Buster Keaton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Buster Keaton | |
 Buster Keaton, The Great Stone Face in a scene from The General |
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| Birth name | Joseph Frank Keaton, Jr. |
| Born | October 4, 1895 Piqua, Kansas, USA |
| Died | February 1, 1966 (Age 70) Woodland Hills, California, USA |
| Official site | The International Buster Keaton Society |
| Notable roles | Johnny Gray in The General |
Joseph Frank Keaton, Jr. (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966), better known by his stage name Buster Keaton, 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" (referencing the Hawthorne story about the Old Man of the Mountain).
His activity as a performer and director is widely regarded to be among 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.[1]
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.[2]
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life in vaudeville
Keaton was born into the world of vaudeville. His father was Joseph Hallie Keaton, a native of Vigo County, Indiana, known in the show business world as Joe Keaton. Joe Keaton owned a traveling show with Harry Houdini called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company, which performed on stage and sold patent medicine on the side. Buster Keaton was born in Piqua, Kansas, the small town where his mother, Myra Edith Cutler, happened to go into labor.
Popular legend has it that one day before a vaudeville performance, a very young Keaton was walking down a flight of stairs, but tripped and fell down the entire flight and broke his nose. Keaton got right back up, and upon seeing this the famous magician Harry Houdini, who was in the performance, said to Keaton's mother that he was quite the little buster. It is more likely, however, that the nickname was given by a fellow vaudvillian, whose name has been lost to history. Although Houdini did tour with the Keatons, he did not join up with them until Keaton was well beyond infancy. Regardless of the source, however, the name 'Buster' was acquired in his youth, and used ever since.
At the age of three, he began performing with his parents in The Three Keatons; the storyline of the act concerned 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. A suitcase handle was even sewn into Buster's clothing to aid with the constant tossing. 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, saying "I don't know, ask his wife!" Despite tangles with the law and a disastrous tour of 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.
[edit] 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. Joe Keaton Sr. disapproved of the moving pictures, thinking them to be little more than a fad. Buster was also unsure of the medium. During his first meeting with Arbuckle, he asked to borrow one of the cameras to get a feel for how it worked. Buster promptly took the camera back to his hotel room and disassembled it. With this rough understanding of the mechanics of the moving pictures, Buster returned the next day, dissected camera in hand, asking for work. He was hired as a co-star and gag-man, making his first appearance in The Butcher Boy. 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, Buster Keaton Studios. 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, Keaton moved to full-length features.
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). This 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 enduring 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.
[edit] Marriages
In 1921, he married Natalie Talmadge, sister-in-law of his boss, Joseph Schenck, and sister of actresses Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge. The couple had two sons, James (1922-2007) and Robert (1924-), 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, whose last name she had changed to Talmadge. 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"). Scriven herself would later claim that she didn't even know Keaton's real first name until after the marriage. When they divorced in 1936, she took half of everything they owned.
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.
[edit] Sound era and television
Keaton signed with MGM in 1928, a business decision that Keaton would later call the worst of his life. He realized too late that the studio system MGM represented would prove to be a far more restrictive environment than that in which he had previously worked, severely limiting his prior creative independence. From now on he would (for the first time) be forced to use a stunt double during some of his more dangerous scenes, as MGM wanted badly to protect its investment. He also stopped directing, but continued to perform and made some of his most financially successful films for the studio. 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?' Although the two comedians never quite meshed as a unit, the films proved popular.
Keaton was so depleted during the filming of What! No Beer? that the studio released him, despite the film being a resounding hit. In 1934 Keaton accepted an offer to make an independent film in Paris, Le Roi des Champs-Elysses.
Upon his return to Hollywood, he made a screen comeback in a series of 16 two-reel comedies for Educational Pictures. Most of these are simple visual comedies, with many of the gags supplied by Keaton himself. The high point in the Educational series is Grand Slam Opera, featuring Buster in his own screenplay as an amateur-hour contestant. When the series lapsed in 1937, Keaton returned to MGM as a gag writer, particularly for the Marx Brothers—including At the Circus (1939), and Go West (1940); and for Red Skelton.
