Free shipping for many products! 'Camera Man' unspools the colorful life of silent film star Buster Keaton: By age 5, Keaton was a star in his family's vaudeville act; he went on to star in and direct silent films, performing jaw . The 21st Annual International Buster Keaton Convention will be held Oct 2-3, in Muskegon, MI, and The Humphrey Bogart Film Festival will be held October 21-25, in Key Largo, FL. Father of Private and James Talmadge His impassive features gave him the nickname "The Great Stone Face.". Poker-Faced Comedian of Films", "Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow (American Masters)", Dada, Surrealism, and the Cinematic Effect, "Mel Brooks on Buster Keaton--The Lybarger Links Interview", "The Strange Behavior of Johnny Knoxville", "Keaton Weekend in L.A. Celebrates the Great Silent Comedian", "City of Los Angeles to declare June 16, 2018 "Buster Keaton Day", Barnett, Ryan and Matthew Tavares (Illustrator), Buster Keaton and the Muskegon Connection, Buster Keaton's Silent Shorts (19201923) by James L. Neibaur and Terri Niemi, Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Buster_Keaton&oldid=1142053518, United States Army personnel of World War I, Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills), Male actors from Beverly Hills, California, Articles with dead external links from March 2022, Articles with permanently dead external links, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Vague or ambiguous geographic scope from June 2022, Articles with unsourced statements from June 2022, Pages using Sister project links with hidden wikidata, TCMDb name template using numeric ID from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. Moviegoers and exhibitors welcomed Keaton's Columbia comedies. "I took out 40 useless characters and a couple of subplots. MGM also forced Keaton to use a stunt double during some of the more dangerous scenes, something he had never done in his heyday, as MGM wanted badly to protect its investment. [4] In 1996, Entertainment Weekly recognized Keaton as the seventh-greatest film director, writing that "More than Chaplin, Keaton understood movies: He knew they consisted of a four-sided frame in which resided a malleable reality off which his persona could bounce. Keaton, Eleanor and Jeffrey Vance. His father owned a traveling show called the 'Mohawk Indian Medicine Company' along with Harry Houdini. Buster William Keaton Sr. from tree Keaton Family Tree. Keaton's personal favorite was the series' debut, Pest from the West, a shorter, tighter remake of Keaton's little-viewed 1934 feature The Invader; it was directed not by White but by Del Lord, a veteran director for Mack Sennett. Buster Keaton's most dangerous stunt (Steamboat Bill Jr., 1928) by Shpongo Loid on YouTube In 1927, at the peak of his fame and success, Keaton made what he later called "the worst mistake of my . He traveled from one end of Canada to the other on a motorized handcar, wearing his traditional pork pie hat and performing gags similar to those in films that he made 50 years before. He was a motion picture comic actor, writer, producer, and director of the 1910s thru 1960s. He was also a great director. Most of these parodies targeted acts with which Keaton had shared the bill. The young Keaton goaded his father by disobeying him, and the elder Keaton responded by throwing him against the scenery, into the orchestra pit, or even into the audience. It was followed a month later by James Curtis' biography Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life. "[5] In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him as the 21st-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema.[6]. 8 'A Woman of Paris'. Please enable JavaScript in your browser's settings to use this part of Geni. From acclaimed cultural and film historian James Curtis--a major biography, the first in more than two decades, of the legendary comedian and filmmaker who elevated physical comedy to the highest of arts and whose ingenious films remain as startling, innovative, modern--and irresistible--today as they . A century has passed since Buster Keaton entered the plum decade of his career. Keaton's other 1924 film, The Navigator, was shot on an ocean liner and directed with Donald Crisp. The program always includes talks by Keaton expertsincluding family memberssocial events and film screenings. Born the same year as the film industry in 1895, Buster Keaton began his career as the child star of a family slapstick act reputed to be the most violent in vaudeville. Born Joseph Keaton (the sixth in a line of Joseph Keatons) in Piqua, Kansas on October 1, 1895, Buster had the delightful fortune of being born in the right place at the right time. Allegedly, Keaton suffered a nasty fall, but displayed a nonchalant reaction to it. Keaton parodied the tired formula of the melodramatic transformation from bad guy to good guy, which Hart's characters went through, known as "the good badman". Natalie would glare and fly into a rage. To the world, he was the famous silent film star Buster Keaton, but to Melissa Talmadge Cox of Cloverdale, he was simply Grandpa Buster. [48] The screenplay, by Sidney Sheldon, who also directed the film, was loosely based on Keaton's life but contained many factual errors and merged his three wives into one character. [29] Keaton later said[where?] 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." A scene from Steamboat Bill, Jr. required Keaton to stand still on a particular spot. [92] The marriage lasted until his death. By the time he left the act to star in motion pictures with Fatty Arbuckle at age 22, he had already been doing slapstick comedy for over 86% of his life. 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. Later, Keaton changed his middle name to "Francis". [16][17][18] According to a frequently repeated story, which may be apocryphal,[19] Keaton acquired the nickname Buster at the age of 18 months. 