Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton

Joseph Frank Keaton Jr. (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966), known by his professional name as Buster Keaton, Pamplinas ("Nonsense") in Spanish markets, was a popular and influential American silent-film comic actor and filmmaker. His trademark was physical comedy with a stoic, deadpan expression on his face, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face", Cara de palo ("Wooden face") in Spanish markets. His work as a performer and director is widely regarded to be some of the most innovative and important work in the history of cinema. He was recognized as the 7th greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

A 2002 world-wide poll by Sight and Sound ranked Keaton's The General as the 15th best film of all time. Three other Keaton films received votes in the survey: Our Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator.

Biography

Early life in vaudeville

Keaton was born into the world of vaudeville. His father, Joseph Hallie Keaton, a native of Vigo County, Indiana, known in the show business world as Joe Keaton, and Harry Houdini owned a travelling show called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company, which performed on stage and sold patent medicine on the side. Keaton was born in Piqua (PICK-way), Kansas, the small town where his mother, Myra Edith Cutler, happened to go into labor.

Legend has it that one day before a vaudeville performance, Keaton a very young age was walking down a flight of stairs, but tripped and fell down the entire flight. Miraculously Keaton got right back up, and the famous magician Harry Houdini, who was in the performance, saw Keaton fall and said to his mother that he was quite the little buster. The name Buster Keaton stuck with him ever since.

At the age of three, he began performing with his parents as The Three Keatons; the storyline of the act was how to raise a small child. Myra played the saxophone to one side while Joe and Buster performed on center stage. Buster would goad Joe by disobeying him, and Joe would respond by throwing Buster against the scenery, into the orchestra pit, or even into the audience. The act evolved as Buster learned to take trick falls safely. He was rarely injured or bruised on stage. Nevertheless, this knockabout style of comedy led to accusations of child abuse. Decades later, Keaton said that he was never abused by his father and that the falls and physical comedy were a matter of proper technical execution. In fact, Buster would have so much fun, he would begin laughing as his father threw him across the stage. This drew fewer laughs from the audience, so Buster adopted his famous dead-pan expression whenever he was working.

The act ran up against laws banning child performers in vaudeville. When one official saw Buster in full costume and make-up, he asked a stage-hand how old that performer was. The stage-hand shrugged and pointed to Buster's mother. "I don't know," he said, "ask his wife!" Despite tangles with the law and a disastrous tour of the English Music Halls, Buster was a rising star in the theater, so much so that even when Myra and Joe tried to introduce Buster's siblings into the act, Buster remained the central attraction.

By the time Buster was 21, Joe's alcoholism threatened the reputation of the family act, so Buster and Myra left Joe in Los Angeles. Myra returned to their summer home in Muskegon, Michigan while Buster travelled to New York, where his performing career moved from vaudeville to film.

Silent film era

In February 1917, Keaton met Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle at the Talmadge Studios in New York City, where Arbuckle was under contract to Joseph M. Schenck. He was hired as a co-star and gag-man. Keaton later claimed that he was soon Arbuckle's second director and his entire gag department. Keaton and Arbuckle became close friends, a bond that would never break, even after Arbuckle was embroiled in the scandal that cost him his career and his personal life.

After Keaton's successful work with Arbuckle, Schenck gave him his own production unit, The Keaton Studio. He made a series of two-reel comedies, including One Week (1920), Cops (1922), The Electric House (1922), and The Playhouse (1921). Based on the success of these shorts, he graduated to full-length features. These films made Keaton one of the most famous comedians in the world. At the time, he was perhaps the 2nd most popular comedian in America.

His most enduring feature-length films include Our Hospitality (1923), The Navigator (1924), Sherlock Jr. (1924), The Cameraman (1928), Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928), and The General (1927). The last film, set during the American Civil War, is considered his masterpiece, combining physical comedy with Keaton's love for trains. Unfortunately, many of his most acclaimed films performed poorly at the box office due to their sophistication—audiences had a difficult time seeing Buster as a cinematic artist of considerable ambition.

