Disarming 1930s screwball fluff, better than you might think if you’ve dismissed Buster Keaton’s work in the talkies. All it lacks is a sparkling leading lady, but maybe that would mean no room left in this film’s slim seventy minutes for the very funny Charlotte Greenwood as a society columnist who gets roped into rich society man Reginald Denny’s plot to find a husband for his fiancee’s older sister (as his lady won’t marry him until her ultra-picky sister is wed first, such is the etiquette of aristocratic society here). Who do they find? Keaton, you betcha. He’s a dirt-poor Depression-era schmoe and rank virgin, but perfect for the scheme because the sister has never met him, which gives Denny plenty of room to fashion a ruse that Keaton’s the sort of sexy playboy whom she likes. Keaton is 90% of the show here and though he’s not directing, writing or risking his life for some of the world’s most insane silent screen stunts anymore, he’s still a beautifully nimble presence who slips on wet floors, gets tackled by five men and gets flung around hotel rooms like an artist.
A relevant irrelevant aside: The best movie theater in Dallas, Texas is a single-screen beauty called The Texas Theatre. It’s gone through many owners in its long life and been open and closed off and on over the decades. It’s main claim to fame is that it’s the place where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested after the Kennedy shooting. It’s second claim is that Howard Hughes once owned it for a short spell in the 1930s. It’s been an old school movie palace, it’s been a 1970s grindhouse, it’s been a 1980s multiplex, it’s been a place for the cobwebs to spread wide and the dust bunnies to multiply behind padlocks and the threat of a wrecking ball. Today though, it lives on as the city’s last true arthouse, independently owned, restored and boasting a 35mm projector, a dazzling marquee, a full bar and an eccentric hand-picked selection of movies, old and new, that ought to have any film freak in town wetting their pants weekly. If you’re ever in Dallas (and you’re still reading this), I insist that you go. I’m a regular. I’m the little bald guy in the cowboy shirt. If you see me, say hi.
Anyway, when the theater opened on April 21, 1931, the first feature they showed was Parlor, Bedroom and Bath.
Eighty-five years later, on April 21, 2016, they decided to celebrate the theater’s birthday with… Parlor, Bedroom and Bath on 35mm and with the same preceding newsreel and Mickey Mouse cartoon (each on 16mm) that the owners surmised were also shown back in ’31. In another old-fashioned gesture, ticket prices were 35 cents and included a replica printed program from the theater’s original grand opening. I wasn’t missing it for the world.
I last saw the movie about twenty-five years ago, when I was the biggest classic film nerd in my high school. I didn’t remember much about it in my old age, so I assumed it was bad. My expectations were low. Most everyone else there felt the same, I gathered. We weren’t there for the movie. We were there to pay our respects and experience something that was long gone. A nice, big crowd showed up. The people behind me at the screening openly made fun of the newsreel, which annoyed me. I was expecting the feature to get the same treatment.
And then Parlor, Bedroom and Bath leveled the place.
It KILLED. Gales of laughter. Keaton had ’em rolling. Instead of making fun, people were having fun. The antique had barely aged a day. The film felt weirdly modern (it sneaks in a few dirty jokes, in true pre-Code fashion) and it jabbed upper class 1930s ways as finely as anyone in the 21st century audience could. The chatter at the bar afterward was all about how surprisingly good it was. I left like someone had just shoved a magic light bulb up my ass, totally aglow.