User Reviews

As you would expect, a film starring established Buster Keaton, up and coming Jimmy Durante, and, much in demand, sexy blond Thelma Todd, is bound to be a comedy: not the greatest for any of them, but reasonably entertaining, for the most part. Actually, there is another blond costar, in Ruth Selwyn, who serves as the wholesome blond entertainer Keaton falls in love with. In contrast, Thelma is a wild, gold-digging, speakeasy entertainer. Whereas Ruth is present as a friend of Buster and Jimmy through most of film, Thelma doesn't show up until about half way through..........Buster is cast as a very reclusive, naïve, awkward, stuffy, bachelor professor., who receives a letter claiming that he has inherited a whopping $250,000.(several million $ in todays money.) Without waiting to check up on this, Keaton withdraws his life's savings, abandons his professorship, and heads out into the world for some fun. He runs into a traveling thespian troope, including Jimmy and Ruth, that has fallen upon hard times. He decides to buy the outfit, and heads for NYC. Later, they meet up with Thelma, who is invited to join them. Upon learning that she's been entertaining in a speak easy, Keaton thinks he is correcting her grammar, when he suggests it should be called a speak easily. He then suggests that their play be called "Speak Easily"..........Thelma discovers that Buster is apparently rich and single, and sets marriage with him as her primary immediate goal. She invites him over to her apartment 'for a cup of tea', and he naively accepts. She proceeds to try to get this teetotaler drunk, along with herself, for a boosy romantic evening. There follows the most entertaining segment of the film, as the two fall all over each other and the furniture, before retiring to separate beds to sleep it off. In the morning, Thelma is shocked that Buster is wandering around in his underwear.......... At film's end, Buster is in a romantic clinch with Ruth, with Thelma the loser. By then, it was discovered that Buster's supposed fortune was a sham, which very nearly caused their show to fold before it was even started. But Jimmy manages to hold off the bill collector until the first performance, which is hilariously disorganized and botched, especially by Buster's unscheduled appearances on stage. Very fortunately, a Broadway producer in the audience is quite impressed by the laughter of the audience at what they assumed was intentional comedy. He offers them a half interest in the show for substantially more than they owe the bill collector, and they accept. Now, presumably, Buster and Ruth can afford to get married, in a happy ending.........As demonstrated, Thelma was a first rate comedian, as well as beauty, who began her film career in the silent era, and was cut down at the end of 1935, in an apparent murder, staged as a suicide. I won't go into details. Unfortunately, her death occurred while she was acting in the Laurel and Hardy musical comedy "The Bohemian Girl". Therefore, most of her substantial role had to be deleted........Last on the credits list is Ed Brophy, an easily recognized character actor, with his squat chubby torso, bald head, pop-eyes and mannerisms. He was in great demand for 30 years, in films, as well as TV in the '50s, before his death in 1960. He even had a few minor appearances in the silent era, going back to1920.........This was the last of 3 films pairing Buster and Jimmy, although they never formed a close partnership, such as Laurel and Hardy, as their comedy styles didn't blend that well.........Several complete copies of this film are available free at YouTube.

"Speak Easily" actually isn't as bad as I'd been given beforehand to expect. True, Jimmy Durante, playing a stand-up (or in his case, sit-down) comic called 'Jimmy', is basically playing himself, but in this context it is at least appropriate. True, adorning Buster Keaton with a fussy pair of pince-nez throughout the entire film deprives him of his principal means of expression -- his eyes -- but on the other hand, it establishes the character and does actually suit him: Keaton in his thirties had always borne a resemblance to a sculpted bronze bust, and as he administers a professorial stare through his perched glasses, his features appear more strongly modelled than ever. True, Keaton is clearly struggling with the 'refined' vocabulary and accents required for the part -- possibly his most extended piece of vocal acting -- but in the context of comedy his strained and somewhat artificial delivery is not out of place...