In 1939 Columbia Pictures hired Buster Keaton for a series of two-reel slapstick comedies. The director was usually Jules White, whose heavy-handed approach made most of these films resemble White's Three Stooges comedies. The best of the 10 Columbias is probably the first one, Pest from the West, directed by Del Lord, but the entire Columbia series boasts many charming Keaton touches, and the films were immensely popular with moviegoers.
During the 1940s Keaton played character roles in both "A" and "B" features. Critics rediscovered Keaton in 1949 and producers now hired him for bigger pictures. 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. 'Limelight' was the only time in which the two giants of silent comedy would appear together on film.
Keaton 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 Deadhead, in which he ran past the end of a firehose into a six-foot-high flip and crash. When director Norman Taurog balked, expressing concerns for Keaton's health, Keaton said, "I won't hurt myself, Norm, I've done it for years!".
Keaton's classic silent films saw a revival in the 1950s and 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).
[edit] Death
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 February 1, 1966, at the age of 70.[1] He was never told that he was terminally ill.
He was not related to actors Michael Keaton or Diane Keaton. Both Michael and Diane had chosen "Keaton" as their professional surname because their real names were already being used by other actors in the industry.
[edit] Legacy and contribution
Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd are remembered as the great comic innovators of the silent era. Keaton 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, his image appeared on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.
During his days as a writer, Dick Cavett wrote a joke for Johnny Carson, a fake caption to a newspaper photo of Aristotle Onassis looking at the home of Buster Keaton, which he was considering purchasing. Cavett wrote: "Aristotle Contemplating the Home of Buster"
[edit] Personal life
Keaton was a railfan and model railroader. He had an extensive S gauge model railroad in his back yard.[3]
[edit] Trivia
- At the time of his death, was living at 22612 Sylvan Street, in Woodland Hills, CA.
- During the height of his popularity, spent $300,000 to build a 10,000-square-foot home in Beverly Hills. Later owners of the property were actor James Mason as well as Cary Grant. The "Italian Villa," as Keaton called it, can also be seen in the movie The Godfather.
- During the railroad watertank scene in Sherlock Jr. Keaton broke his neck and did not realize it until years afterwards. [2]
- In one of Jackie Chan's early films Project A-2, a falling wall lands on Chan while he's still standing after it hits the ground, much like the scene's predecessor in Buster's Steamboat Bill Jr.. Chan has said numerous times that Keaton was a big influence.
- In Benny and Joon, Johnny Depp's character 'Sam' (who is inspired by Buster Keaton) is reading "The Look of Buster Keaton" as he rides the train into town during the open sequences of the film.
- In the Stephen King novel Needful Things, Danforth Keaton's unwelcome nickname is "Buster".
- In the first Keaton pictures with sound, he and his fellow actors would shoot each scene three times- one in English, one in Spanish, and one in either French or German. This was done instead of overdubbing and was never very commonplace. The actors would memorize the foreign-language scripts a few lines at time and shoot immediately after. This is discussed in the AMC documentry "Buster Keaton - So Funny it Hurt," with Keaton complaining about having to shoot lousy movies not just once, but three times.
- His stage name in Spanish markets was Pamplinas ("Nonsense"), and his nickname became Cara de palo ("Wooden face"). cineclasico.com (Spanish)
- In an episode of Family Ties, a friend of Steven Keaton exclaims "...Don't call me buster, Keaton..." to which Steven replies, confusedly, "...I didn't call you Buster Keaton..."
