The repeal of the twelve-year dry period known as Prohibition on alcohol was looking like it would happen as the year 1933 began. Franklin D. Roosevelt had promised during his presidential campaign earlier in the fall to end the ban, in part to collect for the government much needed tax revenue on beer, wine and spirits. Once FDR won in a landslide, MGM predicted the end of bootlegging suds when it released in February 1933 its Buster Keaton comedy, "What? No Beer!"
The movie is about two enterprising guys anticipating the quick repeal of Prohibition. They end up buying a shuttered beer brewery and are ready to go into business, only to see Congress delaying its action towards repeal. Elmer Butts (Buster Keaton), who lays down the money to finance the brewery's purchase, and Jimmy Potts (Jimmy Durante), the man with the beer-making idea, get into quite a jam because of the delay. "What? No Beer!" was the third and last film MGM teamed Keaton and Durante together. The importance of the movie not only serves as a window showing the historic transformation about to take place in the liquor industry, but it was also the final feature film in the United States Keaton would appear in as the lead. It's the last picture he made for MGM, a frustrating experience for the prior-independent actor/director/writer.
Keaton's personal fortunes were sinking fast since his acrimonious divorce to his first wife, Natalie Talmadge, in 1932. His bad drinking habits created a ton of problems for him. MGM docked his salary 20% to pay for expenses it rang up when he inexcusably took time off in the middle of filming his last movie, 1932's "Speak Easily." The studio didn't renew his contract after "What! No Beer?", and other Hollywood film companies ignored him. His reputation, especially after the publicized trip to Mexico where he married his personal nurse, Mae Scriven, in a drunken stupor, caused quite a commotion. Keaton claimed he had no recollection of the trip nor the wedding to his nurse whose primary responsibility was to make sure he didn't get drunk.
Keaton's roles during his MGM days, though mostly money makers, saw his on-screen persona drift downwards from playing rock solid confident characters to becoming sheepish, jittery and clueless nobodies for others to sock him. Writes Danny Reid of Buster's part in "What? No Beer!", "Keaton's Butts never rises above the level of morose punching bag." On screen, it was obvious he was showing a level of wear and tear from the toll from drinking purportedly one bottle of whisky a day. His voice is horse, his baggy eyes belie his relatively youthful age of 38, and his energy level is low. The movie, despite a nice profit, failed to convince MGM's president Louis B. Mayer to renew his contract.
Keaton's only offers for his acting services were overseas, where he played in French and British films. He later returned to the states to be in low-budget Education Pictures and Columbia Pictures in a series of shorts. His nurse wife divorced him in 1935, and with therapy, Keaton stopped drinking for five years. In 1940 he met and married Eleanor Norris, 23 years his junior. She turned out to be a staunch supporter of his, turning both his life and career around by getting him the Columbia contract and other part-time gigs. The marriage lasted until his death in 1966 at the age of 71.
"What? No Beer!" was lambasted by film critics, although they did admit the movie had a couple of delightful scenes. In one, paralleling a sequence in his 1925 classic "Seven Chances," which had Keaton running down a hill dodging a number of boulders, here he's being chased by wooden beer barrels that he was hauling up the hill in his truck. Towards the film's conclusion, the movie has Keaton's character opening his Butt's Beer Garden the first day of legalized beer. As soon as FDR took office in March, Congress passed the act legalizing the sale of 3.2 percentage beer. The President signed the law on March 22, 1933, a month after the release of "What? No Beer!" As MGM predicted, Jimmy Durante holds a brimming glass of freshly poured beer to the camera and says, "It's your turn next, folks. It won't be long now!"
