Rent Speak Easily (1932)
3.1 of 5 from 52 ratings
1h 22min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
One of Buster Keaton's best 'talkies' features our comedy hero as Professor Post, a naive college pedantic who mistakenly believes he has inherited $750,000. Hoping to use this windfall to bring the Fine Arts to the waiting world, Post gets mixed up with a less than professional theatrical troupe, headed by Jimmy the piano player (Jimmy Durante). Enchanted by the troupe's libertine leading lady Eleanor Espere, the professor agrees to finance their Broadway-bound musical, assuming it will be presented in tasteful, classical tradition. When he realizes that he's bought into just another girlie show, Post walks onstage to apologize to the opening-night audience, only to become the hit of the show himself as he becomes enmeshed in the production's special stage effects. Post's unconscious silliness saves the musical from becoming a disaster and also somehow wins him the love of Pansy Peets (Ruth Selwyn), the hometown girl he left behind. Based on a novel by Clarence Buddington Kelland, Speak Easily boasts some terrific sight gags, an abundance of hilarious repartee between the usually ill-matched Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante, and a hilarious performance by future "Charlie Chan" Sidney Toler as an apoplectic stage manager. - Actors:
- Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Ruth Selwyn, Thelma Todd, Hedda Hopper, William Pawley, Sidney Toler, Lawrence Grant, Henry Armetta, Edward Brophy
- Directors:
- Edward Sedgwick
- Producers:
- Lawrence Weingarten, Buster Keaton
- Writers:
- Clarence Budington Kelland, Ralph Spence, Laurence E. Johnson
- Studio:
- The Sales Office
- Genres:
- Classics, Comedy
