Buster Keaton

Joseph Francis "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 - February 1, 1966) was a popular and influential American silent-film comic actor and filmmaker. His trademark was physical comedy while keeping a deadpan expression on his face at all times, which earned him the nickname of "The Great Stone Face". Like his contemporaries, he came from vaudeville. His godfather was Harry Houdini, and Keaton himself credited Houdini with dubbing him "Buster" after seeing him, aged three, tumble down a flight of stairs without injury. (At the time, the word "buster" either meant "bronco-buster" or a fall. It was only after Keaton was nicknamed the word became a name — one example of this early use is the comic strip character Buster Brown.)

Birth & Vaudeville

Keaton was born in the town of Piqua (peek-WAY), Kansas. His mother and father, Myra and Joe Keaton, were paid performers of a travelling medicine show, and Myra happened to go into labor in Pique. Buster was born in a boarding house that was later destroyed by a tornado. Currently on this site is a memorial plaque, and nearby is a small power plant than maintains a one-room Keaton museum. (To this day, Piqua is so small that the Annual Buster Keaton Celebration must be held in nearby Iola, KS.)

Keaton grew up in the world of vaudeville, performing with his parents (as "The Three Keatons") from the age of three. The act consisted of a saxophone performance by Myra and an act between Joe and Buster where Joe tried to show the audience how to raise a small child. Of course, Buster deliberately goaded his dad by disobeying, for which Joe would throw Buster into scenery, the orchestra pit, or occasionally into the audience! This on-stage lead to accusations of child abuse; however, Joe had only started the act when little Buster (about four years old) showed his father that he could imitate his on-stage trick falls perfectly. So while Buster and Joe were knocked around, they were rarely injured or even bruised. Decades later, Keaton would state that he was never abused by his father, and that the falls and physical comedy was 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 would diminish the laughs from the audience, so Buster learned how to keep his famous dead-pan expression whenever he was working.

However, this did not stop members of the public from passing a law 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, who was no fool, shrugged and pointed to Buster's mother. "I don't know," he said, "ask his wife!" Despite entaglement 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 LA. Myra returned to their summer home in Michigan, while Buster travelled to New York, where he easily found work.

Silent Film

It was there in February 1917 that he ran into Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Arbuckle invited him to the studio, where Arbuckle was under contract to Joe Schenck. He was quickly hired as a co-star and gag-man. Keaton later recalled that he soon became 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 "Fatty Arbuckle scandal" that cost him his career and his personal life.

Keaton's success encouraged the studio to give him his own production unit, and Buster Keaton began starring in a series of two-reel comedies that rocketed him to fame, including One Week, Cops, The Electric House, and The Playhouse. He reached the peak of his creativity during the early 1920s, and he graduated from short films to full-length features. The initial success of his movies made Keaton one of the most famous comedians in the world. At the time, he was perhaps the third most popular comedian in America behind Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. Today, Lloyd is remembered as a distant third to Keaton and Chaplin, and there are some who argue that Keaton was a superior filmmaker to Chaplin. (It should be said that Keaton never indulged in such comparisons. He enjoyed Lloyd's films highly and often praised Chaplin for his genius.)

His filmmaking style employs editing and framing techniques that are more closely aligned with today's sensibilities than the melodrama of other films of the day. His most famous and popular feature-length films included Our Hospitality, The Navigator, Steamboat Bill Jr., and The General. The last film, a Civil War adventure, is considered his masterpiece, combining physical comedy with Keaton's love for trains. It is seen by many as a good choice for viewers who are becoming newly acquainted with silent films. Unfortunately, many of his most acclaimed films performed poorly in the box office due to their sophistication -- the audience had a difficult time seeing Buster as a cinematic artist of considerable ambition.

In addition, the technical side of filmmaking fascinated him and he was forward thinking enough to want to produce 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, whom Chaplin thought could not survive sound.

Marriages

In 1921, he married Natalie Talmadge, sister-in-law of his boss, Joe Schenck, and sister of the famous actress Norma Talmadge. After the birth of their second son, their marriage began to suffer. According to Keaton's autobiography, Natalie turned him out of the bedroom and then sent detectives to follow him to see who he was dating behind her back. By the time Keaton's began work in sound pictures, Natalie had divorced him, taken his entire fortune, and refused to allow any contact between Keaton and his sons. (Keaton was reunited with them about a decade later.)

Buster re-married in the late 1930s to his nurse during an alcoholic binge that he remembered nothing about afterward. She later divorced Buster and took half of everything they owned — half of each dining set, half of each table and chair set, half of the books, and even Buster's favorite St. Bernard, Elmer.

In 1940, Buster married the woman who not only saved his life but also helped to salvage his career — Eleanor Norris. She was 23, and he was 44. All their friends advised them against it, but the marriage lasted until Buster's death. Between 1947 and 1954, Buster and Eleanor appeared regularly in the Cirque Medrano in Paris, where they were highly regarded as a double act.

Sound Films & 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 that he had ever worked in previously (including vaudeville). He had difficulty adapting to the studio system, and he lapsed into alcoholism. His career declined within a few years, and he spent most of the 1930s in obscurity, working as a gag writer for various MGM films (including the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera) and At the Circus.

He often made guest-appearences in films, including Billy Wilder's 1950 film Sunset Boulevard, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Among the best is a brief cameo in Charlie Chaplin's late film Limelight. Keaton and Chaplin share the screen for the only ten minutes in their lives, playing two aging former vaudeville stars trying to recapture a bit of glory, decades after both Chaplin's and Keaton's fame had peaked — though Keaton remarks, "If one more person tells me this is just like old times, I swear I'll jump out the window."

He starred in "The Buster Keaton Comedy Show" for two seasons. Despite its popularity, he cancelled the program because he had been unable to accumulate the amount of material to produce a new show each week. He also found steady work as an actor for TV commercials. But he largely believed, perhaps, that he had been forgotten. His classic silent films did see a revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Shortly before he died, Keaton starred in one final short film called The Railrodder for the National Film Board of Canada, which saw him returning to the classic "stone face" role he had known during his heyday in the 1920s. He also played the central role in Samuel Beckett's only film project, Film, in 1965.

Death & Legacy

Buster contracted lung cancer after years of smoking. His wife and doctors let him believe that he had contracted chronic bronchitus, and he was never told that he was dying. (Why exactly they did this is uncertain, but it is clear that Keaton required others to manage his daily living; since his condition was already terminal and uncurable when it was diagnosed, perhaps they were concerned that if he had been told, he would have stopped working. Performing before a camera or a live-audience was what Buster enjoyed most, apart from model trains; perhaps he would have died sooner and with less quality of life had he been told the truth.) Buster Keaton is interred in the Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

Buster Keaton has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 1994, he was honored with his image on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.

Many actors and filmmakers were influenced by Keaton, including Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Blake Edwards, and Jackie Chan.

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