SPEAK EASILY

US, 1932, 81 minutes. Black and white.
Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Ruth Selwyn, Thelma Todd, Hedda Hopper.
Directed by Edward Sedgwick.

Speak Easily is one of the early sound films made by Buster Keaton and his company. After his great success in silent films, in such films as The General, he moved to sound but was not as successful as in his silent films. However, he appeared in film and television for almost thirty years more, finally appearing in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

In this film Keaton portrays a professor of classics who cuts himself off from the real world. When his assistant gives him a false letter claiming that he has inherited seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, he goes out into the world to experience life.

Keaton keeps his serious face all the time. His performance is also helped by the fact that he takes everything absolutely literally, has no idea of the slang of the time. This leads to quite some verbal and complex situations.

When he goes out into the world, he comes across a theatre troupe in a backwoods town. He is entranced by the performance, decides to finance the show and its going to Broadway. The show is revamped, but the creditors make demands for their money. The film culminates in the opening night of the show, complicated by the fact that Keaton comes onstage at all the wrong times, disrupts the show, swings on ropes, crashes onto the floor and all other kinds of slapstick. The audience thinks this is the real show – and it proves to be a success.

Keaton is good in the central role, better than in the previous year’s film, The Passionate Plumber. He is joined once again by Jimmy Durante who gives the same kind of enthusiastic performance of jokes, nods to the audience, piano-playing and singing, that he was to do in films and television over the next three decades or more. Ruth Selwyn is the ingénue. Thelma Todd is the vamp in the cast – in a similar role to her countess in Fra Diavolo the following year. Columnist Hedda Hopper appears as the heroine’s mother.

There is some verbal humour, quite an amount of slapstick – but, the film seems quite dated in its presentation and style and is more interesting as an illustration of the comedy of the time, Buster Keaton’s career, MGM’s support of his career.