Free and Easy

Free and Easy is a 1930 American pre-Code comedy film starring Buster Keaton. It was Keaton's first leading role in a talking motion picture. Plot When small-town girl Elvira Plunkett (Anita Page) wins a contest that sends her to Hollywood for a screen test at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), she is accompanied by her overbearing mother (Trixie Friganza) and Elmer J. Butts (Buster Keaton), a gas-station attendant who goes along as Elvira's manager. Elmer is secretly in love with Elvira, but on the train they meet MGM contract actor Larry Mitchell (Robert Montgomery), who falls for her as well, and he has the connections to make her a star. In Hollywood, Elmer manages to bungle his way through numerous films being shot on the MGM lot, disrupting production. When given a screen test, he can't manage to say his one line correctly. Despite these flubs, both he and Elvira's mother are given film contracts, and they appear in a comic opera together. Elmer wants to tell Elvira that he loves her, but he hints at it in such a way that she mistakes it for advice on how to tell Larry that she loves him. Cast Buster Keaton as Elmer Anita Page as Elvira Trixie Friganza as Ma Plunkett Robert Montgomery as Larry Mitchell Fred Niblo as himself Lionel Barrymore as director David Burton as himself William Haines as himself Marion Shilling (uncredited) Cecil B. DeMille as himself