Free and Easy (1930) User Reviews

Buster enters the Sound Age - and plays Pagiacci

[theowinthrop · 6/10 · 23 September 2007]

In 1928 Buster Keaton was convinced to sign a contract with MGM in which they would produce his films. As the first film under this contract was THE CAMERAMAN, which is a good Keaton film, it seemed to be a good idea. But Keaton's key man at M-G-M was Joseph Schenck, his brother-in-law. Schenck died. The head of M-G-M, Louis B. Mayer, never liked comedians, whom he felt were there to just be funny with whatever material they were given. As Keaton had family problems (his wife would take away his children in a messy divorce) and a growing drinking problem did not endear Mayer to him at all.

Keaton had specific ideas about the use of sound in movies - he felt that most films were too talky (he was right), and talking should be used sparingly. Sound effects were a better idea. But by 1929 all the leading stars in Hollywood (exceptions included Keaton, Lloyd, Chaplin, Garbo, and Lon Chaney Sr.) had started to turn towards talking films. Some with disastrous results - one, by the way, in this film. Keaton had no problem with his voice (a kind of flat baritone), but it was not something that really added to his planned zaniness.

Mayer could hardly care for Keaton's feelings. He gave him the script for FREE AND EASY as his entry into sound movies. Typically for Mayer he gave Keaton a lousy comedy, with an oddly sad ending.

Throughout his M-G-M films in the early 1930s, Keaton was saddled with characters with the same first name: Elmer. Here he was Elmer Butts, from Gopher City, Kansas. He is sent by that town's chamber of commerce to be the agent for the winner of a beauty contest, Anita Page (as Elvira Plunkett). This leads poor Buster into repeated collisions with Page's battle ax of a mother (Ma Plunkett - played by Trixie Friganza),who liked other overly ambitious star-making mothers ("Mama Rose" in GYPSY comes to mind) can't understand why Elmer is there at all.

On the train to California Elvira meets Larry Mitchell (Robert Montgomery), one of the leading stars at M-G-M. He is quite interested in the young woman, though honorably or not is up in the air (at this time Montgomery played mostly fashionable cads or weaklings in his films). He invites the trio to see the shooting of his current film at M-G-M. It is a costume musical set in a "Ruritanian" setting.

I won't go into all the details of the improbable script here. Keaton does have a few opportunities to show his put-upon situations (looking for a parking spot while he misses a Hollywood premiere he's been invited to); demolishing several film sets and shootings under directors Fred Niblo and Lionel Barrymore, as well as involving him with such figures as actor John Miljan and comedian Karl Dane*. He also tries to influence a less than interested Cecil B. De Mille in his protégée. And such luminaries as Jackie Coogan, William Haines, and William Collier Sr. pop up at the premiere.

(*When I mentioned "disastrous results" due to the coming of sound, I had poor Dane in mind - he eventually shot himself when his once high career as a film comic went under due to his thick Danish accent.)

He's wasted - positively wasted as a seasoning for the wretched plot about whether Montgomery really loves Page beyond a pretty evening of sex. In the end the audience knows Keaton does love Page (despite her mother), but is too shy to fully come out and say it. Instead, in the final moments of a film that is comic, Keaton's heart is left broken (with a degree of irony as he is dressed up like a clown). It is the oddest ending of any film he ever appeared in.

He does sing (two songs - one being the title song which is also a dance). So does Montgomery, whose singing is adequate and no more (it also weakens the film - why waste a star in singing in some ridiculous musical?).

I give the film a total of "6" because I am a fan of Buster Keaton and of Robert Montgomery, and it gives one a rare opportunity to see all those other film figures like Niblo, Barrymore, DeMille, Coogan, Miljan, Haines, Dane,and Collier. I also feel the rest of the film cast is trying (note too the dependable Ed Brophy, as Niblo's assistant who is fed up with Keaton). But except these "plusses" FREE AND EASY is a real waste of talent and time.

Keaton The Schnook

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 2 November 2007]

Free And Easy is another variation on the Merton of the Movies type film where unknown schnook goes to Hollywood and winds up a comedy star. It worked fine for Glenn Hunter on stage and Stu Erwin on the screen. The lead in Free And Easy was a part that was perfect for Eddie Cantor. But Buster Keaton got it and it wasn't quite right for him.

Keaton, known in Hollywood as the Great Stone Face, was one of the greatest pantomimists the screen ever knew. Why you would star someone in a film that has musical numbers, though you would not classify it as a musical is beyond me. That title song which Keaton croaks would have been perfect for Eddie Cantor.

In watching it I thought I recognized the plot of this film. It was part of the story line of Pepe, the great Cantinfas all star production from thirty years later. Keaton is in love with young Anita Page who is the young screen hopeful from his home town. But she's got eyes for the flawed young movie star Robert Montgomery.

Like Pepe, a number of folks on the MGM lot made guest appearances as themselves. One of the most interesting was William Haines who at that time competing with Robert Montgomery for juvenile parts. Haines of course was one of the first film stars outted as gay and his fall was a lucky break for Montgomery's career.

Best in the film is Trixie Friganza, a great vaudeville star who played Page's number. She really harries and harasses poor Keaton. Page has won some kind of contest and for reasons I can't explain the Chamber of Commerce of their hometown has appointed Keaton as her agent and manager. Like they have the right and the power. No wonder Trixie's mad at him.

If you've seen Pepe, you know how this turns out.

Hollywood or Butts

[lugonian · 5/10 · 25 June 2013]

FREE AND EASY (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1930), directed by Edward Sedgwick, like many early sound films, happens to be a musical. And like many early sound films, this one, too, stars one of many from the silent screen era making a transition into the new phase known as "the "talkies." Not counting the all-star musical extravaganza appropriately titled "The Hollywood Revue of 1929" (MGM, 1929), FREE AND EASY marks the talking debut of Buster Keaton. As with so many silent movie comedians, ranging from Harold Lloyd to Harry Langdon being heard on screen for the first time, wondering whether or not their careers would resume in the same capacity as before, only Charlie Chaplin chose to remain silent a little while longer. For Buster, it wasn't how he spoke that slowly declined his promising career, but how the powers that be over at MGM used or misused his talents as both comedian and leading man. The selection of having Keaton's talking debut set mostly inside a movie studio is a sound idea, yet one wonders how the movie in general might have been had it been scripted and completely supervised by Keaton himself.

