For all the wealth a person has, money can't insure a person's happiness. Actor Buster Keaton was constantly learning that lesson as his MGM contract, although lucrative, wasn't making him the happiest man seen on the screen. Knowing the background of the comic during the time he made February 1931's "Parlor, Bedroom and Bath," today's viewer can almost feel the angst Keaton was undergoing in his personal life. His marriage was crumbling, his romantic affairs were unsatisfying, his finances were affected by the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and his drinking was getting the better of him. This third movie under the MGM studio banner displays an unevenness that pales in comparison to his earlier shorts. As one reviewer noted, what could easily have been a two-reeler short has been stretched out to a full-length movie, albeit a 72-minute one.
The fascinating aspect of "Parlor, Bedroom and Bath" is the first third was filmed in and outside the Italian villa Keaton had built for his family in 1926. Costing $300,000 in mid-1920s money, the 10,000 square foot mansion sits on three-and-a-half acres of prime real estate in Beverly Hills. So magnificent the house is that it is still standing, a rare feat for houses built back then in that particular area. His neighbors were Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, and Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks' Pickfair. When he and his wife, Natalie Talmadge, divorced in 1932, she took the villa along with their kids. Eventually, the house was owned by Cary Grant and his rich wife Betty Hutton. James Mason later bought the house and discovered an old film vault next to the room Buster had set up as his own private film editing suite. The new owner had someone drill the lock, and found reels of old film that had the "combined value at the time worth more than that of the estate," according to Mason. The pile included a pristine print of Keaton's classic "The General" as well as one of "Parlor, Bedroom and Bath.'
At 35, Keaton plays a chaste Reggie Irving, whose job is to nail posters on telephone polls. He gets caught in the middle of a wild romantic crusade where one sister, Virginia (Sally Ellers) insists on waiting until her older sister, Angelica (Dorothy Christy) gets married before she does. Virginia's fiancé, Jeffrey (Reginald Denny), fixes that Reggie will be Angelica's husband. This pre-code film encourages Reggie to act like he has a history of a number of affairs with beautiful women in order to entice the older sister to fall in love with him.
There's some ribald humor mixed in this parlor/bedroom farce, which include a newspaper society columnist, Polly (Charlotte Greenwood), attempting to teach Keaton the fine art of lovemaking.
Greenwood steals the show, overshadowing even Keaton. The tall veteran silent film actress was known for her long legs and high kicks. She jokingly described herself as "the only woman in the world who could kick a giraffe in the eye." "Parlor, Bedroom and Bath" uses her six-foot height towering over the much shorter Keaton to her advantage in several scenes. Her antics proves the updated version of the 1917 play of the same name by Charles William Bell could still sustain some laughs 14 years later. Was the feature film a verifiably Keaton classic? As one modern day reviewer wrote, "The overall feel of the film is polished farce, and it doesn't sit side by side with Keaton's downplayed, ironic slapstick style very well." But the movie does offer a rare glimpse of the actor's real home. The opulent estate shows why, to keep up with the mortgage payments, he signed with MGM.
The fascinating aspect of "Parlor, Bedroom and Bath" is the first third was filmed in and outside the Italian villa Keaton had built for his family in 1926. Costing $300,000 in mid-1920s money, the 10,000 square foot mansion sits on three-and-a-half acres of prime real estate in Beverly Hills. So magnificent the house is that it is still standing, a rare feat for houses built back then in that particular area. His neighbors were Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, and Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks' Pickfair. When he and his wife, Natalie Talmadge, divorced in 1932, she took the villa along with their kids. Eventually, the house was owned by Cary Grant and his rich wife Betty Hutton. James Mason later bought the house and discovered an old film vault next to the room Buster had set up as his own private film editing suite. The new owner had someone drill the lock, and found reels of old film that had the "combined value at the time worth more than that of the estate," according to Mason. The pile included a pristine print of Keaton's classic "The General" as well as one of "Parlor, Bedroom and Bath.'
At 35, Keaton plays a chaste Reggie Irving, whose job is to nail posters on telephone polls. He gets caught in the middle of a wild romantic crusade where one sister, Virginia (Sally Ellers) insists on waiting until her older sister, Angelica (Dorothy Christy) gets married before she does. Virginia's fiancé, Jeffrey (Reginald Denny), fixes that Reggie will be Angelica's husband. This pre-code film encourages Reggie to act like he has a history of a number of affairs with beautiful women in order to entice the older sister to fall in love with him.
There's some ribald humor mixed in this parlor/bedroom farce, which include a newspaper society columnist, Polly (Charlotte Greenwood), attempting to teach Keaton the fine art of lovemaking.
Greenwood steals the show, overshadowing even Keaton. The tall veteran silent film actress was known for her long legs and high kicks. She jokingly described herself as "the only woman in the world who could kick a giraffe in the eye." "Parlor, Bedroom and Bath" uses her six-foot height towering over the much shorter Keaton to her advantage in several scenes. Her antics proves the updated version of the 1917 play of the same name by Charles William Bell could still sustain some laughs 14 years later. Was the feature film a verifiably Keaton classic? As one modern day reviewer wrote, "The overall feel of the film is polished farce, and it doesn't sit side by side with Keaton's downplayed, ironic slapstick style very well." But the movie does offer a rare glimpse of the actor's real home. The opulent estate shows why, to keep up with the mortgage payments, he signed with MGM.