"Buster Keaton doing his own films was a master. Buster Keaton working for other people was a travesty.” YouTube poster, commenting on GENERAL NUISANCE (1941).
"Buster Keaton plays everything well, but there's absolutely nothing that feels specific to Buster Keaton in the material." IMDB commenter hte-trasme, commenting on THE SPOOK SPEAKS.
First and foremost, we tip our well-worn porkpie hat to Lea Stans of Silent-ology for hosting the annual Buster Keaton Blogathon and encouraging the following contribution from the diehard and dyed-in-the-wool Damfinos at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog.
Today's topic is one of the low points of Keaton's career - arguably THE lowest point - the two years Buster spent starring in comedy short subjects created by Jules White and Del Lord at Columbia.
Just in case one is an enthusiastic fan of Buster and the studio's house-style gurus, The Three Stooges, the ten Columbia Keaton shorts are available on a 2-DVD set under the title Buster Keaton Collection. There are commentary tracks by comedy film historians throughout, if one can’t stop thinking of the 1920's masterpieces Cops, Sherlock Jr., The General, Our Hospitality, The Navigator and Steamboat Bill, Jr. and finds the misuse and misunderstanding of Buster in these films unbearable.
Classic movie buffs know the story: Buster makes magic, the most astonishing and original of all comedy films, as an independent producer, signs with MGM, who, making such Thanksgiving turkeys as Free & Easy and What? No Beer, ruin him as surely they subsequently made the worst movies of The Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello and Our Gang.
Thus, Buster Keaton transitioned from MGM feature film star to the ignominious world of comedy shorts, first with Educational Pictures. The 2-reelers were made quickly and inexpensively, shot in three or four days.
As far as the Columbia Shorts Department goes, its product to this day remains lowbrow, and yet, it is difficult for this classic movie fan to dislike a production company that makes films titled “You Were Never Uglier” and “Three Dumb Clucks.”
The stars of the Columbia Shorts Department, unquestionably, were The Three Stooges, creating cartoony slapstick mayhem in some of their funniest films at the same time Buster Keaton was at Columbia. The formula works like a charm for them, at least until the serious health problems that led to Curly Howard's untimely passing in 1952 become undeniable onscreen in the mid-1940's.
Under producer Jules White, to some extent everybody on the lot made Three Stooges comedies, complete with the trademark sound effects and stock company, whether their individual style of and approach to comedy fit into the formula or not. So, with the Columbia Shorts Department, Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon, two idiosyncratic, clever and original comedy creators, essentially starred in knockabout slapstick. This was anathema to the approach they rode to 1920's feature film stardom. While this slapstick humor style frequently squelches the silent movie headliners, whose humor depended on nuance, Buster's astonishing ability to execute acrobatic falls and devise brilliant bits of comedy business often carries the day, both at Educational and Columbia.
Buster Keaton landed at Columbia Pictures in 1939 and, as he needed the steady work, signed for half the rate he had been paid to star in short subjects for Educational previously. In 1930, comedy short subjects still ruled the roost, with Hal Roach Studios specializing in them, but by 1939, Roach, Sennett and Educational were no longer producing short comedies and - with the exception of the 1-reel "Joe McDoakes" series made by Richard L. Bare for Warner Brothers - Columbia and RKO were the last studios to make them.
While "2-reelers" in particular were considered the minor leagues of movies, Buster took the job.
Columbia became the destination for former silent comedy performers, writers, cinematographers, producers and directors looking for work. At one point Del Lord, architect of insane car chases and Billy Bevan comedies at Mack Sennett's studio, Charley Chase from Hal Roach Studios, Harold Lloyd collaborator Felix Adler and Jules White's brother Jack (a.k.a. "Preston Black"), producer/director of funmakers from Lloyd Hamilton to Louise Fazenda at Educational Pictures, were all making 2-reelers for Columbia.