The basic plot involves Elmer J. Butts (Buster Keaton), a garage owner of Golpher City, Kansas, chosen by the Chamber of Commerce, to act as manager for Elvira Plunkett (Anita Page), winner of the "Miss Gopher City" contest. On their railroad trip to Hollywood, they are escorted by Elvira's overbearing mother (Trixie Friganza) who has a very low opinion of Elmer. Following a farewell committee at the station, Elvira encounters Larry Mitchell (Robert Montgomery), formerly Hymie Schwartz also of Kansas, now motion picture star on his way to attend the premiere of his latest motion picture, "The Love Call" at Grauman's Chinese Theater. Following a series of unexpected mishaps on the MGM lot while movie making is in progress, Elmer somehow is offered a position in the studio while Elvira encounters more than just a possible movie assignment and coping with her mother's constant insults against Elmer.

Song selections by Roy Turk, Fred E. Ahlert and William Kernell include" "It Must Be You" (sung by Robert Montgomery, sequence used in 1974's documentary of MGM Musicals, THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT); "It Must Be You" (reprise), "Penitenary Blues," "Ah King, Ah Queen" (performed by Buster Keaton and Trixie Friganza); "Free and Easy" (sung by Buster Keaton)," "Free and Easy" (sung by chorus); and "It Must Be You."

Though some song interludes weaken the promising concept of the story, FREE AND EASY benefits greatly from its assortment of MGM guest stars appearing as themselves, including that of child star Jackie Coogan, wiseacre comedian William Haines, Dorothy Sebastian (who co-starred opposite Keaton in 1929's SPITE MARRIAGE); Karl Dane in Cave Scene; John Miljan and Gwen Lee in Bedroom Scene. William Collier Sr. Appears acting as master of ceremonies during the motion picture premiere segment. Notable directors participate considerably into the storyline as well, including Fred Niblo; Lionel Barrymore (actor then turned director before returning to acting again); the legendary Cecil B. DeMille and David Burton. A pity that there wasn't consideration for some now prominent names as Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert in cameo appearances as well.

Having watched FREE AND EASY numerous times whether it be on VHS, DVD, or one of many broadcasts from Turner Classic Movies, it's my guess that circulating prints appear to be missing some material mostly during the first half hour. There's really no plot development pertaining to the central characters (though whom they are and their background are briefly mentioned). The film simply opens at a train station with its central characters where the story gets going from there. A train sequence where Elvira talks to her mother about her meeting with actor Larry Mitchell ends abruptly, immediately followed by a movie premiere rather than a logical choice of the trio's arrival in Hollywood and what occurs next. Some sources list this at 106 minutes while other clock it to the current length of 93 minutes.

As much as some may claim the Keaton comedies for MGM cannot compare to those he starred in during the silent era, FREE AND EASY does contain some laughable moments, including one where his Elmer drives to a premiere but is unable to find a place to park his car until miles away near a cow pasture; and another where Elmer tries desperately memorizing his lines for a movie, driving director Fred Niblo and assistant director (Edward Brophy) to a point of mental exhaustion. Had FREE AND EASY been remade in the 1940s, chances are its leading players might have been Red Skelton, Gloria Graham, Frank Sinatra and Marjorie Main in place of Keaton, Page, Montgomery and Friganza.

Final notes: Television prints for FREE AND EASY were changed to "Easy Go," so not to confuse with MGM's non-remake 1941 comedy FREE AND EASY starring Robert Cummings and Judith Anderson. Though TNT and TCM formerly presented this long forgotten Keaton comedy as "Easy Go" in the past, the original title and has been restored. While Keaton played Elmer J. Butts again in WHAT, NO BEER! (MGM, 1933), whether it's the same character or another bearing the same name played by the same actor is anyone's free and easy guess. (***)

Keaton's Starring Talkie Debut

[drednm · 12 April 2005]

Not really that bad but very bizarre. Buster Keaton in his starring talkie debut had talent and charm to spare, but the film is so weird. MGM had taken control of Keaton as had the Talmadge family, but he's game here as a hayseed manager accompanying Miss Gopher City (Anita Page) to Hollywood along with her stage door mother (Trixie Friganza). Some really funny stuff among the not-so-funny. MGM tosses in some guests stars like William Haines, Robert Montgomery, Lionel Barrymore, Dorothy Sebastian, Karl Dane, Gwen Lee, John Miljan, William Collier, and directors like Fred Niblo and Cecl B. DeMille, who chats up yes men about his future leading lady: Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Marion Davies, or Bebe Daniels. Lots of MGM name dropping and studio in jokes. Keaton is actually very good in his transition to sound, but the film meanders away and around the bend. He's surprisingly good in a dance number with an excellent young woman (is she Marion Shilling?) to "Free and Easy," which I like more every time I see it. Keaton could DANCE! And Ann Dvorak is in the chorus. Friganza steals several scenes. Page is beautiful. Montgomery gets his voice dubbed in a singing number. Niblo is hilarious as himself, but Buster Keaton, the great and wonderful silent comic, is the reason to watch Free and Easy. He's funny and light and tragic all at once. Was there anyone EVER like Buster Keaton? Around the time of filming he was being screwed by ex-wife Natalie Talmadge and her family as well as by MGM--the same studio that screwed William Haines, John Gilbert, Lillian Gish, Bessie Love, Anita Page and scores of others. See this film. Give it a chance and just watch BUSTER KEATON.

What you think of it depends on your perspective...

[AlsExGal · 7/10 · 13 June 2010]

If you are looking for a study in early talking film and how MGM simply did not know how to utilize Buster Keaton, this is your movie. If you're looking for competition with Buster's great silents of the 20's look away and elsewhere. It's a 9 if you are in the first category, a 5 if you are in the second. I average the two together to get my rating of 7.

