SPITE MARRIAGE

US, 1929, 76 minutes. Black and white.
Buster Keaton, Dorothy Sebastian, Edward Earle, Leila Hyams.
Directed by Edward Sedgwick.

Spite Marriage is the last of Buster Keaton’s silent films. It is also considered the film that he had control over – MGM withdrawing his control as it moved into sound. Buster Keaton found himself in lesser roles in sound – almost immediately with The Passionate Plumber, teamed with Jimmy Durante. However, he continued work, contributing to scripts, playing in comic roles. Donald O’Connor? portrayed him in the 1950s in The Buster Keaton Story.

The basic plot of this film is very similar to ingredients in Red Skelton’s 1942 vehicle, Ship Ahoy, with Eleanor Powell. Keaton helped Skelton in some of his films – and Watch the Birdie (1950) contained some of the elements of Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman.

In this film, Keaton is a drycleaner, very much in love with an actress, Trilby Drew, played by Dorothy Sebastian. However, she is in love with the leading man, Edward Earle (with a character called Lionel Benmore). However, he is carrying on with a society woman.

Elmer goes every night to the theatre, practically stalks the actress, sits in the front row, explains what is happening to some of the audience. At one stage he is able to go on instead of the actor who wants to get away for an emergency. Part of the comedy in the film is the slapstick in which Keaton spoils the whole performance.

The actress decides to make her boyfriend jealous, proposes a sea trip, proposes to Keaton – and marries him. However, she resists living out the marriage, preferring to torment her boyfriend.

The film is the portrait of a spite marriage, with a comeuppance for the actor, and not a particularly happy ending for the drycleaner.

Keaton portrays the sad sack hero, smitten in love, an ordinary worker (borrowing some of the tuxedos that he is cleaning in his business to go out).

With Red Skelton and Ship Ahoy, Skelton’s film Merton at the Movies also bears some resemblance to Spite Marriage, especially in the sequences where Skelton wants to act and spoils the sequences completely.

The film offers an opportunity for audiences to evaluate Buster Keaton in the silent vehicles of the 20s.