Stubs - What! No Beer?

What! No Beer? aka What - No Beer? (1933) Starring Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Roscoe Ates, Phyllis Barry Directed by Edward Sedgwick. Screenplay by Carey Wilson. Produced (None listed: Irving Thalberg) Run time: 78 minutes. Black and White. Pre-Code, Comedy

Buster Keaton’s tenure at MGM, “the worst business decision of his life in his autobiography”, was relatively short lasting only five years. His last film for the studio, What! No Beer?, would also mark his last starring role in an American film. While his films at MGM are not generally regarded as his best, they were, for the most part, financial successes.

The studio first paired him with Jimmy Durante, a one-time nightclub comedian who had recently begun to appear in films. Durante’s rambunctiousness was a compliment to Keaton’s more iconic style. The two of them would appear in three films together, Speak Easily (1932), The Passionate Plumber (1932), and What! No Beer?

Elmer J. Butts (Buster Keaton) can't take his eyes off he beautiful Hortense
 (Phyllis Barry), the gun moll of gangster Butch Lorado (John Miljan).

 

The film opens during an election year, during Prohibition. Infatuated by the beautiful Hortense (Phyllis Barry), the gun moll of gangster Butch Lorado (John Miljan), taxidermist Elmer J. Butts (Buster Keaton) goes to a "dry" rally, where he is thrown out when he makes his own desires known. He is still infatuated with her the next morning when barber Jimmy Potts (Jimmy Durante), driving a car covered in pro-booze stickers and carrying a large fish he wants stuffed from a recent fishing trip, arrives.

Jimmy Potts (Jimmy Durante) brings Elmer a fish to stuff in What! No Beer?

Jimmy, who is pro-beer convinces, Elmer to vote wet. They go to the local polling place, where they cause havoc and end up wrecking the voting booths. The vote, which is nationwide on Prohibition, shows the nation has gone wet. This doesn’t sit well with gangsters like Lorado, who rely on the illegal monies they make bootlegging.

Elmer is a taxidermist and the kangaroo is one of his subjects.

Following the vote, and with Prohibition set to expire the next day, Jimmy tells Elmer his million-dollar idea: making their own beer for a thirsty public. Elmer wants to be rich, too, so he can marry Hortense, and admits that he has saved $10,000 hidden in his stuffed animals. Together, they collect the monies and go that night to see the banker, whose bank had foreclosed on a local derelict brewery. They use the $10,000 as a down payment and go that night to start it back up, armed with a recipe that Jimmy had been given.

They obviously don't know what they're doing.

They find three hoboes, Tony (Henry Armetta), Schultz (Roscoe Ates) and Mulligan (Charles Dunbar), have been living at the brewery and hire them to help. Jimmy takes charge, but the recipe will only make five gallons and neither he nor Elmer have any idea what they’re doing. When Schultz, who stutters, tries to speak up, Jimmy gives him the menial task of cleaning up to shut him up.

Open for business, they get shut down the same day.

Even with a batch, there are more mishaps, including too much foam and exploding bottles, but the five persevere and the next morning, Elmer and Jimmy open up their business to sell beer. Unfortunately for them, their first customers are the police, who raid the brewery since the repeal isn’t official yet. The pair faces six years in prison until the Police Chemist (Broderick O'Farrell) determines there is no alcohol in the beer, which he describes as, “It ain't been anywheres near a beer. It's brown dishwater.”

When they get back to the brewery, Tony and Mulligan convince Jimmy that Schultz was a brewer back in St. Louis and that they need to add hops to make it alcoholic. Wanting to help Elmer earn back his $10,000 investment, Jimmy agrees to let Schultz brew real beer, but Elmer is kept in the dark. Jimmy even tells him that they will only make “near beer.” Business booms.

With Prohibition threatened, rival bootlegger Spike Moran (Edward Brophy) realizes that his operation is washed up. Butch Lorado is also worried. Spike and Butch meet to discuss their business interests. Butch vows to eliminate his competition.