The story is a simple one - Anita Page is a small-town beauty contest winner from the Midwest - Elvira Plunkett. She and her mother (Trixie Friganza) along with Elvira's agent, Elmer Butts (Keaton) are taking the train out west where Elvira will seek a career in movies ... with no contacts ... and no name recognition. What follows are their adventures on the train and in Hollywood once they arrive at their destination. Probably nothing would have happened if not for the fact that Elvira and her mother wind up running into movie star Larry Mitchell (Robert Montgomery) on the train. Larry takes a shine to Elvira and thus gets her invited to his studio - MGM of course - for a look at how films are made.

This is the fascinating part. You get to see the actual MGM movie factory during the transition to sound. You see a completely inane and awful musical number - maybe intentionally so but I doubt it - that is exhibit A in why audiences rebelled against the early musicals. Poor Robert Montgomery is forced to dress up like a cossack and sing a duet. As Buster is chased through MGM by security guards you get a look at Lionel Barrymore directing a film - he did so for just a few years at MGM - complete with the camera blimps that allowed the cameras to emerge from the static booths and enabled more fluid motion in movies. You also get to see some of MGM's prominent directors of the time in conference, including Cecil B. De Mille who was employed there briefly at the dawn of sound.

Now for the bad part. Buster is forced into a grueling "who's on first" kind of verbal comedy scene at the middle of the film that simply didn't suit him, is generally depicted as a bumbler when he had always been the innovative problem solver in his silent films, and during the finale musical number his beautiful face is covered in ridiculous clown makeup. The finale musical number is actually pretty good with a catchy tune and Keaton dancing about like a pro, doing his familiar "Highland Fling" if you've seen some of his silents. However, at the very end of the number he emerges as a puppet on a string - emblematic of Keaton's career at MGM. At least the studio let Keaton speak his first film words in front of a train - his favorite film prop.

If you see this make sure you watch the documentary "So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton & MGM". It really helps put Keaton's MGM career in context and explains, as narrator James Karen says, "how Buster Keaton came to MGM as one of the greatest comics in the whole world, and ended up being regarded as totally unemployable just five years later."

Well worth watching!!

[rap-39 · 7/10 · 13 February 2011]

The first 2/3 of the flick has Buster Keaton rambling around movie sets, pretty much getting into trouble. While the last roughly 1/3 of the movie focusing on the "Free and Easy" dance presentation, very entertaining (at least to this writer). If you are at all interested in the 1930's movies then this is a must have for your collection, and you WILL enjoy it!

Incidentally, it's easy to see why background dancer, Ann Dvorak went from an 18 year old dancer in this film to co-starring in a major movie (Scarface) only two years later. She really captures your attention – a beautiful gal!!

Regarding the singer/dancer listed as "Marion Shilling", IMDb indicates that Marion Shilling is the "Singer and Dancer in 'The Free and Easy' Number (uncredited)". The girl dancing with Keaton most decidedly is not Marion Shilling.

"Free and Easy" was released March 22, 1930. I have a number of DVD's featuring Marion Shilling in co-starring roles: "Shadow of the Law'with William Powell (released a couple months later on June 6, 1930). I also have DVD's of Marion Shilling in "Rio Rattler" (released Aug 1, 1935) and "I'll Name the Murderer" – Jan. 27, 1936. The dancer with Keaton in "Free and Easy" bears little resemblance to the Marion Shilling that co-starred in the DVD's I list above.

In his review of Free and Easy, Kidboots states: "Elmer is teamed with a cute dancer (Estelle Moran)". This may well be; however I could find no movies or pictures of an actress named Estelle Moran (or "Estelle Morgan") from that period. So the identity of the singer/dancer remains unclear – except it is not Marion Shilling. Perhaps if you listed the dancer as "Unknown" it would be more accurate.

Extremely disappointing

[km_dickson · 3/10 · 9 September 2005]

Extremely disappointing for fans of Buster Keaton's silent films, or fans of comedy in general. Keaton' first talkie found him playing a small town talent agent who brings the hopeful young starlet, Elvira Plunkett (Anita Page), to Hollywood and, of course, gets into a lot of trouble along the way. Keaton himself is funny in parts, but the movie drags and the comedy is too slowly paced. The film gets more enjoyable in the last twenty minutes when Keaton becomes a surprise star and is thrown into some entertaining musical numbers. The numbers have nothing to do with the story, but that's almost a relief. Trixie Friganza also delivers some good moments as Elvira's controlling mother.

Buster Keaton's First Talkie

[springfieldrental · 7/10 · 9 August 2022]

Buster Keaton was looking forward to talking pictures since everyone agreed his voice was a good fit for the new technology. He wanted to make his final silent movie, 1929's "Spite Marriage," as his talkie debut. But MGM producers had a different opinion. The studio kept the 1929 movie as a silent while scheduling his March 1930 "Free And Easy" as Keaton's first sound picture. He plays Elmer Butts, a gas station attendant dragged by the winner of a local beauty pageant, Miss Gopher, Elvira (Anita Page), and her overbearing mother (Trixie Friganza) to chaperon them as they travel cross country to be screen tested by MGM in Hollywood.

Unlike the majority of his past films that portrayed his characters consistently emerging as the hero and winning his gals in the end despite a series of obstacles, in "Free And Easy," he's the smacked around throughout the movie looking like a loser. To add insult to injury, Keaton finds himself dressed up as a fat clown prancing on stage in a lengthy finale musical number. Buster called this sequence the most ridiculous thing he had ever done. As writer Robert Sherwood wrote "Buster Keaton, trying to imitate a standard musical comedy clown, is no longer Buster Keaton and no longer funny." To rub his character's humiliation deep into his face, MGM writers had Keaton attached to strings acting as a marionette puppet in the clown suit. Buster's biographer describes the scene symbolically as MGM's treatment to the once brilliant comic. But the studio was happy with the theater receipts. "Free And Easy" became a bigger financial success than most of his silent classics.

