#013: Free and Easy

 FREE AND EASY

Release Date

March 22, 1930

History

Known for being the studio that had "more stars than there are in Heaven", MGM was not only always looking for new talent, but also established talent that it could acquire. Some of these new contracts pushed an established star further in an amicable relationship between them and the studio, and sometimes it was a decision both would later regret. The latter was the case between MGM and Buster Keaton. While Keaton had worked for other production companies and directors early in his career, the 1920s had been spent producing, co-writing, and co-directing his films. Being a part of the creative process was part of his craft as a performer. Now, under contract for MGM, Keaton was forced to kowtow to a larger machine, and perform on command. Input would be discouraged and he'd be forced to star in films he didn't want to. On top of this, the studio would make him recreate his routines for other actors as they were mimicked shot for shot by another director, 20 years after the film where the routine originated was released.

Free and Easy would be Keaton's first talkie film, minus a small part where he played himself in Hollywood Revue. Free and Easy was also going to take on the challenge of how to market sound films to other countries. In a 2014 episode of The Warner Archive Podcast, George Feltenstein and other hosts discuss how dubbing films had not been perfected yet, and as a result, the most preferred solution was to shoot a film several times in different languages. While there were German and French versions of the film that would utilize intertitles for Keaton's dialogue, the Spanish version of Free and Easy would require him to read his lines phonetically in Spanish from cue cards, while performing with a predominantly Spanish speaking cast. 

A movie about movie making, Free and Easy would feature Los Angeles venues such as Grauman's Chinese Theater and the MGM studio, which might have been more accessible to people in years to come through tourism and being featured in film and television, but in 1930, "Hollywoodland", as the sign read, was still a foreign place, and having access to these in a film made for a very special moviegoing experience. Anita Page, Trixie Friganza, Lionel Barrymore, and Robert Montgomery costar; for Montgomery, an actor who would go onto having an illustrious career doing non-musicals, audiences get a special treat to hear him sing in this film. A scene of him singing would be featured in a segment of That's Entertainment where James Stewart hosts a segment about non-singing actors singing in musicals as per their contract. Because the film is a movie about making movies, there are also cameos from actors and directors playing themselves, such as Cecil B Demille, David Burton, Fred Niblo and William Haines.

Review

Free and Easy features Anita Page as Elvira, a beauty queen who has won the Miss Gopher City pageant and is now heading west with her overbearing mother, played by Trixie Friganza. The city's chamber of commerce has elected local citizen Elmer, played by Buster Keaton, to be their business manager. On the train, Elvira and her mother meet Larry Mitchell, a famous actor, who takes a liking to Elvira and helps get her started in the industry, first by allowing her to watch him film at the studio, and then by slowly getting her, her mother, and Elmer parts in his film. Of course, the relationship between him and Elvira is challenged when she is expecting a marriage proposal, he just wants to have a little fun, Elmer is also in love with her and wants to protect her, and her mother wants to micromanage her life.

Keaton is hysterical as Elmer, a character who is too small town for Hollywood, and this ends up creating most of the entertainment of the film, as there is a culture clash between his green ways and the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles, and the preceding journey to get there. His comedic timing and slapstick routines are the fabric of this film and illustrate that there is room for this kind of humor that was common in silent cinema to continue into the sound era. In his first scene, there's a tease of this being his first fictional sound role, as he tries making a speech to the crowd gathered, and every time he opens his mouth to speak the crowd won't stop talking to allow him to do so. When he makes a solemn oath of Elvira that he will "never let her out of my sight" and the train pulls away behind him without him knowing, it already informed me that he would be stealing the show, as I expected he would be.

Most of all, his character and its humor are great at illustrating the absurdity of Los Angeles, and it was great to see how universal a lot of those themes were nearly a century ago that still resonate with Angelenos today. For example, he drives Elvira and her mother to an opening at Grauman's Chinese, and is yelled at by security for keeping his car parked too long and not moving along. Trying to find a parking spot, he has to drive far as he learns all the lots are full, and eventually parks in an abandoned field with cows. While this is exaggerated as no farm with cows would ever have been remotely near Grauman's Chinese in 1930, it does make anyone who has lived in LA think about at least one time they've struggled to find parking. He is able to get into the film screening just as it ends. 

The next day, as Elvira and her mother watch Larry shoot a scene for his film, Elmer tries to sneak onto the lot because he doesn't have a pass and can't get past security. Eventually he is able to sneak on by huddling with a group of actors in a cast call. This made me laugh because when I worked at Sony Pictures, the current location where MGM used to be, the back entrance off of Culver Blvd, which is the exact same back gate that Elmer sneaks onto, always had incredibly loose security compared to the main entrance at Oakland, illustrating that even a century ago, there was this facade that the studios had tight security when it really wasn't all that tight.

As security catches up with Elmer, we see him bounce from one film shoot to another, trying to dodge the guard who is looking for him, each time sabotaging the production company's individual shoots. He hides and sits on a dynamite barrel in a cave, scheduled to blow up for a shot in a Western, making everyone confused as to why the dynamite didn't explode. He then accidentally steps on the lever and blows it up while the cameras aren't rolling. Everyone chases him onto another set, where he hides in a closet and hears a line of dialogue where a husband tells a wife's lover to come out with his hands up. Thinking it is a real threat, he does so, killing the shot, and once again is chased off a set. While incredibly humorous, the audience also gets a chance to see how movies are made in 1930.

