Welcome to ‘Buster Keaton Movies’

Welcome to Buster Keaton Movies, a celebration of the life and work of the famous silent clown and film star, Buster Keaton.

Buster Keaton began his career in vaudeville at the tender age of six weeks, and as a young boy worked as as part of his parents’ vaudeville act, being tossed across the stage by his father.  His trademark was physical comedy with a stoic, deadpan expression on his face, earning him the nickname “The Great Stone Face”.  He later was given an opportunity to make movies when a mutual friend introduced him to Fatty Arbuckle.  After learning the trade, he began making his own films, which led him to become one of the three most famous silent film comedians, along with Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd.

Buster Keaton’s Early life in vaudeville

Joseph Frank Keaton Jr. (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was born into the world of vaudeville. His father, 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. Buster Keaton was born in Piqua (pronounced PICK-way), Kansas, the small town where his mother, Myra Edith Cutler, went into labor.

At the age of three, he began performing with his parents in the vaudeville act The Three Keatons; the storyline of the act was how to raise a small child. Buster’s mother Myra played the saxophone to one side while his father Joe and Buster performed on center stage. Buster would irritate Joe by disobeying him, and Joe would respond by throwing Buster against the scenery, into the orchestra pit, or even into the audience. Buster learned to take trick falls safely, and he was rarely injured or bruised on stage, however this style of comedy led to accusations of child abuse. Many years later, Buster 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!” Buster Keaton 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.

Buster Keaton in the Silent film era

In February 1917 Buster 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. Buster Keaton later claimed that he was soon Arbuckle’s second director and his entire gag department. Buster 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 Buster 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 Buster 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.

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 provided Buster with an easier adjustment than Charlie Chaplin’s silent Tramp character, who could not speak.  Sadly, Buster Keaton’s loss of independence as a filmmaker coincided with the coming of sound films and his mounting personal problems, and his full potential in the early sound era was never realized.

Buster Keaton’s 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 Buster Keaton in his autobiography, My Wonderful World of Slapstick, 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, according to 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 Buster Keaton and his sons. This was a tremendous blow, and Buster Keaton was not reunited with his children until a decade later. The traumatic failure of his marriage, along with the loss of his independence as a filmmaker, led Buster 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 afterward — Buster 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 younger than Buster Keaton.  She saved his life and helped to salvage his career. All of their friends advised them against marrying, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. The marriage was successful, and lasted until his death. It is partly due to her tireless efforts on Buster’s behalf that there was a resurgance of interest in Buster’s silent films. Between 1947 and 1954, Buster and Eleanor appeared regularly in the Cirque Medrano in Paris, in a highly-regarded doubles act.

Buster Keaton in the Sound era and television

Buster Keaton’s film making unit was acquired by MGM in 1928, a business decision that Keaton regretted for the rest of his life.  He was forced to enter the ranks of the studio system, working at the MGM studios in a more restrictive environment that he had ever 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). 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-Élysées (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 two back-to-back television series, The Buster Keaton Show (1950) and Life With Buster Keaton (1951). (Despite their popularity, he canceled the programs because he was unable to create enough material to produce a new show each week). He also found steady work as an actor in TV commercials. 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 starred in a last short silent film, called The Railrodder (1965) for the National Film Board of Canada. Wearing his traditional porkpie hat, he traveled from one end of Canada to the other on a motorised “hand-car”, performing gags similar to those in films he made 50 years before. 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 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.