As noted, Keaton’s fellow silent feature star Harry Langdon was there at the Columbia Short Subjects on and off, as was uncrowned king of comedy short subjects Charley Chase. Of the three, Chase fared best by far and would appear to have maintained at least some creative control over his starring series and held on to a fair amount of his established onscreen persona, while also directing other comedians on the lot. He died in 1940 and it is likely that had Chase lived longer, his films would have increasingly veered into heavy-handed slapstick.
What suggestion do we have for the avid fan of Buster Keaton silents watching the 1939-1941 Columbia shorts for the first time? After all, Buster Keaton not only starred in The Goat but WAS the GOAT, a.k.a. Greatest Of All Time.
On one hand, DON'T WATCH THEM would very likely be the advice for Damfinos and silent movie mavens. Some of the Columbia shorts are not bad at all, even quite funny and enjoyable, but others are such unmitigated stinkers that, given the choice between watching one and shoving a dipstick from a 1976 Buick LeSabre as far up your nostril as humanly possible, the latter option would be best for Buster fans.
On the other hand, for classic comedy buffs who laugh out loud and invariably end up ROFL at Chaplin's Keystones, Larry Semon’s Vitagraph 1-reelers, Mack Sennett car chase epics (SUPER-DUPER DYNE LIZZIES), early Harold Lloyd comedies transitioning from dorky "Lonesome Luke" to his "glasses character, The Three Stooges' YOU NAZTY SPY, Laurel & Hardy in HELPMATES and both Buster silent era masterpieces as COPS and ONE WEEK, plus his work 30+ years later in television and even in AIP features, it might well be possible, with some trepidation, to watch Keaton's Columbia short subjects. Make no mistake about it, these "Buster the Stooge" Columbias suffer by direct comparison to Keaton's silents but certainly hold their own in the late 1930's and early 1940's 2-reeler universes of the Columbia Shorts Department and RKO's comedy shorts directed by Hal Yates.
Short films, while considered the ragged stepchild of prestigious feature films, were popular with audiences, and Buster, like his mentor Roscoe Arbuckle, began his silver screen career starring in short subjects. Buster created quite a few of the funniest, most inventive short comedies ever produced, the gold standard once he took over Roscoe Arbuckle's studio when the big fella graduated from 2-reelers to starring in feature films for Paramount. These Buster Keaton Comedies from from 1920-1923 are in the same category among silent era comedy triumphs as the Chaplin Mutuals, the last Harold Lloyd "glasses character" short subjects and, also produced by Hal Roach Studios, the films Leo McCarey directed for Laurel & Hardy and Charley Chase in 1924-1928.
Since the Columbia series is the first since the 1917-1920 Comique Productions films in which he co-starred with Roscoe Arbuckle and Al St. John to focus almost entirely on knockabout slapstick, another way to regard them is to imagine that the only existing silents featuring Buster Keaton were the Arbuckle Comique series - and that everything else went the way of the Fox and Universal comedies that burned up in the notorious 1937 vault fire in Little Ferry, New Jersey. Buster's solo films, from One Week through Spite Marriage, are not necessarily slapstick-oriented, although there is much physical comedy, as well as sight gags that inspired everybody from Mel Brooks to Chuck Jones.
The biggest problem with the Buster Keaton Columbia 2-reelers is something insidious that creeps into his films beginning with The Cameraman and extends through the MGM features and Educational Pictures short subjects: presenting Buster as a sad sack, a pathetic individual and a blithering idiot. Who was the genius who thought this somehow made Keaton funnier? It doesn't, and the Columbias are particularly egregious at presenting Buster as a dolt. This idea reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of his comedy and couldn't have come from Buster; given the onscreen results, from big-budget MGM features to threadbare Educational and Columbia short subjects, this remains absolutely incomprehensible. Yet, Buster playing an idiot is what is seen and repeated through the ten Columbia shorts. . . repeated over and over and over.