MGM's First Snuff Film

[Shelly_Servo3000 · 2/10 · 15 August 2002]

If you're interested in watching a major movie studio kill a comic genius' career, then "Free and Easy" is for you. If you want to watch a movie that makes you seeth with anger, while watching your favorite star sink lower and lower into an alcoholic haze, then by all means, watch "Free and Easy". However, if you want to be entertained, by all means stay away from this movie. Its only redeeming qualities are hearing the voices of Buster Keaton and Bill Haines, and the amusing (in the lowest possible way) musical number of "Oh King" at the end. But beware the clown costume.

early talkie for Keaton, Page, Montgomery

[ksf-2 · 6/10 · 4 September 2007]

One of the early talkies for Buster Keaton. In Free and Easy, local girl Elvira Plunkett (Anita Page) heads to Hollywood with Mom (Trixie Friganza) and manager Elmer Butts(Keaton) to break into Hollywood. Several folks have mentioned that this isn't as good as Keaton's earlier works, but in many of those, he had written and directed his own works, and he does neither one in "Free and Easy". In addition, it is was one of the earliest talkie movies for Hollywood, so I'm sure the big shots were just worried about how the sound would come over to worry too much about the plot. They even use caption-cards in several places. Also has several Busby Berkeley type musical numbers staged by Sammy Lee. Several running gags - Keaton, Elvira's manager, is always being denied entrance to trains and studios; the loud, overbearing mother, and of course, Keaton's own physical comedy. Robert Montgomery is Larry Mitchell, fighting Keaton for Elvira, in one of his first starring roles. Some great cameos by all the stars of the day. Also keep in mind this was pre Hayes Code, so everything doesn't have to stay prim and proper... including when Buster Keaton says "I kissed her, right on the back porch!" Not a bad film -- Definitely worth watching!

The question is -- why Keaton?

[Igenlode Wordsmith · 4/10 · 9 March 2006]

As a twist on the old 'innocent makes it big in the movies' theme, it's not a bad plot: a pretty blonde beauty queen from a sleepy provincial town comes to Hollywood in the chance of a lifetime... only, instead of Elvira winding up as a star, it is her Olympian harridan of a mother and incompetent booby of a would-be manager who end up with contracts -- as comic relief.

Trixie Friganza provides a wonderful performance as the stage-door mother from hell, with the bonus of some very attractive costume routines in the film-within-a-film. Anita Page is naive and sweetly shy as the unambitious Elvira, establishing sympathy and character in a relatively small part. Robert Montgomery is competent but unremarkable as the caddish movie star she falls for, and who ultimately repents and offers her the prize of every good girl's virtue: marriage.

But the question one is inevitably left asking concerns the casting of Buster Keaton as 'Elmer Butts', the shambling idiot. Nominally, this is a "Buster Keaton Production"; but in fact, his character is probably the biggest reason not to watch it, since most of the time Elmer is just embarrassing. Once you hide 'the great stone face' under sad-clown makeup, so that he can't use it to act with, and conceal the trained grace and expression of his body under tent-like trousers or padded tights, so that he can't act with that either, and then give him semi-moronic dialogue to recite so that he can't even act with his voice -- you have to ask yourself: why hire the talents of Keaton, of all people, in the first place?

Presumably, given a scene in which the character gets repeatedly hit in the face and flung to the ground by a succession of muscular ladies, it helps if you employ an actor who can take a fall without getting hurt. Keaton manages to work in a few trademark variations on the basic tumble during this tedious sequence, and elsewhere in the film there are a couple of acrobatic moments of note: when Elmer launches himself straight into a horizontal tackle at neck-height at Elvira's seducer, and the illusory dive into a shallow tank of water. In the final dance sequence he forgets to shamble, and gives us a glimpse of crisp vaudeville steps despite the obliterating handicap of the costume. Otherwise, the part doesn't appear to demand his particular skills at all.

The song and dance numbers raised a few -- I suspect not all intentional -- laughs, but tended to drag, an ongoing problem. Many of the dialogue scenes outstay their welcome, including the seduction sequence with its repeated cuts back to the chase, and almost all Elmer's allegedly amusing stand-up exchanges: I suspect you could shorten at least ten minutes out of this film and it would only be an improvement.

Comedy-wise, it's effective from time to time. I was surprised into a few genuine laughs, including a couple where Keaton gets to slip in a dry sotto-voce aside -- an acting style that would clearly have suited him much better than the verbose mumbling and misunderstandings he has to labour through in this script. I'm not familiar enough with Buster Keaton's voice to tell how much of the slurred delivery here was produced for 'comic' effect and how much was his natural vocal range... but frankly, in a number of scenes he sounds quite simply drunk, an effect that can't possibly have been wanted!

The ending, meanwhile, appears to lack effective resolution, and left me somewhat up in the air as to what message it was supposed to convey. Elvira marries her actor, as Elmer's stumbling attempts to confess his own love inadvertently contrive to bring together the estranged pair; but the film, mis-paced as ever, doesn't end at this point. Instead Elvira, still innocently unaware of Elmer's feelings for her, kisses him in gratitude, laughs at him, and sends him back out in front of the cameras to be comic (which, as ever, he fails in any noticeable degree to achieve)... and then we have yet another musical number, with the two love-birds caught up in each other's eyes, and Keaton just standing there immobile, grotesquely painted and (presumably) heartbroken.

Is it supposed to be funny? Is it trying for some ironic depth hitherto unheralded by the rest of the film? Are we supposed to feel sorry for Elmer -- and if so, just what sort of a comedy ending is that?

(Plus, an unpalatable point: if one of your actors has a mutilated forefinger, then don't have him fidgeting with the stump throughout in the foreground of a dialogue scene! In Buster's own films, spot-the-finger is an endearing game to be played by those in the know, with a complicit wink; here, it's painfully obvious.)

