Buster Keaton

Silent film star known for his deadpan expression and daring stunts.

Joseph Frank 'Buster' Keaton was an American actor, comedian and filmmaker best known for his silent films, in which he performed physical comedy and inventive stunts. His trademark stoic, deadpan facial expression earned him the nickname 'The Great Stone Face'. Orson Welles called Keaton's film The General 'the greatest comedy ever made...and perhaps the greatest film ever made'.

Quick Facts

Birth name

Joseph Frank Keaton

Born

4 October 1895

Birthplace

Piqua, Kansas, U.S.

Died

1 February 1966

Place of death

Los Angeles, California, U.S.

Resting place

Forest Lawn Memorial Park

Occupation

Actor
comedian
filmmaker
stuntman

Years active

1899–1966

Facts from the source article.

Did You Know?

On April 3, 1957, Keaton was surprised by Ralph Edwards for the NBC program This Is Your Life.
In 1961, Keaton appeared in promotional films for Maryvale, a housing development in Phoenix.
Keaton was a heavy smoker and died of lung cancer on February 1, 1966, aged 70.

Career

Keaton was born on October 4, 1895, to a vaudeville family in Piqua, Kansas, the small town his mother was visiting. He was named Joseph to continue a tradition on his father's side and Frank for his maternal grandfather. His father had a traveling show called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company. According to a frequently repeated story, possibly apocryphal, Keaton acquired the nickname Buster at 18 months after falling down stairs without injury; an actor friend remarked, 'Gee whiz, he's a regular buster!' In Keaton's retelling, he was six months old and Harry Houdini gave the nickname, though the family did not know Houdini until later. Family lore tells of a cyclone picking a young Buster up and depositing him four blocks away.

Return to feature films

In 1960, Keaton returned to MGM for the final time, playing a lion tamer in an adaptation of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, shot largely on the Sacramento River. In 1962 he signed for a Canadian musical comedy feature, Ten Girls Ago, which was never released. Keaton had a cameo in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) as Jimmy, assisting Spencer Tracy's character; the restored 2013 version contains a telephone scene recreated from discovered audio.

In 1964, American International Pictures hired him for comedy scenes in its Beach Party pictures, including Pajama Party (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini and Sergeant Deadhead (all 1965). Columbia Pictures re-released some of his vintage-1940 two-reel comedies. During autumn 1964 Keaton starred in the color featurette The Railrodder for the National Film Board of Canada, traveling across Canada on a motorized handcar. A black-and-white companion film, Buster Keaton Rides Again (1965), documented him at work.

In 1965 he appeared on the CBS special A Salute to Stan Laurel and played the central role in Samuel Beckett's experimental project Film (1965).

Style and themes

Keaton began experimenting with parody during vaudeville, often burlesquing other performers' acts. In film, he parodied melodramas and cinematic plots. The Frozen North (1922) satirized William S. Hart's Western melodramas, parodying Hart's 'good badman' transformation; Hart was not amused and did not speak to Keaton for two years. The Playhouse (1921) parodied Thomas H. Ince's over-crediting and featured an impression of a performing monkey.

Three Ages (1923), Keaton's directorial debut with Edward F. Cline, parodied D. W. Griffith's Intolerance and Bible stories. Keaton developed a signature style of lucidity, precision, and acrobatics of ballistic precision and kineticism. Gilberto Perez noted Keaton's ability to keep a nearly deadpan face while rendering it vividly expressive, especially through his large, deep eyes. Anthony Lane described Keaton's body language, and James Agee also wrote about him.

Legacy

David Thomson wrote of Keaton's sense of style, citing Go West, The Navigator, The General, and Seven Chances. Keaton received a 1959 Academy Honorary Award at the 32nd Academy Awards in April 1960. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the alley where he shot Cops was renamed Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd Alley. Six of his films are in the National Film Registry: One Week (1920), Cops (1922), Sherlock Jr. (1924), The General (1926), Steamboat Bill, Jr. and The Cameraman (both 1928).

A 1957 film biography, The Buster Keaton Story, starring Donald O'Connor, contained many factual errors. A 1987 documentary, Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow, won two Emmy Awards. The International Buster Keaton Society, founded October 4, 1992, is nicknamed the 'Damfinos' after a boat in The Boat (1921). Salvador Dalí declared Keaton's works 'pure poetry' and produced a 1925 collage titled The Marriage of Buster Keaton.