- Lost some of his hearing in World War One, in which he served, but saw no action. [3]
- When he married Natalie Talmadge, the Talmadge family was one of the great acting dynasties in both theater and film, and the gossip in Hollywood was that Keaton married her to gain respect in the industry, a rumor he never quite lived down during his peak. Ironically, Keaton is now a film legend, while most people would be hard-pressed to answer who the Talmadges are.[4]
- The Italian songwriter Francesco Guccini has composed a song titled "Keaton", about an old friend of him which was so nicknamed "naturalmente perché non rideva mai" (Italian for: "obviously because he never laughed"). The song appears in the album Signora Bovary.
[edit] Quotes
- "No man can be a genius in slapshoes and a flat hat."
- "Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- "Think slow, act fast."
- "The first thing I did in the studio was to want to tear that camera to pieces. I had to know how that film got into the cutting room, what you did to it in there, how you projected it, how you finally got the picture together, how you made things match. The technical part of pictures is what interested me. Material was the last thing in the world I thought about. You only had to turn me loose on the set and I'd have material in two minutes, because I'd been doing it all my life."
- "The only person who has the right attitude about boxing in the movies for me was Buster Keaton." - Martin Scorsese, director of Raging Bull[5]
- "His eyes shone with a certain intensity, fire and love. His face had little expression, but his eyes were always dynamically alive. His eyes spoke more than any script could speak." Mel Brooks,[6]
[edit] Filmography
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[edit] Notes
- ^ http://www.filmsite.org/directors2.html
- ^ bfi : Sight & Sound : Top ten. Retrieved on November 18, 2005.
- ^ Carp, Roger. "Buster Keaton's Trains", Classic Toy Trains, May 2003.
[edit] Further reading
- Blesh, Rudi (1966). Keaton. The Macmillan Company. ISBN 0-02-511570-7.
- Kerr, Walter (1975). The Silent Clowns. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-46907-0.
- Keaton, Buster; Samuels, Charles (1982). My Wonderful World Of Slapstick. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80178-7.
- 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.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Buster Keaton at the Internet Movie Database
- Buster Keaton at the TCM Movie Database
- Buster Keaton Forum
- Obituary, New York Times/Associated Press, February 2, 1966
- The International Buster Keaton Society
- They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?
- Buster Keaton at SensesOfCinema.com
- Annual Buster Keaton Celebration, Iola, KS
- Buster Keaton livejournal community
- 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
| The films of Buster Keaton |
| Full Lengths |
| Three Ages - Our Hospitality - Sherlock, Jr. - The Navigator - Seven Chances - Go West - Battling Butler - The General - College - Steamboat Bill Jr. - The Cameraman - Spite Marriage - Hollywood Cavalcade - Easy to Wed - In the Good Old Summertime - Excuse My Dust |
| Shorts |
| The Rough House - Convict 13 - One Week - The Scarecrow - Neighbors - The Haunted House - Hard Luck - The High Sign - The Goat - The Playhouse - The Boat - The Paleface - Cops - My Wife's Relations - The Blacksmith - The Frozen North - The Electric House - Daydreams - The Balloonatic - The Love Nest - The Gold Ghost - Allez Oop - One Run Elmer - Tars and Stripes - Grand Slam Opera - Blue Blazes - Mixed Magic - Love Nest on Wheels - Life in Sometown, U.S.A. - Hollywood Handicap - Streamlined Swing - The Railrodder |
A-Z of films • Academy Awards • Actors • Animators • Box office • Cinematographers • Critics • Directors • Editors • Festivals • Film series • Golden Globes • Hollywood • Movie theatres • Producers • Production companies • Score composers • Screenwriters • Silent films • Studios • Stunt performers • AFI 100 Years
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Keaton, Joseph Frank, Jr. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Keaton, Buster (professional name) |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Actor and filmmaker |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 4, 1895 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Piqua, Kansas |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 1, 1966 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Woodland Hills, California |
Categories: Articles with large trivia sections | American film actors | American film directors | American silent film actors | Mimes | Silent film comedians | Vaudeville performers | Academy Honorary Award recipients | English-language film directors | Hollywood Walk of Fame | Kansas actors | Lung cancer deaths | 1895 births | 1966 deaths