In Keaton's best films, the more competent, resourceful, clever and unconventional thinking the unassuming pork pie hat fellow is, the funnier he is - he's a smart guy who's just ever so slightly absent-minded, not an amalgamated moron in the Moe, Larry and Curly mode - but such films as The General were considered ancient history by 1940.
Another big problem and elephant in the room with this series is a by-product of the Jules White signature slapstick and related to the change in Buster's characterization that begins in The Cameraman: how often Buster is mistreated. He's pushed around and bullied to a degree not even seen in the misbegotten MGM features and Educational shorts, which denigrate Buster plenty. This never ends up being in the service of comedy. Buster The Stooge gets Buster gets bashed throughout the ten short subjects repeatedly and frequently for no reason; Keaton is constantly getting smashed in the face throughout the Columbia series and the point comes quickly where it's not funny. The viewer ends up feeling sorry for Buster. Unfortunately, "Moe Howard Theory", a specific sequence within The Three Stooges formula that gets laughs - Moe acting like a complete jerk, then getting hit hard with a two-by-four or large metal object - is nowhere to be found in the Keaton Columbias, even with supporting players Vernon Dent and Bud Jamison on hand to play the "Moe" part.
The third big problem with Buster’s Columbia series is Elsie Ames, an enthusiastic, energetic and unrelentingly in-your-face performer who could execute vigorous slapstick a la Joan Davis and Lucille Ball, but also possessed a pronounced penchant for overacting (note: Trav SD, author of Chain Of Fools, wrote a post about the slapstick comedienne on his Travalanche website, which also covered Jules White at length). Jules paired Buster with Elsie Ames - and the teaming doesn't work any better than teaming Keaton with Jimmy Durante in the MGM features.
Among a slew of brassy comediennes (Martha Raye, Mabel Todd, Judy Canova, Betty Hutton and rubber-faced Cass Daley), who came to prominence at that time, Elsie Ames made her show business name as part of the comedy dance team of Ames & Arno, seen here doing their pratfalling act in the 1937 Bing Crosby vehicle Double Or Nothing. It is possible to understand why Jules White and the Columbia Shorts Department signed her, as Ames is quite an accomplished acrobat and possesses a goofy personality.
One would venture to guess that Jules White envisioned Elsie as a Curly Howard-style slapstick comedy star who would headline her own series. Comparisons to Curly Howard prove difficult, as the NYUK NYUK NYUK WOOWOOWOO king's onscreen persona exudes a certain peculiar charm and highly unique timing that was, just about always, extremely funny. His characterization is weirdly likable and gets laughs. Oddly, Elsie Ames never appeared in the one Columbia Shorts Department series where she might have been a good fit - as a supporting player with The Three Stooges. Of course, if Elsie tried to upstage them even once. . .
Although Elsie Ames is, as noted, a gifted acrobat and a physical comedienne willing to take thunderous pratfalls that would give Roscoe Arbuckle and Al St. John pause, she tends to run roughshod over her co-stars at Columbia, not just Buster but Harry Langdon and El Brendel as well. It's comparable to a heavy metal guitarist whose only technique is to shred, shred, shred and then shred some more at high volume and ridiculous speeds but entirely without nuance or variation in dynamics. The concept of "less is more," at least at this stage of her show business career, is entirely lost upon Elsie.
When Keaton imbues the Three Stooges style slapstick with his more low-key and thoughtful personality, does it work? The writer feels that understatement surrounded by bombast can succeed, if it is allowed to. Is The Taming Of The Snood, a knockabout opus loaded with pure physical comedy and astonishing falls by both Keaton and Ames, overbearing or funny? Find it, like other Keaton Columbias, to be both - and love the opening scene with Buster modeling hats for Dorothy Appleby - but you be the judge. As is the case with slapstick gags in Laurel & Hardy and Three Stooges comedies, I find myself LOL at the extremity of it all. Again, with the Columbia series, draw the direct line to Arbuckle's Comiques, not Keaton's 1920's masterpieces, as Buster's pal Roscoe would have fit right into the Columbia Shorts Department and perhaps brought just a touch of that "slapstick ballet" quality from his Comiques and Keystones to the proceedings.
