Buster Keaton - 65th Anniversary Collection (General Nuisance / His Ex Marks the Spot / Mooching Through Georgia / Nothing but Pleasure / Pardon My Berth Marks / Pest From the West / So You Won't Squawk / The Spook Speaks / The Taming of the Snood / She's Oil Mine)
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American actor, comedian, film director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".
Background
He was born on October 4, 1895, into a vaudeville family; his father’s name was Joseph Keaton while his mother’s was Myra. His father owned a traveling show called the ‘Mohawk Indian Medicine Company’ along with Harry Houdini.
He began performing with his parents as a three year old in the act ‘The Three Keatons’, first appearing on stage in 1899. His parents performed a comedy sketch that involved the young Buster being tossed and thrown around a lot. In spite of this seemingly rough treatment, the boy was never injured.
While he was a little kid he would start laughing as his father threw him around but this did not get much laughter from the audiences. So, he developed a deadpan expression while performing which had the viewers doubled up in laughter.
His parents were often questioned by authorities and arrested for child abuse. His parents also had several brushes with the law when child performers were banned.
Education
He did not go to school; instead his mother taught him to read and write at home.
Career
Keaton became an expert at pratfalls and developed an impassive face that delighted audiences. His talent led the family to New York City and, in 1909, to an appearance in London.
By 1917, Joseph Keaton had developed severe problems with alcohol and the family's act was dissolved. Their routine had relied on physical prowess and exact timing, and required reliable performers. The break brought new opportunities for Keaton. He was soon offered a role in a Broadway show, The Passing Show of 1917, for the princely sum of $250 per week. A chance meeting with comedian Rosco "Fatty" Arbuckle led him to break that contract. Keaton was convinced to star in a short film with Arbuckle, called The Butcher Boy (1917). Arbuckle also wrote and directed this film. Keaton soon discovered that his brand of comedy, especially his deadpan facial expressions, worked very well on film. The only time he ever laughed on screen was in an Arbuckle movie, Fatty at Coney Island (1917).
Keaton appeared in 14 Arbuckle shorts between 1917 and 1919, including His Wedding Night (1917) and The Bell Boy (1918). His film career was briefly interrupted by military service during World War I. He was drafted by the United States Army in 1918, and served for over a year with the 40th Infantry in France. After returning to the U.S. in 1919, Keaton appeared in several more Arbuckle short films such as A Country Hero (1919). In 1920, Keaton made his first full-length feature, The Saphead, playing the straight man, Bertie "The Lamb" Van Alstyne.
In 1920, Arbuckle left Comique Films for Paramount. Keaton became the new head of the company, which was owned by Joseph Schenck (who later became Keaton's brother in law). Like Arbuckle before him, Keaton began directing films that he appeared in. His first directorial effort, The High Sign, was a short that apparently did not work very well. It was not released until 1921. Keaton found his footing with his next film, One Week (1920), which focused on the tribulations of a do-it-yourself house. Behind the camera, Keaton worked with a co-director, Eddie Cline, with whom he collaborated several times. Though this was a partnership, Cline later acknowledged that Keaton did much of the work.
Keatan balanced his work in front and behind the camera very well. This equilibrium came into play with The Playhouse (1921), which he also wrote and directed with Cline. Keaton played every role in the movie, which was set in a theater. He was every member of the audience as well as every performer. In one sequence, Keaton even danced with himself. He appeared on screen simultaneously nine times. The innovative special effects he developed for The Playhouse made him an early leader in the field. He also began using a moving camera, at a time when many of his peers continued to use stationary ones.
Because of Keaton's success, and a notorious scandal involving Arbuckle, Comique Films was renamed Buster Keaton Productions. Keaton, however, did not own any part of the company. With complete artistic control, he developed his own working methodology and made about two pictures per year.