This is a perfectly decent little 'smalltown act makes it big on Broadway' story, nothing special but nothing worse than a dozen others in the genre. It's reasonably entertaining, although it has its share of lines that simply fall flat. And I can forgive a great deal for the sake of Keaton's wickedly accurate take-off of Napoleon Bonaparte in the opening scene; as proved so memorably in his 'ape act' on-screen back in "The Playhouse" (1921), given the opportunity the man was a truly gifted mimic.

Having said all this, however, it has to be owned that the one thing that really isn't necessary to this story is the presence of Buster Keaton. Which is unfortunate, because realistically speaking the only reason why anyone is likely to revive it these days is because of his name on the title screen! There's just one laugh that depends on Keaton's persona, and that's when Jimmy Durante attempts to demonstrate the effectiveness of his stage patter on this passer-by, whom of course the audience know to be incapable of cracking a smile. As so often with MGM's chosen vehicles for their unwilling star, one ends up wondering why they wanted him in it -- wouldn't any actor have done as well? In the case of this material, at least, there were almost certainly actors who might have done better...

Increasingly, all that the studio required of Keaton was the ability to take a fall and/or look bewildered, and that's about all he does here; the grand finale consists chiefly of swinging him round and round on a loop of rope, the humour of which does tend to wear off after a bit. The entire final sequence is based on what I had found to be the least successful section of "Spite Marriage" -- made by MGM only three years before -- in which Keaton's character blunders through the performance of a play, including the blatant re-use of a title-card gag from the silent feature in which the harassed stage manager hisses "Shoot him, they'll think it's part of the act!" Sooner or later, as Keaton's name lost its old shine, the penny was inevitably going to drop. MGM *didn't* need Buster Keaton for this sort of stuff, not when they had comics who could both fall over and talk. And with the once-meticulous performer reduced by the experience to an increasingly unreliable shell, his net worth to the studio was rapidly decreasing.

"Speak Easily" is not a bad film; it can still raise a few laughs. (It's not an especially outstanding one either, but that's another issue.) What it is not is in any sense a film representative of Keaton's strengths; given the disintegration of his personal and professional life at this stage, and the resultant number of days lost during filming to the fact that he had drunk himself into a condition unfit to work, it is perhaps surprising that he gives a performance as collected as this ultimately appears, but there's little trace left of his own distinctive style. He does a job that anyone else could have done, and does it more or less as well as can be expected.

If you're a Keaton fan your eyeballs will not melt in their sockets if you watch this - it really is not bad. It would be a rather enjoyable early talkie if it were not for the fact that Buster Keaton's talents are being wasted in this film. Since I know that by this time (1932) MGM gave him no creative control and treated him just as a performer, I can only wonder what the film would have been like if someone had listened to his ideas. However, at least there are no moments in which you must look away in embarrassment at what MGM is doing to the man, as there are in Free and Easy.

The good aspects of this film include Buster getting the girl in the end, unlike in Free and Easy (a real embarrassment of a film). Also Buster shows a real penchant for dialog and verbal comedy, demonstrating that he was not outside his element in talking pictures. Then there are the seduction/morning after scenes with Buster and Thelma Todd. Todd gave the best supporting performance in the cast. What a shame she died so young. Finally there is the ending where Keaton disrupts the show but scores a hit with the audience. It's not the most clever stuff he ever did, but it is funny.

The bad parts of this film include Buster being made to play a straight man to Jimmy Durante, Buster's expressive eyes being hidden behind his pince-nez spectacles, and finally there is the issue of Buster bungling into a happy ending. In his years as an independent filmmaker his character would often start out lost and fumbling around, but he figured things out in the end and came up with resourceful and deliberate solutions.

In the end, I have to wonder why this film really needed Buster Keaton anyways. Lots of comics less talented than Keaton could have been employed to recite the dialog that was written for this script and take a few pratfalls.