To cut Elsie just a tiny bit of a break, here is one sequence from General Nuisance in which she does include her strong suit, dancing. This sequence is still dominated by shameless mugging and knockabout, but the hoofing is enjoyable and there's something to like in this song-and-dance bit; as much as Elsie and Buster slap each other around, the musical number indicates a possible direction other than 100% knockabout this series could have taken. Buster sings and dances, and, as always, is funny and charming. If Elsie could have just done a moment here or a moment there of nothing, of repose, for a breath. Whether this was her sensibility or Jules' direction, we don't know. That said, we know Buster was too much of a gentleman to overrule the director or tell her to shut up.
Interestingly, Elsie Ames redeemed herself for the enthusiastic and well-intended but overbearing performances in Columbia 2-reelers with her last appearances in movies 30 years later, in the John Casavettes films Minnie and Moskowitz and A Woman Under The Influence. Casavettes was an original, innovative and first-rate feature film director and turned out to be the one to successfully bring out the acting mojo in Elsie Ames. She's good in both movies and, as a senior citizen, totally unrecognizable from the knockabout clown from the Columbia 2-reelers.
Of the ten Columbia shorts, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog have a favorite. That would be Nothing but Pleasure, in which a bus trip to Detroit devised to save money on shipping the newly bought auto is an unmitigated disaster. This is a Buster piece in that he brings back the "getting a stone drunk woman to bed" bit from Spite Marriage (and several other films), as well as a Clyde Bruckman piece which includes a gag involving parking a car in a tight space which was previously seen in Lloyd Hamilton's TOO MANY HIGHBALLS (1933) and, with improvements, the hilarious W.C. Fields feature THE MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE (1935). Redolent with Clyde Bruckman's dark sensibility, Nothing But Pleasure is very much a Lloyd Hamilton-like piece in its fatalistic "everything happens to me" scenario.
Although Buster does not portray the sharpest tool in the shed, or even the resourceful fellow we see in his silent features, thankfully, he does not play a complete idiot, just a guy who, like Lloyd "Ham" Hamilton and Albert King, is born under a bad sign. Unlike Lloyd Hamilton and W.C. Fields, Buster's character is chock full of cheerful earnestness - and the contrast with the viewpoints of his long-suffering wife (played by Dorothy Appleby) and Bud Jamison as a puzzled police officer, makes this a very good, very funny comedy short.
Also like So You Won't Squawk, with a gangster and chase-filled plot reminiscent of the Gus Schilling - Richard Lane comedies produced by the Columbia Shorts Department a few years later. Buster is mistaken for a gangland kingpin and it's off to the races. Keaton takes fall after fall after all in this and adapts surprisingly well to the fast-fast-fast and then faster Jules White ethos throughout.
One wonders, watching the Columbia Keatons and seeing them wrecked over and over by loud, hammy, irritating performances, is whether anyone thought of casting Buster’s wife Eleanor, who he married in 1940, even briefly. She was not under contract to the Columbia Shorts Department and perhaps, after hearing how very unhappy her husband was there, would have opted not to appear in these slapstick-heavy films had she been offered the opportunity to do so. In the 1950’s, Eleanor would work onstage with Buster at the Cirque Medrano with great success.
All ten Keaton Columbias are, at least at this moment, up on YouTube. Proceed at your own risk.
In his 2010 book The Fall of Buster Keaton: His Films for MGM, Educational Pictures, and Columbia. Author James L. Neibaur delves into Buster’s post-Steamboat Bill. Jr. films at length. The encyclopedia on the subject, Columbia Comedy Shorts: Two-Reel Hollywood Film Comedies, 1933-1958 by Ted Okuda and Edward Watz, is out of print in hardback, but available in paperback and on Kindle - and well worth checking out, as the authors painstakingly review hundreds of Shorts Department films. Leonard Maltin discusses Buster's comedy in The Great Movie Shorts and The Great Movie Comedians and offers his insights.
