Background

Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895 in Piqua, Kansas, United States, the son of Joseph Francis Keaton IV, a comic dancer in medicine shows and vaudeville, and Myra Cutler, a musician. From infancy Keaton was known as Buster, a nickname he received from the escape artist Harry Houdini, his father's medicine-show partner.

Education

Keaton received no formal education except for one day in a Jersey City public school.

Career

Keaton first appeared in his parents' act at Dockstader's Theater in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1899, and by the age of five he was the featured member of the Three Keatons. Child performers were not unusual in vaudeville, but Buster was unique by any standard. He was known on the circuit as the Human Mop because his father would wipe up the stage floor with the boy, whose costume included a suitcase handle mounted between his shoulders, the better to jerk him about with. The success of this stunt led his father to devise other knockabout routines in which Keaton was thrown or kicked about the stage, often to the tune of his mother's saxophone solos. There is no evidence that Keaton suffered serious physical injury from such treatment, for he quickly mastered the art of the pratfall. But Thomas Dardis, his most thorough biographer, maintained that Keaton's peculiar childhood accounted for his subsequent passivity in his relations with women and employers. Keaton's rough-and-tumble apprenticeship aroused the ire of urban reformers (such as the Gerry Society in New York City) who sought to regulate child labor in show business. Keaton was an excellent test case for the Gerry Society.

The Keatons temporarily managed to fend off the reformers, but the society finally succeeded in having them banned from New York City theaters for two years, prompting an unsuccessful tour of England in 1909. Eventually Keaton grew too large to be easily thrown about, and his father became increasingly unreliable. They were unable to maintain the physical precision necessary to perform their most popular routines. His father's drunkenness and disagreements with promoters marred the final years of the Three Keatons. With the act reduced to playing minor theatrical circuits, Myra Keaton encouraged her son to pursue an independent career.

In February 1917 Keaton signed to do a Broadway review. A chance meeting in New York City with the comedians Lou Anger and Roscoe ("Fatty") Arbuckle, acquaintances from vaudeville, led to Keaton's movie debut. Arbuckle, under the tutelage of the producer Joseph Schenck, had recently formed a movie company specializing in two-reel comedies. He invited Buster to appear in his next picture, The Butcher Boy (1917). Moviemaking fascinated Keaton from his first day on the set, and so he promptly abandoned Broadway to work with Arbuckle's Comique Film Corporation. He did six two-reel comedies in New York City, always in support of Arbuckle, and continued in that role when the company moved to California in October 1917.

The war in Europe interrupted Keaton's movie career in 1918. He served in France for seven months but was not sent to the front, because the army thought he was more valuable entertaining the troops. Keaton returned to California in 1919. He did three more pictures with Arbuckle before Schenck decided to launch a series of comedies starring Keaton. The comedian retained artistic control over his pictures, while Schenck handled financial matters. During Keaton's first three years of independent production he turned out several memorable two-reel comedies, including One Week (1920), The Boat (1921), Cops (1922), and The Electric House (1922). But his most fully realized works, as actor and director, are the feature-length films completed between 1923 and 1927. The cycle began with Our Hospitality (1923), in which Keaton used a story of feuding families to deflate the legend of gracious hospitality in the antebellum South. In Sherlock, Jr. (1924), Keaton portrayed a motion-picture projectionist who wants to be a detective. The film features an ingenious special-effects sequence in which the hero falls asleep on the job and, in his dream, steps into the screen and participates in the action of a movie within the movie. The comedian's greatest popular success was The Navigator (1924), which centers around Keaton's misadventures with an abandoned ship. But, by critical consensus, Keaton's masterpiece is The General (1927), an epic comedy-adventure set in the Civil War. Keaton imprinted his genius on these films. While much of his humor, like that of Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel, drew upon vaudeville formulas, Keaton's best gags revealed a fascination with mechanism, the hallmark of his style. And, unlike the other great clowns of his age, Keaton seemed contemptuous of mere sentiment. The stoicism of his characters is the only rational response to a world always slightly out of joint. Keaton's famous deadpan countenance is the outward emblem of his absurd predicament. Amid the chaos of silent comedy, Keaton used his expressionless yet fascinating face to convey, however precariously, a belief in order. And despite the chaos, Keaton's films display a unique pictorial sense and a strong feeling for landscape and structure.

He was no mere slapstick artist but one of early Hollywood's most creative directors. After The General, Keaton progressively lost artistic control over his pictures. By then Schenck had joined United Artists, which distributed The General, College (1927), and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928). All failed at the box office. Schenck decided to curtail independent production and arranged for his brother-in-law to join Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), the industry's leading studio. This move was the greatest mistake of his career, Keaton later admitted. Keaton's early films for MGM were profitable, but he soon found himself at odds with the studio. Previously he had been free to improvise or rework gags during production. Now MGM required him to follow detailed scripts with fixed story lines. Keaton never fully adjusted to the studio's methods, though at MGM he successfully managed the transition to talking pictures. Alcoholism and a deteriorating marriage made the dissatisfied comedian even more troublesome on the job. MGM released him in February 1933.