(Flash Review)

Keaton plays a professor who is told he inherited $750,000. Turns out that was not true. He travels to New York while being generous with money he doesn't have, thus burning through his savings. As he travels to New York, the professor falls for a beauty in a tacky musical that is out of funds. He decides to fund the show, with his new fabricated windfall, and take it to Broadway. Various women try to win him over for his money. Several gags about his lack of experience with the opposite sex and jokes about the professor's eloquent vocabulary and his hyper naivety world experience ensue. Will the show flop or hit the top and will his fabricated money derail opening night? This is full of light physical comedy and as with other Keaton films the story slowly builds into rapid fire laughable mishaps, which elicited some genuine laughter from me. This was pretty good yet lacks the amazing physical moments of Keaton in his silent era prime. This being an MGM production, many people say signing with MGM killed his best work and stunted his career.

To be a Buster Keaton fan is to have your heart broken on a regular basis. Most of us first encounter Keaton in one of the brilliant feature films from his great period of independent production: 'The General', 'The Navigator', 'Sherlock Jnr'. We recognise him as the greatest figure in the entire history of film comedy, and we want to see more of his movies. Here the heartbreak begins. After 'Steamboat Bill Jnr', Keaton's brother-in-law Joseph Schenck pressured him into signing a contract that put Keaton under the control of MGM. Keaton became just one more actor for hire, performing someone else's scripts. Then his alcoholism got worse. After 'Steamboat Bill Jnr', Keaton never again made a truly first-rate film. A couple of sources describe a would-be masterpiece comedy that Keaton claimed he *almost* got to make at MGM: a parody of 'Grand Hotel'. Biographer Tom Dardis has offered convincing evidence that Keaton made up this story.

The heartbreak increases because, among the many years of Keaton's long steady decline, he just occasionally came up with a good film ... such as his short comedy 'Grand Slam Opera'. I continue to search for the lost footage of Keaton's dramatic scene with Spencer Tracy in 'It's a Mad Mad World': a sequence in which embittered cop Tracy telephones an old retired crook (Keaton) and tries to recruit his assistance in stealing Smiler Grogan's cash. That footage is almost certainly gone forever, but I keep looking.

'Speak Easily', alas, is one of Keaton's films from the beginning of his decline. MGM were trying to build up Jimmy Durante (who, coincidentally, played Smiler Grogan three decades later) as a new comedy star. Unfortunately, MGM tried to build up Durante by teaming him with Keaton, whose style of comedy was simply incompatible with Durante's. (I'm a fan of both.) Throughout his career, Durante was a merciless scene-stealer: commendably, he knew that he was being built up at Keaton's expense, and Keaton was the only co-star whom Durante never attempted to upstage.

Keaton was often cast as the victim of extremely cruel machinations. In 'Speak Easily', he plays a didactic and humourless Midwestern college professor named Post (because he's as wooden as one) who receives a letter informing him that he's inherited $750,000, which he must travel to New York City to claim. Does he make a 'phone call to verify this? Does he even check the postmark? No; he takes his life's savings out of the bank and rushes to New York. As soon as he's gone, Post's manservant confesses that he wrote the (fake) letter to jostle Professor Post out of his rut!

Post, who thinks he's a 3/4-millionaire, crosses paths with Jimmy Dodge (Durante), who's trying to produce a musical revue but hasn't any money. The characters which these two brilliant comedians are playing onscreen simply fail to intermesh. Keaton is playing one of those eggheads (like Mister Logic in 'Viz') who intellectualises everything. Durante plays one of those annoying hepcats who is incapable of making any straightforward statement because the script requires him always to speak in slang. There's a painfully unfunny dialogue scene in which Durante is trying to talk to Keaton about money, but - instead of coming straight out with it - Durante has to use increasingly contrived slang terms like 'kale', 'cartwheels' and so forth ... while Keaton of course has no idea what Durante's on about. I'll give Keaton credit: his own dry and dusty prairie voice, his flat Kansas accent, is absolutely perfect for the character he's playing here.