There were moments, at the beginning, when I thought this film might have potential; it was never going to be a classic, but it might have been an unpretentious contemporary spoof. The script needs tightening up throughout, often wasting its laughs by labouring the point instead of cutting out a line or two in favour of a reaction shot. But the outcome is basically doomed from the moment that the plot starts dressing the miscast Keaton up: he might just have carried Elmer off as a deadpan role in ordinary clothing, but in third-rate pier end farce he hasn't got a hope. And no amount of proclaiming on screen that the result is the biggest thing in comedy is going to help.

Buster Keaton's Talkie Debut

[Ron Oliver · 10/10 · 10 August 2000]

A FREE AND EASY, hapless young man escorts Miss Gopher City, Kansas & her unspeakable mother out west to Hollywood, where they hope to make her a big time movie star. Fate, however, in the shape of a handsome movie actor, intervenes...

With the end of the Silent Era, and Keaton no longer in control of his own career, FREE AND EASY was to be his first talking picture. While certainly not a classic, it has a certain small charm of its own and Keaton does a valiant job to provide both laughs & pathos. It is really not fair to compare Keaton's sound films with his silent masterpieces. They were two very different art forms.

It is great fun to watch Buster stumble about the MGM lot, leaving chaos in his wake wherever he goes. Although there are awkward moments of staging, due largely to the restrictions of the microphone, Keaton's genius still shines through. He is given wonderful support from mammoth vaudeville veteran Trixie Friganza, as the ghastly stage mother. With her booming voice & facile face, she is able to steal scenes even from Keaton. They are hilarious together in their `Oh King! Oh Queen!' musical number.

Lovely Anita Page, as Miss Gopher City, gets small chance to do anything here besides look lovely. But Robert Montgomery, as the movie actor, gets to show-off some of the charm that would very soon make him a major star.

Verisimilitude is added to Keaton's chaotic adventures in Hollywood by peppering the scenes with real celebrities from the era appearing as themselves. Movie mavens should have fun spotting them: directors Cecil B. DeMille, Fred Niblo & Lionel Barrymore, as well as Jackie Coogan, Karl Dane, Dorothy Sebastian, John Miljan, Gwen Lee and 1930's top box office male, William Haines. That's Edward Brophy as the Stage Manager.

Like Chardonnay When You're Expecting Merlot

[Better_Sith_Than_Sorry · 7/10 · 1 April 2024]

Boy are there a lot of negative, misguided, hateful reviews here. And boy could I not disagree more.

Plot In a Nutshell: A shy talent manager (Buster Keaton) causes havoc at MGM's studios while trying to find a job there for the woman he secretly loves (Anita Page).

Why I rated it a '7': Well for starters, I found it very entertaining. I laughed a lot through the first 2/3 of the film. The last third gets more serious and a few musical numbers are thrown in for good measure, with less opportunity for comedy. But overall I thought it was a solid film.

It can't be ignored, though, that most of the reviews here for this film are extremely negative in nature. Which would lead one to think that this film is terrible. Well, this is all subjective, right, but if one looks below the surface, you can see why there is a lot of (undeserved) negativity.

This is a 'talkie' - a film with sound, something still relatively new in 1930. All of the films Buster Keaton made before this were silent. Silent films are quite a different animal from talkies. It seems MGM was looking to exploit this new technology and wasn't interested in using Keaton in the same ways Keaton had been performing for the last 10 years - namely, a lot of incredible physical comedy where Keaton exhibited impressive dexterity when performing his own stunts.

This was not to be one of those films. It didn't have to be, because now there was sound. Now you can have a lot more dialogue-driven comedy, and that's what this film has. Oh sure, there are still bits of physical comedy, but nothing really like the death-defying stunts Keaton was known for in the 1920s. And to that I say....so what? This is just a different type of comedy. Watching it, I couldn't help but think of the early Marx Brothers films. In the scenes where Keaton is running loose and causing havoc all over the MGM lot, imagine Harpo doing the same thing. It works.

But there are many reviewers here crying in their milk because the Buster Keaton they wanted and expected to see isn't here. And for that ridiculous and childish reason, they then give this film a terrible grade and tell you it's awful. Well, I beg to differ. I thought it was just fine. It's like getting a glass of chardonnay when you expected merlot. Does that mean the chardonnay stinks? No. Not at all. But you wanted it to be something it wasn't, and so now you're going to complain about it and say it's bad? That's just silly and immature.

This film totally works as an early 1930s dialogue-driven comedy. If approached in that respect, you really should not be disappointed, at all.

7/10. Would I watch again (Y/N)?: Yes.

a sad end for Buster

[kidboots · 5/10 · 7 October 2008]

I suppose, in 1930, people thought that it would be hilarious to have Buster Keaton lose the girl to Robert Montgomery and look bleakly into the camera for a fade out. Nearly 80 years on it is not funny but very sad. For the first time Buster didn't end up with the girl (and I so hoped he would). Even though he was the star, he ended up as Robert Montgomery's amiable side kick. On the plus side it is an invaluable look at Hollywood life behind the scenes.

Elvira Plunkett (the beautiful Anita Page, who didn't have much to do) has won a "Miss Gopher Prairie" beauty contest and is on her way to make good in Hollywood, along with her battleaxe mother (Trixie Friganza). Elmer Butts (Buster Keaton) Elvira's manager, is in charge of tickets and money but due to a mix up (he is in the caboose and can't get through the train) they are almost thrown off. They meet Larry (Robert Montgomery) a big Hollywood star who is visiting his home town.

Elvira's party attend a premiere at which Jackie Coogan gives a little speech. William Collier Snr. is the Master of Ceremonies and William Haines is also in the audience. There is a funny bit where Mr. Haines is upstaged by Elmer but appreciates the joke. Elvira and her mother are invited on set and watch a pretty appalling number "It Must Be You" featuring Robert Montgomery and a chorus of dancing soldiers.