By 1923, Keaton was making full-length features. His first was a parody of the famous D.W. Griffith film Intolerance (1916), entitled The Three Ages. In Our Hospitality (1923), a film about a mountain feud, Keaton shot both a novel train scene and waterfall scene on location. Two of his best films were made in 1924. The first was Sherlock Jr., in which a daydreaming projectionist who longs to be a detective becomes part of the movie he is showing. It marked the first time that a character walks off a movie screen and into "real life." As usual, Keaton performed all of his own stunts. In this film, he broke his neck, but did not discover it until ten years later. Keaton's other 1924 film, The Navigator, was shot on an ocean liner and directed with Donald Crisp.
Keaton had a hard time capturing the promise of Sherlock Jr. over the next few years. While his films were technically and creatively interesting, they were either critical or box office failures. Still, he continued to find new situations in which to put his long-suffering face. In Seven Chances (1925), he faces a rockslide. In Go West (1925), he is stared down by a herd of cattle. Battling Butler (1926), a boxing movie, was a commercial success. Though The General (1926) was successful in retrospect, at the time it was critically derided. The General was a Civil War romance, that featured many impressive chase scenes and one very expensive special effects shot. Keaton spent $42,000 on sending a train into a burning bridge. In College (1927), Keaton was engaged in every athletic sport except football, but it was a disappointment.
Keaton made Steamboat Bill Jr., his last film with Buster Keaton Productions, in 1928. While the movie had an impressive tornado sequence and an interesting topic (a Mississippi riverboat race) which pleased critics, Steamboat Bill Jr. was not a commercial success. After this failure, Schenck sold his contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), where his son, Nicholas, just happened to be in charge. Keaton had never paid much attention to the business side of the film industry, and he paid a hefty price. He lost creative control of his pictures, and, like his father before him, developed a nasty drinking problem. While the first project he did for MGM ( The Cameraman in 1928) was rather good, as was his last silent film (Spite Marriage in 1929), Keaton's career was in decline.
Several factors, other than the loss of creative control, contributed to Keaton's downward spiral in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The arrival of the sound era in 1929 did not work in his favor because of his voice. He had his sound debut in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, then made eight more films under his Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract. None of them were very good. He was forced to make several films as a straight man to Jimmy Durante, including Free and Easy (1930). Keaton's contract with MGM was ended in 1933.
Keaton managed to get his drinking under control by 1934, after a short time in Europe where he appeared in several films including Le roi des Champs-Elyses (1934). That same year, he was put under contract by Educational Films and returned to making shorts. One of the best of this era was Grand Slam Opera. After the company shut its doors in 1937, Keaton was re-signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but only as a gagman. He directed three short films in 1938. The following year, United Artists hired Keaton; he made ten shorts in the next two years. Keaton supported himself throughout the 1940s by appearing on stage in Europe and the United States, and writing gags for MGM and 20th Century-Fox.
In 1949, Keaton appeared on television for the first time. He would return often. The medium revitalized his career. In addition to appearing in numerous commercials (including one for Alka-Seltzer), Keaton made many guest appearances in both comedies and dramas. He appeared on shows such as Playhouse 90, Route 66, and The Twilight Zone. Keaton had two shows of his own, including The Buster Keaton Comedy Show (1949) and The Buster Keaton Show from 1950 until 1951. He continued to appear on television until his death.
Keaton returned to film by the 1950s. In 1950, he played himself in Sunset Boulevard. Two years later, he appeared with Charlie Chaplin for the only time in Limelight. Other significant film appearances included Around the World in 80 Days (1956), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), and War Italian Style (1966). In 1965, Keaton appeared in a short film written and shot by French existentialist playwright Samuel Beckett entitled simply Film.
On February 1, 1966, Keaton died of lung cancer in Woodland Hills, California. He was 70 years old.
Blesh's 394-page biography of Buster Keaton has no mention of any participation in organized religion on Keaton's part, aside from being christened as an infant. In a practical sense, Keaton's only religion seems to have been theater and film.
Views
Quotations:
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
"A comedian does funny things. A good comedian does things funny."
"Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter."
"Charlie Chaplin and I would have a friendly contest: Who could do the feature film with the least subtitles?"
