 Joseph Frank Keaton Jr (October 4, 1895 - February 1, 1966), known by his
professional name as 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. 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.
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.
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 traveling 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.
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 traveled 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 third most popular comedian in
America behind Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd.
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 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, 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 boss, Joe 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.
The traumatic failure of his marriage, along with the loss of his independence
as a filmmaker, led Keaton into a period of 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 that he had
previously worked in. 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 A
Night at the Opera (1935), 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-Elysees (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 February 1, 1966, at the age of 70.
|