Sidney Toler, looking much leaner and more handsome here than he would be just a year later, is impressive as the excitable director of the revue bankrolled (on tick) by Professor Post. Henry Armetta, whom I've never found funny, is even less funny than usual here, offering a running gag with a stupid payoff. Thelma Todd impressed me here, in a more villainous version of the role she played in 'Horse Feathers' (a much funnier movie). Edward Brophy, one of my favourite character actors, is wasted.

Part of the problem with 'Speak Easily' is that supporting characters behave in completely inappropriate ways. Keaton's lawyer shows up at Durante's theatre with an urgent message for Keaton ... but he isn't there, so the lawyer proceeds to divulge Keaton's personal business to the first total stranger he meets. (Fire that lawyer, Buster!) In another scene, Professor Post - the guy who's perceived as bankrolling this musical - blunders into the chorus girls' changing room, and all the chorus girls immediately squeal and cover themselves. I know for a fact that *modern* chorus girls would never react this way, and I seriously doubt that chorus girls in 1932 behaved that way either ... certainly not in response to the 'angel' controlling their show's pursestrings.

SPOILERS COMING. About half an hour into the unfunny 'Speak Easily', the great Jimmy Durante seats himself at the piano, grins into the camera, and does that distinctive little shake of his head as he starts to play a tune. This is the moment when I thought that, at long last, this movie was finally going to settle down to its purpose of entertaining us. Alas, no. Most annoying of all is the ending of this film, which uses the single most hackneyed and implausible cliche in all of comedy: the one in which an utterly incompetent dimwit becomes a star comedian through his own ineptitude. (Keaton would be forced to replay this cliche in a 1955 episode of 'Screen Directors Playhouse'; Chaplin had already used it in 'The Circus'.)

I very nearly wept - in anger and sorrow - at the wasted opportunities in 'Speak Easily'. Mostly out of respect for the work that Keaton, Durante, Toler, Brophy and Miss Todd have done elsewhere, I'll rate this movie 2 points out of 10.

Out of all of the talkies made during Buster Keaton's ill-fated partnership with MGM, only The Passionate Plumber (1932) and Speak Easily (1932) are watchable. The others range from sleep-inducing to infuriatingly bad, but these two have funny moments and Buster is allowed to play characters with dignity and functioning brains.

In this film, Buster plays a timid college professor who decides to live it up once he believes he has inherited a large sum of money. He does well in the role and actually has some comedic chemistry with Jimmy Durante, who proves himself not irritating here. Thelma Todd is sexy and funny as the vamp out to get Buster's money and Ruth Selwyn is good as Keaton's love interest.

Despite being somewhat entertaining, this is still no classic. The climax on the stage is lifted from a similar sequence in Spite Marriage (1929) and even uses some of the same lines. Some scenes are forced and painful, like when Buster and Thelma get sauced. But if you had to sample a few of Keaton's MGM talkies, this would be one to see.

For most younger viewers out there, they probably have no idea who Buster Keaton was. So, because of this, they probably won't feel nearly as sad when watching this film as I did. I happen to be a silent comedy freak--having see just about every Keaton film still in existence. My being a huge fan made this film very painful from start to finish. This is because during his silent days, Keaton was a very vibrant and creative comedian. He was amazing in his physicality and his films were almost never dull. However, in a move that movie historians still are baffled by, at the end of the silent era, Keaton gave up his independence and became a stock MGM actor. Instead of being a great creative force, MGM now saw Keaton solely as an actor--and they wrote scripts for him that had no respect for what made him great. At first, these films with MGM were not that bad (such as THE CAMERAMAN) but with talkies, the studio really blew it--putting him in several films with Jimmy Durante. Durante's humor was based on his gift for gab and was abrasive. Keaton, in contrast, was quiet and based on action. Two more unlike and incompatible actors would have been hard to find. As a result of this deadly combination, Keaton made some truly dreadful films.

Now this isn't to say that SPEAK EASILY is a terrible film. No, instead it's just more of a time-passer and an amazingly unfunny one at that. In fact, if you go into the movie assuming it's a comedy, it will probably make the film harder to enjoy. Instead, it's sort of like a drama with a few comedic elements. It is NOT a film that will produce belly laughs--especially for Keaton fans.