Thinking Elmer is some sort of mastermind, Moran goes to visit him. He offers to buy the business, but Elmer turns him down. Elmer doesn’t know about Moran’s real business. In the end, Moran puts in a standing order for 1000 barrels a day and gives him a down payment of $10,000. They need more employees, so Elmer goes down to the unemployment office and hires all fifty men waiting there.

When Jimmy learns about the deal, he reveals to Elmer the truth about their beer. Looking for a hiding place for the cash, Jimmy puts the money in the pocket of his overcoat, which is hanging in the office. He is not thrilled about being in business with a real gangster.

Later, Elmer looks out the office window and sees Hortense collapse when she gets out of her car. He rushes out to help her and carries her back into his office. Unbeknownst to Elmer, Hortense has been sent by Lorado to get information about the brewery.

Hortense takes off her wet dress in front of Elmer. This is pre-code.

Elmer is nervous about being so close to Hortense and ends up spilling water over her dress. Hortense then proceeds to take off her wet dress. Elmer puts Jimmy’s overcoat on her to keep her warm. When Hortense learns about Moran’s involvement with the operation, she leaves, but does agree to meet Elmer the next day.

Lorado is not happy to see Hortense in her underwear under the coat and, when he finds the money in the pocket, thinks the worst has happened, presumably that Elmer had paid Hortense for sex. Lorado is jealous and denounces Hortense. He then arranges to have the brewery’s delivery truck to be ambushed.

In a scene reminiscent of Seven Chances, Keaton outraces beer barrels instead of boulders.

At the brewery, Elmer resolves to make deliveries himself and drives a beer truck up a hill. Lorado’s men are lying in wait. But just before the attack can happen, the truck blows a tire. When Elmer tries to fix it, he manages to release the barrels of beer instead, which allows Elmer to escape being killed.

The next day, Elmer takes Hortense for a picnic in the park.

Meanwhile, Lorado kills Spike and then moves to take over the brewery. While Jimmy is alarmed, Elmer is too much in love to care.

Meanwhile, the police discover that the “near beer” from the brewery is real beer and they plan to raid it that afternoon and shut it down. An informant tries to warn Lorado, but talks, instead, to Hortense. Rather than warning Lorado, she warns Elmer.

Elmer drives around town advertising free beer.

Hearing the news, Elmer drives around town with a sign advertising free beer at the brewery. The reaction is overwhelming and by the time the police arrive, there is no beer anywhere to be found.

Later, a senator speaking to Congress and tells the story of how gangsters were put out of business when a crowd stormed the brewery. Beer becomes legal.

An appreciative crowd tears the clothes off Jimmy and Elmer.

Skip ahead and at some point, in the future, the state approves the repeal and the group opens Butts’ Beer Garden. Elmer, Jimmy and Hortense arrive in an open car and Jimmy offers free beer to everyone. The crowd is so appreciative that they mob Jimmy and Elmer and leave them only in their underwear.

The film ends with Jimmy, holding a frosty brew aloft, addressing the camera: "It's your turn next, folks. It won't be long now!"

The production of the film was not without conflicts, mostly centered around Buster Keaton. To begin with, he was not happy to be getting second bill to Jimmy Durante, whose acting he found to be loud and crass. His biographers, Joanna E. Rapf and Gary L. Green, noted Keaton's lack of enthusiasm. “In many of the scenes, Buster gives the impression of being under the effect of sedatives. He seems shrunken, hollow-eyed and considerably older.”

Keaton turned to alcohol to temper his frustrations. He claimed to have drunken a bottle of booze a day during the six-week shooting schedule. At one point, he disappeared and the production shot around him. When he returned to the set, Keaton was married to a nurse named Mae Scriven, whom he had married in Mexico City during an alcoholic blackout.