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. At the end of the day, he asked to borrow one of the cameras to get a feel for how it worked. Irving was usually on my side, but this time he said, 'Larry likes it. His first directorial effort, The High Sign, was a short that apparently did not work very well. Though The General (1926) was successful in retrospect, at the time it was critically derided. The next project confirmed Keaton's fears about studio interference. In 1920, Arbuckle left Comique Films for Paramount. [72] Audiences of the 1920s recognized the parody and thought the film hysterically funny. With The Frozen North and The Playhouse. . Keaton returned to film by the 1950s. Their son began appearing on stage with them as early as nine months of age. [47], Keaton's personal life had stabilized with his 1940 marriage to MGM dancer Eleanor Norris, and now he was taking life a little easier, abandoning Columbia for the less strenuous field of feature films. Buster Keaton was an American actor, comedian, stage artist, writer, and director who has been credited as "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies" by critic and historian Roger Ebert. It was too dramatic for some filmgoers expecting a lightweight comedy, and reviewers questioned Keaton's judgment in making a comedic film about the Civil War, even while noting it had a "few laughs. Keaton was born into a vaudeville family. [46] Keaton had a free hand in staging the films, within the studio's budgetary limits and using its staff writers. Two of his best films were made in 1924. A great primer about the history of Buster Keaton b. Keaton is often described as having been ahead of his time; Anthony Lane wrote "He was just too good, in too many ways, too soon No action thriller of the last, blood-streaked decade has matched the kinetic violence at the end of Steamboat Bill, Jr., in which a storm pulls Keaton through one random catastrophe after another. [21] In Keaton's retelling, he was six months old when the incident occurred, and Harry Houdini gave him the nickname (though the family did not get to know Houdini until later). Afterward, I only gradually realized what kind of family I was inheriting. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929" when he "worked . They were popular, and contrary to Keaton's later reputation as "The Great Stone Face", he often smiled and even laughed in them. Production head Irving Thalberg would not permit Keaton to create a script from scratch because the studio had already purchased a stage property, Parlor, Bedroom, and Bath, at the suggestion of Lawrence Weingarten, who was Thalberg's brother-in-law and Keaton's producer. The audience roared. [13] The General has placed highly on the Sight & Sound poll, and Our Hospitality, Sherlock Jr. and The Navigator also received multiple votes. Harry N. Abrams, 2001, pg. He was forced to make several films as a straight man to Jimmy Durante, including Free and Easy (1930). In Go West (1925), he is stared down by a herd of cattle. He had a cameo as Jimmy, appearing near the end of the film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). Keaton made his first full-length feature film, "Our Hospitality," in 1923. Look at his faceas beautiful but as inhuman as a butterflyand you see that utter failure to identify sentiment. The General was a Civil War romance, that featured many impressive chase scenes and one very expensive special effects shot. The International Buster Keaton Society was founded on October 4, 1992: Keaton's birthday. He recovered in the 1940s, remarried, and revived his career as an honored comic performer for the rest of his life, earning an Academy Honorary Award in 1959. Keaton suffered from several personal crises as well. [70], One of his most biting parodies is The Frozen North (1922), a satirical take on William S. Hart's Western melodramas, like Hell's Hinges (1916) and The Narrow Trail (1917). [69] Three Ages also featured parodies of Bible stories, like those of Samson and Daniel. You had to requisition a toothpick in triplicate. He made his last starring feature, El Moderno Barba Azul (1946), in Mexico; the film was a low-budget production, and it may not have been seen in the United States until its release on VHS in the 1980s, under the title Boom in the Moon. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Buster Keaton With Dog Rare Candid 8x10 Photo at the best online prices at eBay! Keaton thought the premise was totally unsuitable, and was uncomfortable with his directors Jules White and Zion Myers, who emphasized blunt slapstick. 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. His life quickly spiraled downward. But not MGM. "[41] MGM wanted only Keaton the star, Keaton the creator was considered a waste of time and money because "in the time it took him to develop a project, he could have appeared in two or three pictures set up by the studio's production staff. 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. They had two sons: Joseph, called James[81] (June 2, 1922 February 14, 2007),[82] and Robert (February 3, 1924 July 19, 2009).[83]. [87], With the failure of his marriage and the loss of his independence as a filmmaker, Keaton descended into alcoholism. Keaton also appeared in a comedy routine about two inept stage musicians in Charlie Chaplin's Limelight (released in 1952), recalling the vaudeville of The Playhouse. Vance, Jeffrey. Era By BOB THOMAS H list grows thin. His great period began in 1923 when he appeared in The Three Ages and a year later he made a full length comedy . [71] He wears a small version of Hart's campaign hat from the SpanishAmerican War and a six-shooter on each thigh, and during the scene in which he shoots the neighbor and her husband, he reacts with thick glycerin tears, a trademark of Hart's. In 1933, he married his nurse Mae Scriven during an alcoholic binge about which he afterwards claimed to remember nothing. He was born into a vaudeville family; his father's name was Joseph Keaton while his mother's was Myra. In The Playhouse (1921), he parodied his contemporary Thomas H. Ince, Hart's producer, who indulged in over-crediting himself in his film productions. In 2023, Keatons life and work was depicted in the graphic novel biography Buster: A Life in Pictures written by Ryan Barnett and illustrated by Matthew Tavares. He was born in Piqua, Kansas on 1895-10-04. He stars as a great fortune's sole heir that falls in love with the daughter of his family's greatest rival, played by . 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 locationsall this masked behind his unflinching, stoic veneer. He stated that he learned to read and write late, and was taught by his mother. [19] He was briefly institutionalized, according to the Turner Classic Movies documentary So Funny It Hurt. Keaton, Eleanor, and Vance, Jeffrey (2001). He re-enacted a famous Keaton stunt for the finale of Jackass Number Two. Twenty-five years after the divorce, she would not permit his name to be spoken in her house. Keaton spent $42,000 on sending a train into a burning bridge. But it's even more pleasurable to get back to the presentwhere brooding, miserable, non-smiling Humphrey Bogart really shines.