Meanwhile Elmer is trying to get through the studio gates. The prolonged chase is the funniest sequence in the film. He accidentally detonates a mine in a scene with Dorothy Sebastian and Karl Dane - he crashes a conversation between Cecil B. DeMille and some others on who the leading lady should be on their next movie. Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo are names suggested, Elmer throws in Elvira Plunkett. The funniest gag is when Lionel Barrymore is directing John Miljan and Gwen Lee in a dramatic bedroom scene - Elmer, thinking the scene is real, comes out of the closet hands raised. "Where did you come from!!!!" "Gopher Prairie". Everyone seems genuinely surprised.

After wrecking the chorus line - Elmer is given a job. The gags end there and the film turns into a conventional romance between Elvira and Larry. Larry and Elmer find they knew each other when kids and Larry then gets Elmer the comedy lead in the song "The Free and Easy". It is a very catchy song and Elmer is teamed with a cute dancer (Estelle Moran). It is pretty hard to miss a much prettier dancer in the front row of the chorus - Ann Dvorak. Keaton is a really good dancer - it may be because of his acrobatic training.

Although Elmer is now the comedy lead he has lost Elvira to Larry - he doesn't even get the girl in the dance. Poor Buster!!!!

Only Recommended.

A treasure trove of footage featuring Hollywood & MGM in '30

[GaryWang · 6 October 2004]

Buster Keaton's talents sadly are not put to very good use here. He appears to be sufficiently alert, however the producer and writers have given him nothing to work with and there is clearly no opportunity for his trademark expertise at improvisation. Sad-eyed Buster's excessively shrill nemesis is a stage mother from Hell who steals all of their scenes together through sheer brute force by overacting, rendering Mr. Keaton's character pathetic and perpetually downtrodden. Then again, the viewer is also subjected to Robert Montgomery crooning so there really is plenty of blame to go around here from a production standpoint. Nevertheless, this is an important movie that features unique and valuable insights into Hollywood soon after the industry's changeover to sound. Billy Haines appears in a cameo as himself and he says a few words before wending his way down to the reserved seating section far forward in the Grauman's Chinese Theater--and the camera follows him! The POV includes panoramic scenes of the interior, as well as a close-up look at the Red Carpet outside of the theater as the glamorous stars of the day drove up, alighted from their magnificent cars and had a few words to say into the microphone before heading inside, framed by shots of the crowd that has gathered outside to witness the spectacle. Jackie Coogan is featured here as himself, and the story soon shifts to the MGM Studio where we are afforded further behind-the-scenes eyefuls of a sound stage with all the trappings, outbuildings, gated entrances and eavesdropping on the likes of Fred Niblo and Cecil B. DeMille as they candidly discuss Garbo, Crawford and Shearer! I have always prized MGM's The Jean Harlow Story, starring Jean Harlow--er, make that BOMBSHELL for the unique and rare glimpses that it provides of the Metro-Golden-Mayer studio circa 1933, but this movie was made three years earlier and the storyline is set at the studio. It is therefore particularly instructive for anyone who is similarly intrigued by sustained peeks at real, undesigning people and authentic settings of historical significance in Hollywood from some of the earliest days of its glorious Golden Age. There is some vintage lightning in a bottle here in this Keaton clunker, for anyone who cares to a take a look.

Not bad. Not good, either. Not Keaton's fault.

[zetes · 6/10 · 30 July 2012]

Having seen a small handful of Buster Keaton's talkies, I personally don't believe the actor is at fault for his failure to stay popular during the talkie era. I don't even necessarily think it's the films themselves, because I like several of them (The Passionate Plumber, in particular, is one of my favorite Keaton films). I just think audiences at the time felt they were old fashioned relics, and thus the movies have faded from memory. That said, Free and Easy isn't one of Keaton's better movies. It has its moments, and Keaton himself doesn't do anything wrong, but it's poorly cobbled together and, with the primitive sound recording, it's difficult to understand the dialogue (a recurring problem when watching the talkies of this year). The film offers a cool view of Hollywood at the time. Keaton plays a small-town manager who is accompanying a talent contest winner (Anita Page) and her overprotective mother (Trixie Friganza) to Hollywood. All three of them immediately get lost in the bustle of Hollywood. We see a lot of cool, behind-the-scenes type stuff, and meet stars like Jackie Coogan and director Fred Niblo. The problem is, little of it is funny, and there are a lot of lame musical numbers inserted (although Keaton does have one killer, comic dance near the end). There are some very funny moments, though, like when a director is supposedly giving Keaton simple directions on acting, but they keep getting more and more complex (the look on his face speaks more clearly than his voice ever could). This was Buster's first talkie vehicle, and of course it was a flop.

Buster Keaton and Anita Page in early sound film trifle...

[Doylenf · 5/10 · 30 August 2007]

BUSTER KEATON and ANITA PAGE are saddled with some lame dialog and tacky situations in this hokey comedy about an aspiring beauty contest winner (Page) who travels to Hollywood with her mother in hope of becoming America's next motion picture sweetheart. It's a look at early Hollywood and for that reason alone it's fairly entertaining.

ROBERT MONTGOMERY is featured as Larry Mitchell, a movie star who takes an interest in Page after a chance meeting on the train to Hollywood. Keaton is his usual bumbling self but the script is a mess with dialog that is painfully unfunny. Nobody can really save the comedy/musical from being way less than ordinary. Keaton with stilted lines is less funny than when he's pantomiming it up in silent films.

Robert Montgomery is dubbed for a couple of awkward musical numbers, all done in the early style of MGM talkies before a word like "finesse" could be assigned to them. The tinny sound recording is no help.

Best excuse for watching is to see how things improved rapidly in the late thirties and forties, but this one has to be regarded as strictly a curiosity piece for fans of Buster Keaton and early sound films.

Painfully unfunny in an amateurish kind of way for a film from MGM. Interesting only for a glimpse of early Hollywood pioneering.

Dismal and degrading

[Chrissie · 2/10 · 10 October 2009]

I only watched "Free and Easy" out of the same kind of morbid curiosity that makes people slow down to gape at car wrecks. And it is indeed a wreck -- the wreck of Buster Keaton's career.

