Free and Easy | |
---|---|
Directed by | Edward Sedgwick |
Written by |
Richard Schayer (scenario) Paul Dickey (adaptation) Al Boasberg (dialogue) Alexander Stein (French titles) Allen Byre (French titles) |
Produced by | Buster Keaton Edward Sedgwick (both uncredited) |
Starring |
Buster Keaton Anita Page Robert Montgomery |
Cinematography | Leonard Smith |
Edited by | William LeVanway George Todd |
Music by |
Fred E. Ahlert
[1] Roy Turk [1] William Axt (foreign vers.) |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date |
|
Running time | 92 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Free and Easy is a 1930 American pre-Code comedy film starring Buster Keaton. It was Keaton's first leading role in a talking motion picture.
When small-town girl Elvira Plunkett ( Anita Page) wins a contest that sends her to Hollywood for a screen test at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), she is accompanied by her overbearing mother ( Trixie Friganza) and Elmer J. Butts ( Buster Keaton), a gas-station attendant who goes along as Elvira's manager. Elmer is secretly in love with Elvira, but on the train they meet MGM contract actor Larry Mitchell ( Robert Montgomery), who falls for her as well, and he has the connections to make her a star.
In Hollywood, Elmer manages to bungle his way through numerous films being shot on the MGM lot, disrupting production. When given a screen test, he can't manage to say his one line correctly. Despite these flubs, both he and Elvira's mother are given film contracts, and they appear in a comic opera together. Elmer wants to tell Elvira that he loves her, but he hints at it in such a way that she mistakes it for advice on how to tell Larry that she loves him.
Free and Easy, whose working title was On the Set, [2] was Buster Keaton's first starring role in a film shot for sound – he had appeared in MGM's talking The Hollywood Revue of 1929, but did not speak. [2] As with Spite Marriage, his previous film for MGM, production on Free and Easy was largely out of Keaton's hands.
The film was used as a way to showcase MGM's stars and filmmakers, several of whom make cameos, including Cecil B. DeMille and Lionel Barrymore. [3] The film was shot in French, German, and Spanish language versions. For the Spanish edition, titled Estrellados, Keaton spoke his dialogue phonetically, [3] but the 1931 release in France had French-language intertitles replacing the English dialogue. [4]
MGM spent almost $500,000 on the production of Free and Easy. [2]
Contemporary reviews were mixed, with The New York Times reviewer Mordaunt Hall stating that Keaton's "audible performance is just as funny as his antics in mute offerings," [5] while Robert E. Sherwood in The Film Daily wrote that "Buster Keaton, trying to imitate a standard musical comedy clown, is no longer Buster Keaton and no longer funny." [2] Nonetheless, Free and Easy was a bigger hit than the majority of Keaton's silent films. [2]
Modern reviews are less enthusiastic, with critic John J. Puccio stating that the film "contains far too much talk and far too few visual gags." [6]
Free and Easy was re-made twice, first in 1937 as Pick a Star and later as Abbott and Costello in Hollywood in 1945. [3]
Notes