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Free And Easy is another variation on the Merton of the Movies type film where unknown schnook goes to Hollywood and winds up a comedy star. It worked fine for Glenn Hunter on stage and Stu Erwin on the screen. The lead in Free And Easy was a part that was perfect for Eddie Cantor. But Buster Keaton got it and it wasn't quite right for him.

Keaton, known in Hollywood as the Great Stone Face, was one of the greatest pantomimists the screen ever knew. Why you would star someone in a film that has musical numbers, though you would not classify it as a musical is beyond me. That title song which Keaton croaks would have been perfect for Eddie Cantor.

In watching it I thought I recognized the plot of this film. It was part of the story line of Pepe, the great Cantinfas all star production from thirty years later. Keaton is in love with young Anita Page who is the young screen hopeful from his home town. But she's got eyes for the flawed young movie star Robert Montgomery.

Like Pepe, a number of folks on the MGM lot made guest appearances as themselves. One of the most interesting was William Haines who at that time competing with Robert Montgomery for juvenile parts. Haines of course was one of the first film stars outted as gay and his fall was a lucky break for Montgomery's career.

Best in the film is Trixie Friganza, a great vaudeville star who played Page's number. She really harries and harasses poor Keaton. Page has won some kind of contest and for reasons I can't explain the Chamber of Commerce of their hometown has appointed Keaton as her agent and manager. Like they have the right and the power. No wonder Trixie's mad at him.

If you've seen Pepe, you know how this turns out.

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.

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.

Buster Keaton was looking forward to talking pictures since everyone agreed his voice was a good fit for the new technology. He wanted to make his final silent movie, 1929's "Spite Marriage," as his talkie debut. But MGM producers had a different opinion. The studio kept the 1929 movie as a silent while scheduling his March 1930 "Free And Easy" as Keaton's first sound picture. He plays Elmer Butts, a gas station attendant dragged by the winner of a local beauty pageant, Miss Gopher, Elvira (Anita Page), and her overbearing mother (Trixie Friganza) to chaperon them as they travel cross country to be screen tested by MGM in Hollywood.

Unlike the majority of his past films that portrayed his characters consistently emerging as the hero and winning his gals in the end despite a series of obstacles, in "Free And Easy," he's the smacked around throughout the movie looking like a loser. To add insult to injury, Keaton finds himself dressed up as a fat clown prancing on stage in a lengthy finale musical number. Buster called this sequence the most ridiculous thing he had ever done. As writer Robert Sherwood wrote "Buster Keaton, trying to imitate a standard musical comedy clown, is no longer Buster Keaton and no longer funny." To rub his character's humiliation deep into his face, MGM writers had Keaton attached to strings acting as a marionette puppet in the clown suit. Buster's biographer describes the scene symbolically as MGM's treatment to the once brilliant comic. But the studio was happy with the theater receipts. "Free And Easy" became a bigger financial success than most of his silent classics.

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."