Buster Keaton liked to take a strong beginning and ending and let the middle work itself out as he and his crew played with the sets and props. "Free and Easy" provides a premise Buster could have worked with: Bungling hayseed Elmer Butz is assigned to manage the Hollywood career of hopeful prairie blossom Miss Gopher City (a girl he secretly loves), but she is actually an unassuming and modest maiden being pushed by her battle-axe of a stage mother. The ending -- in which Buster gets a Hollywood contract but loses the girl -- was a departure from typical Keaton, but as we saw in "Cops," losing the girl was something Keaton could twist into a dark, shuddering laugh. There was plenty there for Keaton to work with. It's a shame nobody let him.

At every turn, the Keaton fan sees missed opportunities, starting with the opening scene in which Elmer ends up on the caboose of a train. Only in the perverse machinations of the MGM system could Buster Keaton + Train = Zilch. It's like presenting Chico Marx with a piano but not letting him touch a single key. MGM didn't even milk Keaton + Train - Stunts = Zilch for the irony. It's as if they were totally unaware that Buster had ever done a thing with trains in his entire career.

The chase -- which critics inexplicably single out as somehow a bit of gold this celluloid junk heap -- falls totally flat. MGM never really allows Keaton to run, dodge, or leap. The guard who is chasing him, in fact, gets the two most vivid physical moments. The idea of Buster Keaton being pursued through a movie studio was ripe with possibilities, but instead each of the scenes he stumbles into is over-elaborately set up when an economy of set-up would have been funnier, completely breaking the rhythm and pace of what could have been an exciting, exhilarating romp in Buster's able hands.

Then there's the matter of Buster himself. Not only is his nimble, athletic body not put to much use, it's obscured in padded tights and enormous clown pants. Though Buster dances adeptly in the contrived musical scene, the costume obscures and upstages his performance. In another move that leaves the viewer wondering if anybody at MGM had actually watched Buster's silent work, his richly but subtly expressive face is obscured with bizarre makeup, effectively obliterating his large, soulful eyes right at the most potentially poignant part of the entire film, in which he inadvertently delivers the girl he loves into the arms of his rival.

Keaton manages to slip in a few tiny moments -- catching his hat behind his back when it falls off, skidding to a bemused stop when he momentarily shakes his pursuers -- but virtually every other possibility slips by unexploited. The mind boggles at the sheer scale of the gap between what MGM made and what Keaton could have done with the same raw material.

The finale involves turning Keaton into an enormous clown puppet, jerked about by thick, unbreakable strings. As biographer Edward McPherson noted, "the story concerns a man who goes to MGM, is made into a misunderstood clown, then has his heart broken." "Free and Easy" could serve as a tragic metaphorical documentary about Keaton's career.

Costly and Laboured

[crispy_comments · 2/10 · 10 January 2006]

"Free And Easy" was interesting to see for it's backstage glimpses into the MGM studio, and for the amusing musical sequences - including a chance to laugh at Robert Montgomery's singing, in a scene you might recognize from "That's Entertainment". But overall this is a pretty bad movie. The story's slim, the dialogue's far from sparkling, and the jokes fall flat. It was depressing to see Buster Keaton given such weak material. His hangdog, sadsack expression never alters - and I don't think he was acting!

I must say I was surprised that Buster didn't get the girl in the end. When Montgomery's character was revealed to be a cad who lures naive starlets up to his apartment, I thought for sure that the girl would end up with her "faithful friend" instead. But no, the cad reforms and somehow we're supposed to believe they fell in love sometime when the cameras weren't on them or something. What the heck? Maybe I've seen too many movies where the less-glamorous-but-nice girl wins the guy once her rival is revealed to be a bitch. Didn't the less-conventionally-handsome-but-nice *guy* ever win in movies back then?

I was dumbfounded at the conclusion of "Free And Easy" - with the camera lingering on brokenhearted Buster's miserable mug (such PAIN in his eyes!) as he contemplates the cruel irony of unintentionally bringing together his rival and the girl he loves. What a way to end an otherwise frivolous comedy! Suddenly it's a tragedy. Then again, the "comedy" is so terribly unfunny that it's all rather tragic anyway, isn't it?

Of historical value, but comically speaking, it's a BIG let down

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 6 September 2007]

As the sound age began, Hollywood bigwigs had no idea what to do with their biggest silent stars. Chaplin, wisely, did not jump into talkies--choosing to take his time making his kind of pictures. As a result, his first sound film, CITY LIGHTS, is considered a classic. Harold Lloyd made some very, very good sound films but the public reaction was surprisingly rather underwhelming (FEET FIRST and MOVIE CRAZY were wonderful and should be remembered). Of the big three silent comedians, Buster Keaton made, in hindsight, the worst career moves at this time--allowing MGM to put him into vehicles that in no way played to his strengths as a comedian.

In this film, FREE AND EASY, much of the film is a musical!!! A musical for a wonderful visual and very physical comedian?! And, unfortunately, it got much worse during the 1930s--as MGM paired him with Jimmy Durante--who the the complete opposite of Keaton in every way. Keaton was quiet, sweet and physically adept, while Durante was loud, brash and just plain annoying! Why, oh why did Keaton allow this to happen?! Why did VERBAL humor come to predominate in his films when this was by far his weakest point as an actor? Oh, I guess I should stop complaining and just address this film.

FREE AND EASY was a very odd film because unlike his earlier starring roles, he was just one of many characters in the film and far less of the movie's focus was on him. Instead, a plot involving Anita Page (as "Miss Gopher Falls") and her mother as they travel to Hollywood is the main thrust of the film--and Keaton is just along for the ride. Later, naturally, the film involves much more of Keaton, but for about the first third, he was definitely a secondary character.