More than just movies, Free and Easy gives viewers a sneak peak at specifically how musicals were made. During the time that Elmer is being chased about the set, Larry has been shooting a number "It Must Be You", with an orchestra off to the side while his character sings live on screen. It's hard to know if this was actually how the number was recorded or if this was pre-recorded and dubbed over later. The technology to do both did exist, and we've seen that in this blog so far, but illustrating how doing it live was a method implemented by the studio is still cool to see. An elaborate dance number follows. This was all set up for a larger joke, because later in the film, after Elmer is chased off of the previous set for coming out of the closet with his hands up, he runs onto this set while the company is doing reshoots of the dance number portion of "It Must Be You" and once again sabotages the number by crashing into all of the dancers.

There are other parts of this film that follow the 'art imitating life imitating art' dance so well. For example, Larry and Elvira convince Fred Niblo (playing himself as director) to give Elmer a bit part in his film. Elmer keeps messing up his lines, and the one time he finally does get it right, he crashes the set. This mirrors the fact that this was one of Keaton's first talkie, and the thought of whether or not he'll be able to pull off doing a sound film was probably on the mind of a lot of film goers in 1930. After getting fired, Larry tells him to go to the transportation department of the studio, tell them that Larry sent him, and they'd give him a ride home. The department thinks he's there to work and get him a job as a chauffer-- a wink at the old Hollywood saying, "being in the right place at the right time" which still rings true for people today.

Elmer drives Larry and Elvira back to Larry's place later that evening where Larry invites Elvira to listen to a record, and knowing that Larry has bad intentions, drives to pick up her mother and then barges in and the two get into a physical altercation, while Elvira goes home with her mother, angry at Larry for taking advantage of her. While Larry and Elmer make up and become friends (it turns out they knew each other as children in Kansas), the next scene takes place on a movie set as a director choreographs a fight between two actors-- mirroring the fight in the scene before, which was choreographed for the benefit of the audience watching Free and Easy! The difference of course is when Keaton flies at Montgomery, Keaton does it will full gusto, reminding me of when he jumped to save Natalie Talmadge from a waterfall in Our Hospitality.

There's a great tongue-in-cheek moment in the following scene as the director of the film within the film can't stand any of the actresses auditioning for him because of their voices. This made me chuckle because finding performers with suitable voices for sound films in the early days was a real challenge and there was great truth to the scene. Elvira's mother is yelling at Larry in another room, which gets her the part because the director likes her booming voice.

Not all of these Hollywood revelations are happy though. Some were downright sad. For example, Larry wants to make amends to Elvira for his behavior the previous night but she won't forgive him. He proclaims that he will sit right where he is until she promises to forgive him. However, the minute someone from production calls him back to the set, he leaves her high and dry. The darker side of Hollywood: no matter what is happening in your personal life, it always has to take second fiddle to your work, because holding up production is a no-no.

When Elvira admits to Elmer that she really didn't want to be an actress and he suggests she become the wife of an actor instead, she thinks he means Larry, who she is in love with, and not him, who the audience knows has loved her all along. He is heartbroken when she and Larry make up and Larry proposes to her, but is not given the opportunity to feel his feelings, because immediately after he has to shoot his big number, "Free and Easy" and is told that he has to "make it funny". Just like one's personal life, personal feelings have to play second fiddle to what is going on, even when getting a big blow like the one Elmer has just been given.

Page and Friganza were not great in their roles in this film, and I was disappointed especially after Page did such a great job in Broadway Melody. Page's performance in Free and Easy does get a little better throughout the film but she's still rather flat. Friganza on the other hand is too vaudevillian. She does a number with Keaton, "Oh King, Oh Queen" where they both speak-sing their lines, and it was rather clunky and out of place with the rest of the film. There is a great pre-code moment in the number, however, where they both strip off their clothes and dance in their underwear while birds around them chirp, salvaging its last minute. Robert Montgomery is a wonderful tenor, despite what James Stewart says about his singing in this film when it was featured in That's Entertainment, and is also a Casanova in his role as Larry. While Anita Page fell flat trying to underplay her role, Montgomery is able to give a subdued performance and pull it off well. 

None of these, of course, match the wonder of Keaton in this film. For the big finale, when he performs "Free and Easy" he may barely be able to carry a tune, but later in the number he comes out of a box and emulates a marionette puppet with such ease and it's breathtaking to see how much control he has over his movement, as if he's actually being controlled by a puppeteer. I give this film two thumbs up, even if it did have a few drawbacks, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of Hollywood.

Home Video

Free and Easy was first released on DVD by Warner Bros. as part of their Turner Classic Movies line in 2004 as part of a Buster Keaton box set, with the titles Spite Marriage, and The Cameraman. This set also included a fascinating documentary that discussed Keaton's career after he signed with MGM and how doing so started a decline in his career. While the 2014 DVD release contained the Spanish language version of the film, entitled Estrellados, this documentary is not included on it. Listening to the episode of the Warner Archive podcast discussing the 2014 release, the hosts didn't make any mention of a new remastering of the film since its 2004 release, which they generally would do if work had been done, so it is probable that the same video transfer is utilized for both releases.

The transfer on the DVD wasn't perfect, but was completely passable for a 1930 film. The sound and image aren't pristine, but not distracting enough for one to not enjoy the film....mostly. In the first scene as Elvira and her mother are at the train station, the audio was very gravely and muffled; all sibilance is missing from the track's fidelity  (which is unfortunate because it is the setup for the whole story); the gravel noise goes away in the next scene but the audio is still muffled. Thankfully by the time the characters get to Hollywood this issue resolves. In a scene where Elvira and Elmer are talking outside her hotel room, there are some distracting image scratches and a splice that cuts out some dialogue. Dancing emulsion scratches come and go throughout the print, and the image does have some flicker to it. In all, though, it is still a good transfer for the technology that was available in 2004 and hopefully one day a newer remaster will be released with today's digital tools.