All we can say in closing is, "thanks, Buster" and "thanks, Eleanor" - and note how many genuinely funny moments turn up between the knockabout in the Columbia series. No Keaton film, no matter how threadbare, is a total loss because he's in it, making great comedy regardless of the circumstances.
The Buster Keaton Blogathon, hosted by film historian, writer and silent movie expert Lea Stans of the outstanding Silentology webpage, is back with a brand new lineup of scholarly, informative posts on The Great Stone Face for 2022. As always, there will be plenty of interesting pieces by good writers.
The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are very pleased to be among the contributors to the 8th Buster Blogathon and shall be writing a post titled Mr. Keaton Goes To The Columbia Shorts Department about The Great Stone Face's ignominious (but better than one would expect) stretch starring in proto-Three Stooges 2-reelers for Jules White and Del Lord. Long ago and far away, we posted a six-part series delving into the history of the Columbia Shorts Department in this very space.
Keaton, then as in March 2022 the GOAT, starred in his own series for the Columbia Shorts Department, as did fellow silent comedy aces Charley Chase, Harry Langdon and Andy Clyde, the Mack Sennett studio's most ubiquitous stock company stalwart. All created bits and entire films at the Columbia Shorts Department featuring inspired comedy, alternating with ill-fated but sometimes surprisingly successful efforts within the slapstick formula that worked like a charm for Moe, Larry and Curly (note: Chase directed Three Stooges comedies, with felicitous results).
While Buster, not surprisingly, absolutely loathed the 2-reelers he starred in for both Columbia and Educational, dismissed them (accurately) as cheap shorts, IMHO, both these and the 1934-1937 Educational Pictures 2-reelers offer more unadulterated Buster than the MGM talkie features.
The Columbia shorts were Buster's least favorite films from his entire career - no shock here, considering that the same guy made The General, arguably still among the handful of greatest and most beautifully realized feature films ever produced.
Always happy to defend films nobody likes, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog will give the Jules White and Del Lord “Buster Goes Stooge” films, often featuring ace comedy supporting players Bud Jamison, Vernon Dent and Monty Collins, a little love. Whatever the scenario is, Buster makes the very best of it.
Thinking about Buster, The General in particular is truly spectacular and, like the Harold Lloyd features, is made to be seen on the big screen with an SRO audience. It's noteworthy that none of the Keaton silent or sound feature films actually lost money, just that some were massive box office smashes and others were modest hits that did not make a huge profit.
Specifically for this year's blogathon, Silver 17 Productions produced a trailer based on the 1918 film The Cook, one of the very successful Comique Productions "knockabout comedy to outdo all competing knockabout comedies" short subjects starring Roscoe Arbuckle, Buster Keaton and Al St. John, all somersaulting their way through the 20 minute running times. Yours truly remembers classic movie buff Johnny Carson running clips from this on The Tonight Show way back when!
Here's a rundown of the scholarly, enjoyable and well-written posts about The Great Stone Face that were posted in The Sixth Annual Buster Keaton Blogathon. Enjoy reading them!
This writer is floored about so many things regarding the cinema icon, not the least of which that a quarter of a century after his biggest box office hits on the silver screen, Buster worked and worked and worked and then worked some more through the television era and right up to his passing in 1966. It is rare to find an appearance of Keaton's that is not touched by his comic genius and astonishing talent for acrobatics. Am always stunned to find yet another film or TV show Buster appeared in that I had never seen or heard of.
Buster was nothing if not prolific!