And it would be Keaton’s alcoholism that would lead MGM to severe ties with him. The pairings with Durante and Keaton were very profitable for the studio and they had even planned a fourth film called Buddies, which was slated to star child actor Jackie Cooper before the dismissal.

Keaton doesn’t look like he’s having much fun during the filming. Known as the Great Stone Face, Keaton seems to be going through the motions, perhaps missing the days when he was an independent filmmaker.

What! No Beer? even has a couple of callbacks to those films, the most prominent being the falling and rolling barrels of beer, which chase Buster down a hill much the same way boulders of ever-growing size had chased him during Seven Chances (1925), but sadly the remake is not as spectacular or as funny as the original. Another homage to an earlier film was when Elmer and Jimmy get caught in the space between voting booths reminded me of the changing room scene at the pool in The Cameraman (1928), when he’s trapped in a small room with another man. While The Cameraman was an MGM film, it is the closest to his previous work that he made at the studio.

Jimmy Durante’s star seemed to be on the rise. Already a vaudeville and radio star, he would soon add Broadway and records to his achievements. In 1934, he would record his own novelty composition, "Inka Dinka Doo", which would become his theme song for the rest of his life. In 1935, he would add Broadway, starring in the Billy Rose stage musical Jumbo.

However, he wasn’t considered strong enough to carry a motion picture by himself. MGM gave Durante leads in moderately-budgeted comedies like Meet the Baron (1933) and Hollywood Party (1934), before releasing him from his contract. But Durante didn’t go away for long, returning to films with Start Cheering (1937) at Columbia and would go on to appear in Melody Ranch (1940), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), Ziegfeld Follies (1945), Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962), and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

Roscoe Ates, who played Schultz, the St. Louis brew master with the speech impediment, actually had one growing up. Ates got his start in Vaudeville before making it to Hollywood. His first screen appearance was as a ship's cook in South Sea Rose (1929). He would also appear in such films as Cimarron (1931), The Champ (1931), Freaks (1932), Alice in Wonderland (1933), and Gone with the Wind (1939). Here, he doesn’t get much of a chance to be anything more than a cliché. His role in this film is basically a featured supporting actor.

Having started as a dancer, Phyllis Barry was used here mostly as eye candy. She made her first films in Australia, appearing in Painted Daughters (1925) and Sunrise (1927). In 1930, Barry, under the name Phyllis Du Barry, came to America to dance, but was discovered by director King Vidor, who selected Barry to co-star as "the other woman" in the 1932 Samuel Goldwyn film Cynara. However, by 1934, her career was starting to falter. Barry was no longer signed for co-starring or featured roles. She would still appear in such films as Laurel and Hardy’s Bonnie Scotland (1935), The Prince and the Pauper (1937), Bulldog Drummond Comes Back (1937), and Step Lively, Jeeves! (1937). Her career continued until 1947’s Love from a Stranger, by which time she was cast as a waitress.

The premise of What! No Beer? at best seems somewhat labored. Prohibition might have outlasted its usefulness, if it ever had any, and the country was ready to move on, but it wouldn't have been handled through a popular vote and certainly wouldn't have taken effect the next morning. And while Jimmy thinks he has an original million dollar idea, you have to think everyone would have had the same one, not to mention the "near beer" brewers already in business.

Overall, the film seems to be somewhat predictable and often seems to disintegrate into mindless slapstick.Watching the film is like watching vignettes that don't quite mend together into a whole. The congressman at the end of the film telling you what happened is a sign of the bad writing that seems to permeate the film. If you can't connect point A to point B in the story, just skip ahead to point C.

While I am a fan of Buster Keaton’s work, I will say that What! No Beer? is a sad way for his career in Hollywood to end. A comedic genius, Keaton was never really appreciated at MGM. His creative process would never fit in with a studio making films on an assembly line and he was never given the free range that would have brought out his best work. There are a few moments that will remind you of his earlier films, but they unfortunately only serve to remind you how much better films they were.