"Like everyone else, I like to be with a happy crowd."
"No man can be a genius in slapshoes and a flat hat."
"They say pantomime's a lost art. It's never been a lost art and never will be, because it's too natural to do."
"All my life I have been happiest when the folks watching me said to each other, `Look at the poor dope, wilya?"
"Down through the years my face has been called a sour puss, a dead pan, a frozen face, The Great Stone Face, and, believe it or not, "a tragic mask." On the other hand that kindly critic, the late James Agee, described my face as ranking "almost with Lincoln's as an early American archetype, it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful." I can't imagine what the great rail splitter's reaction would have been to this, though I sure was pleased."
"And if there is sweeter music this side of heaven I haven't heard it."
"The funny thing about our act is that dad gets the worst of it, although I'm the one who apparently receives the bruises ... the secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment."
"If one more person tells me this is just like old times, I swear I'll jump out the window."
"Not long ago a friend asked me what was the greatest pleasure I got from spending my whole life as an actor. There have been so many that I had to think about that for a moment. Then I said, 'Like everyone else, I like to be with a happy crowd'."
"I don't feel qualified to talk about my work."
"Is Hollywood the cruelest city in the world? Well, it can be. New York can be that, too. You can be a Broadway star here one night, and something happens, and out--nobody knows you on the street. They forget you ever lived. It happens in Hollywood, too."
"What really got my goat at MGM were comedians like The Marx Brothers who never wrote their own jokes."
"I was mad at the time, or I would never have done the thing."
Personality
There was a time in Buster Keaton's life were he started to go down hill. He began to drink and had depression. His first wife Natalie Talmadge who was an actress took all of his money when they divorced. He was unstabilized he had to be put into an institution.
Keaton's alcoholism became so bad that he was eventually institutionalized and confined in a straightjacket.
Physical Characteristics:
White as alabaster, with dark, shy, feline eyes and high, finely sculpted cheekbones, it was capable of a vast range of expression, from the open inquisitiveness of a child to the worldly nonchalance of a millionaire playboy. At the same time, its beauty is as distant and inscrutable as the lunar surface; it suggests isolation, loneliness, perhaps even despair. Of all the silent comics, he was the most silent.
Buster’s voice did not really suit his silent persona—it was low, hoarse and sometimes cracked, a drinking man’s voice.
At 5'5" Keaton was a short guy. He used this to his advantage, though, surrounding himself with heavyset, taller actors in order to appear like more of an underdog and gain the audience's empathy.
Quotes from others about the person
Peter Hogue wrote in Film Comment, "Keaton is astonishing not only for what he does as an actor within the frame, but also for what he does with frame in relation to the actor. Much more thoroughly than Chaplin, he managed a near-perfect, and highly expressive, harmony between the roles of performer and filmmaker."
Caryn James wrote in The New York Times, "Keaton's television appearances are warm and enduring. They are the work of a man who, after decades of obscurity, found a way to perpetuate his comic images by embracing a new medium."
An unnamed author of Keaton's obituary in Variety, wrote, "The secret to his lasting success as a master comedian was his universally recognized character—the unhappy, doleful fall guy to whom 'everything' happened. He ran to meet misfortune and never failed to make connections. Keaton was the world's whipping boy and made the world love him for it."
Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929, (when) he worked without interruption on a series of films that make him, arguably, the greatest actor–director in the history of the movies".
Film critic Roger Ebert stated, "The greatest of the silent clowns is Buster Keaton, not only because of what he did, but because of how he did it. Harold Lloyd made us laugh as much, Charlie Chaplin moved us more deeply, but no one had more courage than Buster."
Filmmaker Mel Brooks has credited Buster Keaton as a major influence, saying: "I owe (Buster) a lot on two levels: One for being such a great teacher for me as a filmmaker myself, and the other just as a human being watching this gifted person doing these amazing things. He made me believe in make-believe." He also admitted to borrowing the idea of the changing room scene in The Cameraman for his own film Silent Movie.