In case any non-Damfinos, non-silent cinema or non-classic movie buffs somehow find their way to this very under-the-radar blog by mistake, here are books we highly recommend for more info on Buster's silver screen legacy :
Mr. Arbuckle, during his "William Goodrich" years, directed complete films and sequences of films starring his Comique Productions mates Buster Keaton and Al St. John through the 1920's and early 1930's.
This is Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog's contribution to the Sixth Annual Buster Keaton Blogathon - happy to be a part of it!
To begin today's post, we thank Lea Stans of Silent-ology for hosting this and the previous five Buster Keaton Blogathons. Will post the full list of 2020 Buster Blogathon articles tomorrow.
Buster Keaton ranks atop the short list of our all-time favorites who ever appeared in or directed movies at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, so we're thrilled and delighted to contribute.
This, with some trepidation, brings us to one of Buster's dreaded MGM talkies, Speak Easily, arguably the best of the bunch that began with Free and Easy and ended with What! No Beer? (described by Buster as a "100 per cent turkey").
In the promotional posters, Buster's name is first but Durante's face dwarfs Keaton's. Funny, I have a sneaking suspicion who MGM was trying to build up as a new star here! Also notable: the poster describes a naughty love triangle storyline that does not occur in the movie.
The cautionary tale of Buster at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and part of the Keaton legend remains that The Great Stone Face transitioned from independent producer to MGM star and lost all creative control over his films in the process.
Buster was caught between his friends/colleagues - Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd pleaded with their fellow comedy filmmaker NOT to sign with MGM - and his family, as he was married to Natalie Talmadge, sister of Norma Talmadge (Buster's sister-in-law) who was married to Joseph Schenck, whose professional association with Keaton dated back to the comedian's first experiences in movies, working as stock company player, gagman and assistant director for Roscoe Arbuckle at Comique Productions. Joe Schenck's brother Nick was among the head honchos at MGM.
Why Speak Easily’s credits say “A Buster Keaton Production,” we have no clue.
Speak Easily is an MGM feature starring three top comedy talents, Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante and Thelma Todd. For the three principal stars, it's a likable albeit second tier piece in their silver screen careers, with The General, Billy Rose's Jumbo, Hips Hips Hooray and the incredibly funny Charley Chase - Thelma Todd 2-reeler The Pip From Pittsburg, among others, representing the top tier.
Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Our Gang and, in two films made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1940's, Laurel & Hardy, had their problems with MGM (A Night At The Opera notwithstanding), even though Our Gang and L&H made many of the funniest comedy short subjects ever committed to celluloid, which were produced for MGM release by the Hal Roach Studio a.k.a. The Lot Of Fun.
Marie Dressler was one brilliant comedienne who was not held in check by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.
The larger-than-life actress and comedienne, star of stage and screen, Marie Dressler alternated at MGM between dramas and lightweight comedies co-starring former Mack Sennett Comedies headliner Polly Moran - and is still known for her epic triple-take for the ages in reaction to Jean Harlow that closes George Cukor's dark comedy Dinner At Eight.
MGM's clear preference as the stars of comic films would be leading men and leading ladies who demonstrated a pronounced flair for comedy such as Robert Montgomery, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and (especially) William Powell and Myrna Loy.
One star of MGM features who could be both a leading lady and a quite talented, goofy comedienne was the very funny Marion Davies.
Marion, like Marie Dressler, was not at all averse to broad humor and slapstick and even co-starred with Marie in The Patsy. It's a good bet that Davies was not held back from doing more comedies by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer brass, but by W.R. Hearst, who fancied her as a stately grand dame starring in costume dramas.
Buster Keaton wanted very much to make a talkie with Marie as his co-star and even pitched a western comedy in which the duo would co-star to Irving G. Thalberg. The MGM brass said no. A Buster Keaton - Marion Davies feature would have also had strong comedic possibilities, but Hearst would have no doubt nixed such an idea in less than a New York minute.