However, his talents were always recognized by his peers. Years later, rival director Leo McCarey talked about the freewheeling days of making slapstick comedies: "All of us tried to steal each other's gagmen. But we had no luck with Keaton, because he thought up his best gags himself and we couldn't steal him!"

In addition, the technical side of filmmaking fascinated him and he was forward thinking enough to want to direct sound films when they began to become technically practical and popular. The fact that he had a good voice and years of stage experience promised an easier adjustment than Chaplin's silent Tramp character, who could not survive sound. Sadly, Keaton's loss of independence as a filmmaker coincided with the coming of sound films and mounting personal problems, and his full potential in the early sound era was never realized.

Marriages

In 1921, he married Natalie Talmadge, sister-in-law of his uncle, Joseph Schenck, and sister of actresses Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge. The couple had two sons, James and Robert, during the first three years of the marriage, but after the birth of Robert, the relationship began to suffer.

According to Keaton in his autobiography, Natalie turned him out of their bedroom and sent detectives to follow him to see who he was dating behind her back. She also spent enormous sums of money. During the 1920s, as per his autobiography, he dated actress Kathleen Key, and upon ending the affair, Key flew into a rage tearing up his dressing room. In 1932, Natalie bitterly divorced Keaton, taking his entire fortune and refusing to allow any contact between Keaton and his sons. Keaton was reunited with them about a decade later when the older son turned eighteen. The traumatic failure of his marriage, along with the loss of his independence as a filmmaker, led Keaton into a period of deep alcoholism.

In 1933, Buster married Mae Scriven - his nurse, during an alcoholic binge that he claimed to remember nothing about afterwards (Keaton himself later called that period an "alcoholic blackout"). When they divorced in 1936, she took half of everything they owned — half of their dining-room set, half of each table and chair set, half of their books - and Buster's favorite St. Bernard, Elmer.

In 1940, Buster married Eleanor Norris, who was 23 years his junior. She saved his life and helped to salvage his career. All of their friends advised them against marrying, but the marriage lasted until his death. Between 1947 and 1954, Buster and Eleanor appeared regularly in the Cirque Medrano in Paris, in a highly-regarded doubles act. Eleanor died in 1998.

Sound era and television

Keaton's filmmaking unit was acquired by MGM in 1928, a business decision that Keaton regretted ever afterwards. He was forced to enter the ranks of the studio system, working at the MGM studios in a more restrictive environment than that in which he had previously worked. He stopped directing, but continued to perform and made some of his most financially successful films for the studio, including Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (1931), and Speak Easily (1932). MGM tried teaming the laconic Keaton with the rambunctious Jimmy Durante in a series of movies including The Passionate Plumber, Speak Easily, and What! No Beer?, but the two comedians never quite meshed as a unit.

After his MGM star contract was terminated he was re-employed as a gag writer for various MGM films, particularly those of the Marx Brothers—including At the Circus (1939), and Go West (1940); and various films of Red Skelton.

During this period Keaton also starred in two series of short films made for Educational Pictures and Columbia Pictures (the latter were directed and written by Del Lord), which received little attention at the time, and made a film in Paris entitled Le Roi des Champs-Élysées (1934).

He guest-starred in such films as Sunset Boulevard (1950), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), and appeared in Charles Chaplin's Limelight (1952), recalling the vaudeville of The Playhouse.

He had a successful series on Los Angeles television, The Buster Keaton Show (1950). An attempt to recreate the first series on film as Life With Buster Keaton (1951), which allowed it to be broadcast to the east coast, was less well received. However, Keaton said he cancelled the programs himself because he was unable to create enough fresh material to produce a new show each week.

