Speak Easily

A Buster Keaton sound comedy directed by Edward Sedgwick for MGM, co-starring Jimmy Durante and Thelma Todd. Keaton plays a sheltered professor who inherits a fortune and, believing he has only months to live, joins a traveling musical show to experience life. Durante plays the show's manager, and Todd is the performer who catches the professor's eye. The film pairs Keaton's deadpan physical comedy with Durante's manic energy, an MGM attempt to replicate the comedy-duo formula. While Keaton's creative control was limited under MGM, the film features some fine physical sequences and the contrast between the two comedians' styles is genuinely funny. The film is in the public domain.