The most glaring problem with Speak Easily, and all the Keaton MGMs is the mega-studio's complete and utter inability to grasp the essential Keaton characterization. Why Lawrence Weingarten and other MGM execs in charge of these films thought casting Buster as a dimwit was funny, we'll never know. Perhaps MGM brass concluded that because The General was not a boffo box-office hit, having Buster play an indefatigable and resourceful fellow would mean bad box office. The penchant for turning Buster's intrepid and heroic, albeit slightly absent-minded character into a bumbling, blithering idiot is painful for Buster fans to watch!
In Speak Easily, he plays a professor - and spends much of the film's 80 minute running time acting like a moron. The point comes where it's not funny, as charming and likable an actor as Buster can be. It is also very odd that the script did not use the fact that his character is a professor and presumably a learned and intelligent fellow to drive the storyline. The plots of the Keaton silents - Our Hospitality, The Navigator, Go West, The General and Steamboat Bill. Jr. in particular - were not driven by idiocy by his characters. This tendency is deadly in the MGMs and begins as early as The Cameraman.
The production executive in charge of the Keaton MGM films, Lawrence Weingarten, later the producer of everything from Spencer Tracy - Katharine Hepburn vehicles to Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, along with the other execs, proved utterly and completely baffled by Buster Keaton.
Buster would have scoffed at the very idea of his silent features possessing “epic,” “mythic” and “poetic” qualities and insisted he was just trying to make a good picture, no big deal - but this is the area where the MGM films after The Cameraman (and especially the talkies) are sorely lacking. The sense of grandeur and scale is gone. Man against a cyclone. Man against a locomotive. Man against something he doesn’t understand. The settings and situations are scaled down, indoors. Buster is no longer a mere blip in the wide open spaces.
While there is a segment with Buster running around and doing his customary mindboggling stunts at a train station in Speak Easily, he is definitely earthbound. As noted in my review of Parlor, Bedroom and Bath for the first Buster Keaton Blogathon, in the MGM talkies, The Great Stone Face is stuck delivering dialogue as opposed to battling with forces far more powerful than himself. While Buster is a very good actor and his Midwestern sound suits his characters, he is much diminished by this. One wonders if the MGM executives other than Irving Thalberg ever actually watched Our Hospitality, The General and Steamboat Bill, Jr. Even the subsequent low-budget Educational Pictures short subjects as Grand Slam Opera get a little more Buster in the mix!
The storyline of Speak Easily casts Buster as an isolated, lonely and socially awkward college professor who receives a bogus letter stating that he shall receive a substantial inheritance: $750,000 in Great Depression money. Not knowing it's a ruse, the professor instantly opts to take a sabbatical from teaching and see the world. At the train station, Professor Potts by chance runs into a low-rent theatrical troupe and, thinking he's rich, pays for the entire cheesy company to take their cheesy musical review to Broadway! Cross-country hijinx, including aggressive pursuit of the incredibly naive academic by the troupe's gold digging diva/vamp, and a chaotic, disastrous, mishap-packed opening night ensue.
In the cast along with Buster, Jimmy Durante and Thelma Todd are actress Ruth Selwyn (who plays Buster's girlfriend Pansy Peets), columnist-to-be Hedda Hopper in a cameo as the overprotective Mrs. Peets, and character actor Sidney Toler.
Toler, between many successes on the stage and later in movies as the always three steps ahead super-sleuth Charlie Chan, does a fine job in his part as a nameless theatrical director, unendingly vexed by Professor Potts' penchant for jumping onstage at the worst possible times and wreaking holy havoc.
All of the above said, Speak Easily is not a bad movie by any means, has its moments throughout. There are several funny Pre-code bits - at one point Profesor Potts declares "I'll buy companionship" - and many involve Thelma Todd's vamp character.
Buster and Thelma create several very good sequences of physical comedy, most notably a variant on the dragging a drunk woman to bed routine that had previously been a cornerstone of Keaton’s last silent film, Spite Marriage, and would be performed two decades later by Buster and his wife Eleanor at the Cirque Medrano.