The film begins in an odd setting. Keaton is cast as a college professor whose entire life is teaching. He knows nothing of the world and has his nose stuck in his books. In a bizarre move, Keaton's servant tricks him into believing Keaton has received $750,000 from a dead relative--hoping that this would spur Keaton to get out and enjoy life. This is amazingly contrived but somehow it manages to work. Not terribly well, but it works.

Keaton immediately leaves school and goes on a journey to New York to have some fun. On the way there, he meets up with an incredibly untalented theater troop. Because he knows nothing of the world, he doesn't seem to realize they stink. And, because he thinks he's rich, Keaton decides to take them all to New York to perform on Broadway. However, just before the show opens, his friends find out that Keaton is NOT rich. So, they decide not to tell Keaton and try to keep him away from process servers that want to close the show. They assume that if the show is a hit, then they can pay off the debts and everyone will be happy. However, they forget that the show itself stinks. What are they to do? And, will Keaton get the nice girl, get roped by a gold digger (Thelma Todd) or be flat broke and alone? If you care, see the film.

As for Keaton, he has few stunts in the film, though there are some dandy ones near the end. Instead, Keaton just kind of walks through the part in a very subdued manner. There's really little to love about this film or hate. It's just blah....when it SHOULD have been a heck of a lot better.

Genius college professor Buster Keaton has the knack for getting himself into situations that would get other people either arrested or committed, but here, even unintentionally, he proves that his old stone face routine could be just as funny with dialog as it was without, even though his critics consider this mediocre at best. With butler Jimmy Durante assisting him, Keaton believes he has the money to back a supposed Broadway bound show and ends up stealing it unintentionally as he continuously ends up on stage trying to save it which he seems to do without realizing it. The show within the film itself isn't very good, a typical early sound view of what a Broadway musical should look like, and is often static and lifeless. But when Keaton gets on the stage, all hilarity ensues, and while some of the gags are dated, many of them are equally as funny as some of his classic moments in silent films.

One of the funniest bits has Keaton getting schnockered with gold-digging leading lady Thelma Todd, trying to get her out of his apartment before they are caught together by picking her up in ways that just a few years later the Hays code might have objected to. In his professor guise, he ends up on stage trying to assure the audience that the fiasco they are seeing is going to go on, and in the process, takes over the audience's hearts who really think that his droll manner is a part of the show. (Apparently, they must not have looked in their programs to see that his name isn't listed.) Edgar Kennedy keeps going around looking for his "thing", and stage manager Sidney Toler (pre-Charlie Chan) is having a nervous breakdown. There's a collection agent on site, some wicked fur pulling rivalry between Todd and Ruth Selwyn, and even the presence of future gossip columnist Hedda Hopper as Selwyn's mother. Durante gets a few nice moments too, particularly when he tries to claim one of the great songs of the day as his own. This may not be a particularly great film, but it is filled with a lot of great moments that will be something that you will remember. Heck, I remember it already!

Despite a slow start and several misfired moments along the way, Speak Easily comes to a grandly amusing climax with Buster Keaton in his acrobatic element as he conspires to wreck/save a Broadway revue. Mind you, it's not all plain sailing for Buster. Right up to the last reel when Buster really cuts loose, it's actually Jimmy Durante who steals all the laughs and the super-sexy Thelma Todd (in her best role ever) who captures all the limelight. True, the lovely Ruth Selwyn is on hand too, plus Sidney Toler, Ed Brophy and Fred Kelsey who liven up all the proceedings no end. I assume that writer/director Edward Sedgwick received professional help from co-stars Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante. I could also put my fist in the pie and say that some more songs would have been welcome, but as is, it's certainly a fast-paced 82 minutes, and definitely one for the permanent collection. My excellent DVD came in a 50-movie Comedy Mega-Pack.