One of Keaton's most memorable television appearances was on Ed Wynn's variety show. At the age of 55, he successfully recreated one of the stunts of his youth, in which he propped one foot onto a table, then swung the second foot up next to it, and held the awkward position in midair for a moment before crashing to the stage floor. I've Got a Secret host Garry Moore recalled, "I asked (Keaton) how he did all those falls, and he said, 'I'll show you.' He opened his jacket and he was all bruised. So that's how he did it-- it hurt-- but you had to care enough not to care." At the age of 70, Keaton suggested a piece of physical comedy for his appearance in the 1965 movie Sergeant Dead Head, in which he ran past the end of a firehose, into a six-foot-high flip and crash. When the director balked, expressing concerns for Keaton's health, Keaton said, "I won't hurt myself, Norm, I've done it for years!"

His classic silent films saw a revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1961 he starred in The Twilight Zone episode Once Upon a Time, which had both silent and sound scenes. Keaton also found steady work as an actor in TV commercials, including a popular series of silent ads for Simon Pure Beer in which he revisited some of his favorite sight gags from his silent film days.

Keaton starred in a short film called The Railrodder (1965) for the National Film Board of Canada. Wearing his traditional porkpie hat, he travelled from one end of Canada to the other on a motorized "hand-car", performing gags similar to those in films he made 50 years before. The film is also notable for being Keaton's last silent screen performance. The Railrodder was made in tandem with a documentary about Keaton's life, cinema style and the creation of The Railrodder called Buster Keaton Rides Again - also made for the National Film Board. He played the central role in Samuel Beckett's Film (1965), directed by Alan Schneider. Keaton's last film appearance was in the Roman musical farce A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966).

Keaton lived to see the rediscovery of his great silent films in his later years, and his recognition as one of the great geniuses of cinema. He died of lung cancer on 1 February 1966, at the age of 70.

Legacy and contribution

Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd are remembered as the great comic innovators of the silent era. Keaton was undoubtedly the most innovative filmmaker of the three, although Keaton never made such comparisons. He enjoyed Lloyd's films highly and often praised Chaplin for his genius.

Keaton has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: 6619 Hollywood Boulevard (for motion pictures); and 6321 Hollywood Boulevard (for television). In 1994, he appeared on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.

Many actors and filmmakers were influenced by Keaton, including Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Orson Welles, Johnny Depp, Blake Edwards, Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow.

Trivia

• During the railroad watertank scene in Sherlock Jr. Keaton broke his neck and did not realize it until years afterwards. [1]

• As a toddler, Joseph Keaton received the nickname "Buster" after falling down a flight of stairs without apparent distress or injury. A "buster" was slang for a big fall. Keaton family friend Harry Houdini is typically credited with making the original "buster" observation.

• In the Simpsons episode A Fish Called Selma, Buster Keaton's Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is removed and Troy McClure's is put in its place.

• In the movie Benny & Joon, while one of the main characters "Sam" is riding the train, he is reading the a book which its title is "The Look of Buster Keaton".

Filmography

• The Butcher Boy (1917)
• A Reckless Romeo (1917)
• The Rough House (1917)
• His Wedding Night (1917)
• Oh Doctor! (1917)
• Coney Island (1917)
• A Country Hero (1917)
• Out West (1918)
• The Bell Boy (1918)
• Moonshine (1918)
• Good Night, Nurse! (1918)
• The Cook (1918)
• Back Stage (1919)
• The Hayseed (1919)
• The Garage (1920)
• One Week (1920)
• The Round-Up (1920) (uncredited)
• The Saphead (1920)
• Convict 13 (1920)
• The Scarecrow (1920)
• Neighbors (1921)
• The Haunted House (1921)
• Hard Luck (1921)
• The High Sign (1921)
• The Goat (1921)
• The Playhouse (1921)
• The Boat (1921)
• The Paleface (1922)
• Cops (film) (1922)
• My Wife's Relations (1922)
• The Blacksmith (1922)
• The Frozen North (1922)
• Daydreams (1922)
• The Electric House (1922)
• The Balloonatic (1923)
• The Love Nest (1923)
• Three Ages (1923)
• Our Hospitality (1923)
• Sherlock Jr. (1924)
• The Navigator (1924)
• Seven Chances (1925)
• The Iron Mule (1925) (uncredited)
• Go West (1925)
• Battling Butler (1926)
• The General (1927)
• College (1927)
• Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
• The Cameraman (1928)
• Spite Marriage (1929)
• The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)
• Free and Easy (1930)
• Doughboys (1930)
• Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (1931)
• The Slippery Pearls (1931)
• Sidewalks of New York (1931)
• Casanova wider Willen (1931)
• The Passionate Plumber (Plombier amoureux, Le) (1932)
• Speak Easily (1932)
• What! No Beer? (1933)
• The Gold Ghost (1934)