After an abortive return to vaudeville, Keaton was reduced to signing on with Educational Pictures, a studio known for its low-grade, low-budget comedy shorts. When Educational went out of business in 1937, Keaton worked briefly as a gag writer at MGM and Twentieth Century-Fox. Then, in 1939, Columbia Pictures signed him for a series of two-reel comedies. From time to time Keaton landed small roles in minor feature films, but his work during this period was undistinguished and his reputation ruined. He fared no better offscreen during that decade.

Between 1947 and 1954 he earned acclaim for appearances at the Cirque Medrano in Paris, which led to successful engagements in Italy, England, and Scotland. In 1949 Life published James Agee's influential essay "Comedy's Greatest Era, " which stimulated renewed interest in Keaton's early work. A cameo appearance in Sunset Boulevard (1950) and his memorable scenes with Charlie Chaplin in Limelight (1952) enhanced the Keaton revival. During the 1950's Keaton appeared regularly on leading television variety programs and starred in his own comedy show for KTTV in Los Angeles. The Buster Keaton Story (1957), with Donald O'Connor as the comedian, was a timely tribute but a mediocre movie. Keaton remained busy in feature films and television commercials well into the next decade. In September 1965, a few months before his death, he received an extraordinary ovation at the Venice Film Festival. It was the crowning moment of his later career, which saw his critical reputation eclipse even Chaplin's.

Achievements

• Keaton played an important part in the film industry of the 1910s through 1960s and was popular for his pioneering silent comedies. He was highly regarded for his films that included "Our Hospitality" (1923), "Sherlock Jr. " (1924), "The General" (1927), and "The Cameraman" (1928). "The General" was considered cinema's highest achievement in comedy. Keaton was recognized as the seventh-greatest film director by Entertainment Weekly. He was granted with a 1959 Academy Honorary Award at the 32nd Academy Awards. He also received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for motion pictures and for television.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Cameraman (El Fotografo) (V.O.S.)

    (Luke Shannon (Buster Keaton) es un fotógrafo de la calle,...)

  • The Boat (1921)

    (This silent classic has our hero (Buster Keaton) completi...)

  • Our Hospitality: ULTIMATE EDITION

    (Like his 1926 film The General, this elaborate historical...)

  • The General

    (Comic genius Buster Keaton achieved an artistic milestone...)

  • Seven Chances (Ultimate Edition) Blu-ray

    (Love has never been funnier or more difficult to manage t...)

  • Limelight Blu-ray

    (A has-been music-hall clown helps a suicidal ballerina be...)

  • Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

    (Something appealing. Something appalling. Something for e...)

  • American Legends: The Life of Buster Keaton

    (*Includes pictures. *Includes Keaton's own quotes about h...)

  • Sherlock Jr. / Three Ages Ultimate 2-Disc Edition

    (SHERLOCK JR. SYNOPSIS: A movie projectionist and janitor ...)

  • Sunset Boulevard Blu-ray

    (BRAY)

  • The Navigator (Silent)
  • Buster Keaton Rides Again/The Railrodder

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. "

"Like everyone else, I like to be with a happy crowd. "

"No man can be a genius in slapshoes and a flat hat. "

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "Buster Keaton had become an anachronism in the Hollywood of the late thirties. " -Thomas Dardis

Connections

Keaton married actress Natalie Talmadge on May 31, 1921. His marriage to Natalie Talmadge ended in 1932, separating Keaton from his two sons. On January 8, 1933 (with a second ceremony on October 17, 1933, because his divorce from Talmadge was not yet final at the time of the first ceremony), the comedian married Mae Scribbens, a practical nurse who specialized in caring for alcoholics. During much of their marriage Keaton was broke and drunk, while Scribbens reportedly turned to prostitution. They were divorced in October 1936. On May 29, 1940, he married Eleanor Norris, an MGM contract dancer, who was twenty-three years his junior. She infused their marriage with the stability and sense of direction that the naive and impulsive Keaton evidently needed.

Father:

Joseph Francis Keaton

dancer

Mother:

Myra Cutler

musician

Spouse:

Natalie Talmadge

Spouse:

Mae Scribbens

Spouse:

Eleanor Norris

References

• Buster Keaton: Tempest In A Flat Hat
• Buster Keaton: the Persistence of Comedy
• Buster Keaton: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series)
• Buster Keaton: The Later Years