When in Hollywood, Miss Page met up with an aspiring young actor (Robert Montgomery--who, unlike the other Hollywood stars and directors does NOT play himself but a fictional star). This part of the film I liked best, as there were may behind the scenes clips where you got to see some great actors in seemingly casual scenes (such as William Haines, Lionel Barrymore and Jackie Coogan). Additionally, super-important directors like Fred Niblo (who directed many of the great early MGM films) and Cecil B. DeMille were on hand. Unfortunately, while these scenes were very interesting to film fans like myself, they weren't all that funny.

As for the rest of the film, it was very disappointing because there just weren't many laughs. Plus, placing Keaton in the musical portion was sad indeed. His Pagliacci-style character with sad makeup just seemed pathetic and overly based in pathos--which was Chaplin's style, not Keaton's. The ending was in many ways also a knockoff of Chaplin's THE CIRCUS, as Keaton professes his love but loses the girl. To make matters worse, this wasn't set up well at all--and his confession seemed to come completely out of left field.

The bottom line is that this film was NOT Keaton but was like another person stuck in Buster's body. While it's a pleasant enough film, that's all it is--no magic and nothing to remember.

Slow and Dreadful!

[cwgallagher · 28 March 2003]

Keaton had been able to maintain some control over his first two films at MGM,which were his last silents,but the studio foisted this TURKEY on him,and as it was a financial winner he lost any say over his final six films for the studio. This is perhaps the most leaden film Keaton ever made! It is incredibly slow and dull,with only minimal patches of action ,and nothing really funny for Buster to do. The dance numbers performed by the chubbiest dance line I've ever seen,are incredibly bad! It's interesting to compare them to the ones in "Speak Easily" (perhaps his best MGM sound film.) One can understand Buster's drinking and depression after making something as bad as this!

Crime by a major studio against major talent

[morrisonhimself · 4/10 · 2 December 2008]

Buster Keaton changed studios but should have found someone who knew how to make Buster Keaton movies.

There is a Hollywood cliché that no one ever set out to make a bad movie (except perhaps Mel Brooks), but it's hard to believe no one could foretell how terrible this movie would be.

Great actors, including Keaton, Robert Montgomery, Anita Page, and the unknown today Trixie Friganza, try very hard, but the script is so scrambled, it makes almost no sense.

Bad as it is, it is interesting for some of the cameo appearances by some major stars, and to see that the athletic and acrobatic Keaton could make even the worst scripts occasionally enjoyable.

Not "easy" to get through

[MissSimonetta · 4/10 · 16 December 2012]

Free and Easy was the first film in which the legendary comedian Buster Keaton spoke. In spite of what others say, his voice suits him and had he still been independent of the studio system, I believe he would have made the transition from silent films to talkies quite well. Alas, he was not independent of the studio system at this point in his career and thus had no control over the films he was obliged to make. Had he had such control, there was no way Keaton would have ever made a film as dismally unfunny as Free and Easy.

I'll try to give a plot summary: an idiot named Elmer is manager to an aspiring actress named Elvira. He accompanies her and her overbearing mother to Hollywood in the hopes that he can make the girl a star. They meet a matinée idol named Larry, who takes a liking to Elvira, which irks Elmer since he's in love with her as well. In between useless cameos and gaudy music numbers, Elvira never even gets a screen test, Elmer runs around the lot like a moron and somehow lands a contract, and then stars opposite Elvira's mother in a stagey "comic opera". Larry attempts to seduce Elvira; the plan backfires when she discovers he has no intentions of marrying her and she leaves him, however, they're both still madly in love (?!) and Larry changes his ways. He proposes marriage to Elvira, and she accepts, breaking old Elmer's heart in two. The final shot lingers on his sad, heartbroken face.

I would say this is the worst of the talkies he made with MGM in the early 1930s. While he gave a worse performance in the infamous What! No Beer (1933), at least that film had an actual plot and structure. Free and Easy meanders from unfunny scene to unfunny scene, whether they be filled with lame verbal humor, needless musical numbers, or Elmer bumbling about the set. It's all dreadfully boring.

And don't get me started on that insipid ending! The film is nothing but an idiotic farce all the way through, right until we get to the end, then it decides to go Chaplin on us by attempting to drench Elmer in pathos. It's like ending Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant's character getting mauled by the leopard and having him die in Katharine Hepburn's arms. It makes no sense whatsoever and does not mesh with the rest of the film.

Definitely a skip unless you're a huge Keaton fan, and even then, you're only likely to watch it once.

Buster should have stayed "silent" like Chaplin did.

[maxcellus46 · 1/10 · 10 January 2006]

This is certainly not a "Buster Keaton" movie per say. This mush of a film is yet another perfect example of when the "front office boys", who have no real talent themselves except how to calculate costs and profits in their tiny minds, mess around and essentially sabotage an otherwise brilliant comedian and his work. Louis B. Mayer, as it is well known, had absolutely no sense of humor or appreciation for others who did. He was a "money man", constantly worried about profit margins and box office returns. Nuts to the genius he had working for him, as the Marx Brothers realized for themselves about six years later when they came to MGM. "Free & Easy" is anything but. It helped to cost Buster his reputation as a creative force and certainly does not appear to have been an easy script for him to endure. He is presented as a buffoon of a man who is merely a doormat for the world. Nothing like his persona in his own artistically controlled shorts and features where he ends up on the plus side of whatever adversity he's faced. Apparently, as with all comedians in this situation, he had a contractual obligation to be filled and he filled it to the best of his ability, even though obviously constrained and repressed from any valuable input. Ironically, the critics at the time actually preferred this type of Buster to his own persona that he had originally created and the box office apparently did too. Who in the world knows why? Chaplin never succumbed to outside pressure and was always on top. So why didn't this work for Keaton? This picture is a travesty of talent wasted on an inane script with poor musical numbers and a juvenile Robert Montgomery. Only watch this out of morbid curiosity and then go back to something like "The General" or "The Cameraman" and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.

Definitely not Buster's finest hour...

[Shemp-10 · 1/10 · 29 August 1999]

Disappointing talkie from one of the screen's finest comedians -- this could possibly be his worst. It's hard to believe that renowned comedy writer Al Boasberg was responsible for this turkey...Keaton fans: BEWARE!