• Allez Oop (1934)
• Le Roi des Champs-Élysées (1934)
• Palooka from Paducah (1935)
• One Run Elmer (1935)
• Hayseed Romance (1935)
• Tars and Stripes (1935)
• The E-Flat Man (1935)
• The Timid Young Man (1935)
• The Invader (AKA An Old Spanish Custom) (1936)
• Three on a Limb (1936)
• Grand Slam Opera (1936)
• Blue Blazes (1936)
• The Chemist (1936)
• Mixed Magic (1936)
• Jail Bait (1937)
• Ditto (1937)
• Love Nest on Wheels (1937)
• Pest from the West (1939)
• Mooching Through Georgia (1939)
• Nothing But Pleasure (1940)
• Pardon My Berth Marks (1940)
• The Taming of the Snood (1940)
• New Moon (1940) (uncredited)
• The Spook Speaks (1940)
• The Villain Still Pursued Her (1940)
• Li'l Abner (1940)
• His Ex Marks the Spot (1940)
• So You Won't Squawk (1941)
• General Nuisance (1941)
• She's Oil Mine (1941)
• Forever and a Day (1943)
• San Diego I Love You (1944)
• That's the Spirit (1945)
• That Night with You (1945)
• She Went to the Races (1945) (uncredited)
• God's Country (1946)
• Easy to Wed (1946)
• Moderno Barba Azul, El (1946)
• Colmillo de Buda, El (1949)
• The Lovable Cheat (1949)
• You're My Everything (1949)
• In the Good Old Summertime (1949)
• Sunset Boulevard (1950)
• Excuse My Dust (1951) (uncredited)
• Paradise for Buster (1952)
• Limelight (1952)
• L'Incantevole Nemica (1953)
• Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960)
• Once Upon A Time, episode of The Twilight Zone (1961)
• Ten Girls Ago (1962)
• It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
• Pajama Party (1964)
• Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)
• How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)
• Sergeant Dead Head (1965)
• Film (1965)
• The Railrodder (1965)
• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)

Further Reading

• Blesh, Rudi (1966). Keaton. The Macmillan Company. ISBN 0-02-511570-7.
• Keaton, Buster; Samuels, Charles (1982). My Wonderful World Of Slapstick. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80178-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Keaton, Eleanor (2001). Buster Keaton Remembered. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-4227-5.
• McPherson, Edward (2005). Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat. Newmarket Press. ISBN 1-55704-665-4.

See also

• List of United States comedy films

External links

• Buster Keaton at IMDb
• Buster Keaton at the TCM Movie Database
• Obituary, New York Times/Associated Press, February 2, 1966
• The International Buster Keaton Society
• They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?
• Template:Senses
• Annual Buster Keaton Celebration, Iola, KS
• The Actors' Colony in Muskegon MI 1908-1938
• Buster Keaton Fans Yahoo List
• Virtual History - Bibliography and Tobacco Cards
• The Keaton Character: Buster Keaton and the Economy of Means (essay)
• Juha's Buster Keaton Page (link resource)
• Buster Keaton Photo Galleries (includes rare images of BK smiling and laughing)
• Buster Keaton on Comedy and Making Movies, an online seminar from Columbia University.
• Buster Keaton Biography
• Buster Keaton: From Butcher Boy To Scribe