And then, can't finish this review without mentioning the topic of Buster co-starring with Jimmy Durante. . .
Buster said of Jimmy Durante's role in this film: "He was very good in the one picture we made together that had quality. I think this was because the character he played was very much like the real Jimmy Durante. The picture was Speak Easily, which...had a sound comedy plot." Buster and Jimmy are not teamed, but play off each other pretty well; yes, Jimmy is very loud but the two work together and Jimmy does not overpower Buster, the table salt and cayenne pepper contrast notwithstanding. Jimmy went to bat for Buster with MGM brass when Keaton did not show up on the set due to heavy drinking and the two comedians became lifelong friends offscreen.
The most interesting aspect of the film is how its "utter mayhem on stage" climax closely resembles another movie starring showbiz icons under the heading of "Comedians Who Got Screwed By MGM," the Marx Brothers. Watch both as a double bill and the parallels between are clear, right down to the bit in which Harpo swings across the stage, which Buster does in the scene of the Broadway show's disaster-filled opening, in which he ends up, quite unintentionally, as a comedy star and audience favorite. While there's no Margaret Dumont or Sig Ruman in Speak Easily, what the hey, it's funny.
This is not the only instance of something from a Buster Keaton movie turning up in A Night At The Opera, as a brief bit in The Cameraman appears to be the kernel of what would be expanded into the hilarious stateroom sequence of the Marx Brothers classic. Buster couldn't have worked on A Night At The Opera - he was alternating between overseas features and Educational Pictures 2-reelers at the time - and yet, there are a couple of instances of Keaton-esque moments in said film. When MGM re-hired Buster a few years later as a gagman and script doctor, he did, in what couldn’t have even a pleasant experience, work with the Marx Brothers; Groucho in particular did not welcome writers who weren’t named George Kaufman, S.J. Perelman, Harry Ruby or Arthur Sheekman, so this couldn’t have been fun for Buster.
Jimmy's next silver screen appearance at MGM would be in Blondie Of The Follies, a vehicle for one of the very few not named Marie Dressler who starred in funny and successful comedies bearing the MGM brand (not counting films produced by the Hal Roach Studio for MGM release) in the early talkie era - Marion Davies. Durante only has a couple of scenes, but the sweetness and genuine warmth underlying Jimmy's bluster and braggadocio is there - and would be the cornerstone of Schnozzola's comedy through several decades of movies and television.
Wrapping this up with a question. How would the Buster Keaton MGM talkies be evaluated if all his silents except Battling Butler and/or College, were lost films and hadn't been seen since 1928. Whatˇif Our Hospitality, Steamboat Bill, Jr. and The General had burned up in the Little Ferry, New Jersey vaults in 1937 (or in the "day the music burned" wipeout of MCA recorded masters in 2008)?
Would Keaton's MGM talkies still be considered to be debacles, horrible wastes of Keaton's talent or regarded as decent 1930's comedies which do not make proper use of The Great Stone Face's acting, directing and filmmaking talents? None of the Keaton MGM talkies are masterpieces, even on par with MGM's William Powell and Myrna Loy comedies, but are any, other than Free and Easy, unwatchable disasters? We'll think about that while preparing to watch Sherlock Jr. after several short subjects produced for MGM release by the Hal Roach Studio, including several of the first tier films of Speak Easily co-star Thelma Todd.
The International Buster Keaton Society (A.K.A. the Damfinos) hosts a convention paying tribute to Buster every October in Muskegon, Michigan and are both sponsoring this blogathon and donating a $50 giftcard to their Buster Stuff store.
Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog shall make a return visit to the dreaded Keaton MGM talkies. Shall take a look at the 1932 film Speak Easily, co-starring The Great Stone Face with ubiquitous comedienne of the early 1930's Thelma Todd and vaudeville star Jimmy Durante, at that time making the transition to movies.
