Speak Easily
About Speak Easily
Timoleon Zanders Post (Buster Keaton), a shy classics professor at Potts College, is fooled by his assistant into thinking he has inherited $750,000. He takes a train for New York, meets James (Jimmy Durante), who manages a dancing troupe, and falls for the dancer Pansy Peets (Ruth Selwyn). He gets off by mistake at Fish's Switch, pays to take the stranded company to Broadway, and tries to rebuild their act on Greek lines. The spoiled star Eleanor Espere (Thelma Todd) moves in on the show and on him. On opening night James tells him the money was never real. Post's blundering on stage saves the performance, Eleanor walks out, and he tells Pansy he loves her.
Cast & crew
More about Speak Easily
Edward Sedgwick directed. Keaton produced. The script is drawn from Clarence Budington Kelland's 1932 novel Speak Easily. MGM released it on 13 August 1932.
Themes
Background
An MGM comedy released on 13 August 1932, with Keaton and Durante in the leads.
Preservation
In the public domain in the United States because the copyright was not renewed.
Notes
- A pre-Code comedy.
- Keaton later reused physical gags from this film, without credit, when he wrote material for the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera.
- MGM paired Keaton and Durante again in The Passionate Plumber and What! No Beer?
- Hedda Hopper plays Mrs. Peets. Sidney Toler plays the stage director. Lawrence Grant plays Dr. Bolton.
- The copyright was not renewed, so the film is in the public domain in the United States.
Scenes
- Post gets off the train at Fish's Switch by mistake.
- His stumbling on opening night carries the show after James admits the inheritance is false.
Influenced by
- Clarence Budington Kelland's novel Speak Easily (1932)
Influenced
- A Night at the Opera (1935)
Also available
- Internet Archive (SpeakEasily)
- Wikimedia Commons (Speak Easily (1932).webm)
- Warner Archive DVD: Buster Keaton Triple Feature (2012)
- Alpha Video DVD (2004)