Film historian Jeffrey Vance wrote: "Buster Keaton's comedy endures not just because he had a face that belongs on Mount Rushmore, at once hauntingly immovable and classically American, but because that face was attached to one of the most gifted actors and directors who ever graced the screen. Evolved from the knockabout upbringing of the vaudeville stage, Keaton's comedy is a whirlwind of hilarious, technically precise, adroitly executed, and surprising gags, very often set against a backdrop of visually stunning set pieces and locations—all this masked behind his unflinching, stoic veneer."
Film critic David Thomson later described Keaton's style of comedy: "Buster plainly is a man inclined towards a belief in nothing but mathematics and absurdity ... like a number that has always been searching for the right equation. Look at his face—as beautiful but as inhuman as a butterfly—and you see that utter failure to identify sentiment." Gilberto Perez commented on "Keaton's genius as an actor to keep a face so nearly deadpan and yet render it, by subtle inflections, so vividly expressive of inner life. His large, deep eyes are the most eloquent feature; with merely a stare, he can convey a wide range of emotions, from longing to mistrust, from puzzlement to sorrow."
Critic Anthony Lane also noted Keaton's body language: "The traditional Buster stance requires that he remain upstanding, full of backbone, looking ahead... (in The General) he clambers onto the roof of his locomotive and leans gently forward to scan the terrain, with the breeze in his hair and adventure zipping toward him around the next bend. It is the angle that you remember: the figure perfectly straight but tilted forward, like the Spirit of Ecstasy on the hood of a Rolls-Royce... (in The Three Ages), he drives a low-grade automobile over a bump in the road, and the car just crumbles beneath him. Rerun it on video, and you can see Buster riding the collapse like a surfer, hanging onto the steering wheel, coming beautifully to rest as the wave of wreckage breaks."
Interests
Keaton designed and modified his own pork pie hats during his career. In 1964, he told an interviewer that in making "this particular pork pie", he "started with a good Stetson and cut it down", stiffening the brim with sugar water.
Connections
On May 31, 1921, Keaton married Natalie Talmadge, sister-in-law of his boss, Joseph Schenck, and sister of actresses Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge. She co-starred with Keaton in Our Hospitality. The couple had two sons, Joseph, aka Buster Keaton Jr. (June 2, 1922 – February 14, 2007), and Robert Talmadge Keaton (February 3, 1924 – July 19, 2009), later both surnamed Talmadge. After the birth of Robert, the relationship began to suffer.
Influenced by her family, Talmadge decided not to have more children, and this led to the couple staying in separate bedrooms. Her financial extravagance (she would spend up to a third of his salary on clothes) was another factor in the breakdown of the marriage. Keaton dated actress Dorothy Sebastian beginning in the 1920s and Kathleen Key in the early 1930s. After attempts at reconciliation, Talmadge divorced Keaton in 1932, taking his entire fortune and refusing to allow any contact between Keaton and his sons, whose last name she had changed to Talmadge. Keaton was reunited with them about a decade later when his older son turned 18.
In 1933, he married his nurse, Mae Scriven, during an alcoholic binge about which he afterwards claimed to remember nothing (Keaton himself later called that period an "alcoholic blackout"). Scriven herself would later claim that she didn't know Keaton's real first name until after the marriage. The singular event that triggered Scriven filing for divorce in 1935 was her finding Keaton with Leah Clampitt Sewell (libertine wife of millionaire Barton Sewell) on July 4 the same year in a hotel in Santa Barbara. When they divorced in 1936, it was again at great financial cost to Keaton.
On May 29, 1940, Keaton married Eleanor Norris (July 29, 1918 – October 19, 1998), who was 23 years his junior. She has been credited by Jeffrey Vance with saving Keaton's life by stopping his heavy drinking and helping to salvage his career. The marriage lasted until his death. Between 1947 and 1954, they appeared regularly in the Cirque Medrano in Paris as a double act. She came to know his routines so well that she often participated in them on TV revivals.