakable and unique eccentricity of spirit found in many of Keaton's silent's. That's what really makes his work special, and here it is translated into a sound-dependent style of film-making in a way that really works, over and over again.

Down on his luck, out of favour, no longer the huge star he used to be, and broke, Buster Keaton signed to do a series of shorts with Educational pictures. Most are merely amusing. But Grand Slam Opera is a flash of comedic brilliance that reminded us just who we were watching: one of the greatest movie comedians and directors who ever lived.

Keaton pulls off the funniest parody of Fred Astaire ever in a sequence where he mimics the famous scene from Top Hat, dancing in his dingy room, up on the furniture and down again, disturbing the lady trying to sleep below. He pokes fun at Sinatra's Hoboken Four, and Major Bowes' Hour. Deadpan, he dances through an international medley of music, improvising the appropriate dance as the music changes. He lampoons pretentious singers, annoying band leaders, and introduces a pick-up line that you will never forget. He sings, he dances, and he falls in ways that only he can. Best of all, he gets the girl. If you love Keaton, you'll love this short.

Grand Slam Opera (1936)

** (out of 4)

Elmer Butts (Buster Keaton) travels from Arizona to New York where he wants to appear on an amateur-hour talent contest but while in town he also tries to win the heart of a young woman (Diana Lewis) he sees cooking pancakes in a window. These Educational-Keaton pictures were never known for their stories and that's a good thing because there usually wasn't any and that's certainly the case here. It's said that these films were shot on $20,000 budgets and that Keaton pocketed $5,000 of that so it's clear the rest of the money went somewhere other than a screen writer. Pretty much this entire film has Keaton annoying the girl and then finally getting on the radio show where his "talent" is juggling a bottle, which of course doesn't do much for those people listening on a radio. Ha ha. As was the case the majority of the time, this short really doesn't add up to too much in the end, although some might get a kick out of seeing Keaton doing a wide range of tricks. The majority of these comedy bits happen inside a bedroom where Keaton tries to rehears but of course nothing goes right. He tries jumping on a bed and it collapses. He tries to do a trick with a bowling ball and it crashes through the floor. Of course, the girl he loves is in the room below and this just makes her hate him more. Keaton at least gives an energetic performance as he's clearly trying to make something out of nothing. Lewis was pretty bland in her role and Harold Goodwin is also wasted in the role of the band leader who gets into it with Keaton on the air.

By the time this film was made just about everyone had given up on Buster Keaton. He'd been divorced by his wife, fired by MGM, and reduced to making obscure features in Europe and cheap two-reel shorts in Hollywood, the latter at a studio known as a haven of sorts for has-beens: Earle Hammons' Educational Pictures. As its name suggests, Educational had initially produced instructional films for schools, then switched to comedies without a change of name. During the 1920s a lot of quality work came out of this studio, but by the mid-1930s the place had become shabby and most of its product was bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, making its slogan ("The Spice of the Program") a sadly ironic joke. Buster Keaton, now an alcoholic ex-MGM star with a wobbly private life, became the biggest name on the lot.

Keaton fans know that his output of shorts for Educational was erratic: several of the films are depressingly poor, but a few of them feature a little of the old spark and can be put in the category of "not half bad." Grand Slam Opera, on the other hand, is something of a miracle, a genuinely enjoyable comedy that has the feel of Buster's best work from his heyday. It's as if the man suddenly pulled himself together and decided to show the world what he was still capable of accomplishing.

From the opening moment we know we're in for something special: Buster's character, a small-town dreamer named Elmer Butts, is hoisted by a crowd of well-wishers onto a train for New York and treated to a serenade of farewell, "So Long Elmer," a parody of a George M. Cohan song. The song kicks things off on a breezy, funny note, and when Buster joins in on the chorus it marks a rare occasion that his bullfrog voice was utilized to full comic effect in talkies. Then Elmer is off to the big city to try his luck on Colonel Crow's radio talent show, where he doggedly persists in performing a silent juggling act that makes no sense to radio listeners. (Colonel Crow's program represents a satirical jab at an actual radio show of the day, Major Bowes' Amateur Hour). Elmer meets a girl, she rejects him, and then when he discovers that her apartment is directly beneath his own we're presented with another great parody, this time poking fun at the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers "meet cute" sequence in Top Hat. Buster's dance is one of the film's highlights, but for my money the best bit comes when he's waiting in the radio station's Green Room while a band called the Hoboken Canal Boat Boys plays a medley of various national folk tunes. Just for the sheer challenge of the thing, Elmer dances madly to each number, switching from Highland fling to Spanish tango, etc., as the music dictates. The scene is hilarious, exhilarating and impressive, and demonstrated that 40 year-old Buster still had plenty of energy and wasn't ready to be put out to pasture just yet.

It's interesting to note that the central premise of Buster's story provides a kind of hidden message concerning the state of his career at this time. The joke is that Elmer Butts refuses to adapt his act to the demands of an audio medium, radio, and insists on performing a silent act. But the wish-fulfillment upshot of it all is that Elmer's comic talent is recognized anyhow, and he eventually wins the contest and the girl. In reality, Buster Keaton still had plenty of hard knocks to come in his life and career, but for a brief moment, if only in this surprising and delightful film, he was on top again.

"Grand Slam Opera" is the only Educational short film of which Keaton felt proud enough to take story credit. Jim Kline in "The Complete Films Of Buster Keaton" writes the short "is a joy from beginning to end, full of playfully satirical routines from his days in vaudeville, all performed with vitality and assurance in classic Keaton style." He also notes that Keaton was "sober during production and managed to stay away from alcohol throughout the rest of the decade." Variety" called the short "pretty good enough to be sold as a baby feature." Other reviews on this database are far less enthusiastic.