Happy Birthday, Buster Keaton! Born today in 1895 as Joseph Frank Keaton IV, this American stunt performer, comedian, actor, screenwriter, producer and film director was the "Great Stone Face" of the silent screen, known for his deadpan expression and his imaginative and often elaborate visual comedy.
Born in Piqua, Kansa, Keaton was the son of American vaudeville performer and film actress Myra Keaton (née Cutler) and to American vaudeville performer and silent film actor Joseph Hallie "Joe" Keaton.
His father owned a traveling show with Harry Houdini called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company (or the Keaton Houdini Medicine show Company). The act performed on stage and sold patent medicine on the side.
Born into a vaudeville family, Keaton was named "Joseph" to continue a tradition on his father's side. Later, Keaton changed his middle name to "Francis".
According to a frequently repeated story, which may be apocryphal, Keaton acquired the nickname "Buster" at the age of about eighteen months.
An American actor friend named George Pardey was present one day when the young Keaton took a tumble down a long flight of stairs without injury. Pardey remarked, "he's a regular buster!" After this, Keaton's father began to use the nickname to refer to the youngster.
At the age of three, Keaton began performing with his parents in The Three Keatons. He first appeared on stage in 1899 in Wilmington, Delaware. The act was mainly a comedy sketch. His mother played the saxophone to one side, while Joe and Buster performed on center stage.
The young Keaton would goad his father by disobeying him, and the elder Keaton would respond by throwing him against the scenery, into the orchestra pit, or even into the audience. A suitcase handle was sewn into Keaton's clothing to aid with the constant tossing.
The act evolved as Keaton learned to take trick falls safely; he was rarely injured or bruised on stage. This knockabout style of comedy led to accusations of child abuse, and occasionally, arrest.
However, Keaton was always able to show the authorities that he had no bruises or broken bones. He was eventually billed as "The Little Boy Who Can't Be Damaged", with the overall act being advertised as "The Roughest Act That Was Ever in the History of the Stage".
Years later, Keaton said that he was never hurt by his father and that the falls and physical comedy were a matter of proper technical execution.
In 1914, Keaton told the Detroit News: "The secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me.
Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment."
Keaton claimed he was having so much fun that he would sometimes begin laughing as his father threw him across the stage.
However, noticing that this drew fewer laughs from the audience, he adopted his famous deadpan expression whenever he was working. The act eventually ran up against laws banning child performers in vaudeville.
According to one biographer, Keaton was made to go to school while performing in New York, but only attended for part of one day.
Despite tangles with the law and a disastrous tour of music halls in the United Kingdom, Keaton was a rising star in the theater.
He had stated that he learned to read and write late, and was taught by his mother. By the time he was twenty-one, his father's alcoholism threatened the reputation of the family act.
Because of this, Keaton and his mother left for New York, where Keaton's career swiftly moved from vaudeville to film.
Keaton later served in the American Expeditionary Forces in France with the United States Army's 40th Infantry Division during World War I. His unit remained intact and was not broken up to provide replacements, as happened to some other late-arriving divisions.
During his time in uniform, Keaton suffered an ear infection that permanently impaired his hearing.
Keaton's 1929 American silent black and white comedy/romance film 'The Cameraman' was Keaton's first film with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is considered by fans and critics to be Keaton still in top form.
Within a little over a year, however, MGM would take away Keaton's creative control over his pictures, thereby causing drastic and long-lasting harm to his career. Keaton was later to call the move to MGM "the worst mistake of my career."
Keaton had a cameo appearance in Billy Wilder’s 1950 American black and white noir/drama film ‘Sunset Boulevard’, credited as himself.
Gloria Swanson’s character Norma Desmond invites her fellow silent-film ghosts (the “waxworks”) to come over to play bridge.
Aside from Keaton, the others were played by real-life silent relics, including Anna Q. Nilsson, and H.B. Warner.
In the film, Keaton says the line “Pass” twice. In real life, Keaton had a reputation as one of Hollywood's best bridge players.
In Keaton's retelling, he was six months old when the incident occurred, and that it was who Houdini had gotten him the nickname.
Keaton was presented with a 1959 Academy Honorary Award at the 32nd Academy Awards, held in early April 1960.
In the American black and white anthology television series The Twilight Zone (1959 –1964), Keaton stars in the episode “Once Upon a Time” (S03E13). It had aired on December 15, 1961.
The episode tells of Woodrow Mulligan, (Keaton), a man from 1890 who is catapulted seventy-two years into the future when he steals a time machine.
Two years later, Keaton appeared in a cameo in Stanley Kramer's (‘The Defiant Ones’) 1963 American Technicolor comedy/adventure film ‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Keaton is credited as Jimmy the Crook.
Later that year, Keaton retold the anecdote of how he got his nickname "Buster" over the years, including a 1964 interview with the CBC's Canadian black and white/color documentary series Telescope (1963–1973).
Keaton has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They are located at 6619 Hollywood Boulevard (for motion pictures); and 6225 Hollywood Boulevard (for television).
Keaton passed from lung cancer in Woodland Hills, California on February 1, 1966. He was 70. He was later buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, California.
Despite being diagnosed with cancer in January 1966, he was never told he was terminally ill or that he had cancer. Keaton thought that he was recovering from a severe case of bronchitis.
Confined to a hospital during his final days, Keaton was restless and paced the room endlessly, desiring to return home.
In a British television documentary about his career, his widow, Eleanor, told producers of Thames Television that Keaton was up out of bed and moving around, and even played cards with friends who came to visit the day before he passed.
Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929" when he "worked without interruption" on a series of films that make him "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies".
Ebert also considered 'Our Hospitality' to be Keaton's first masterpiece. Turner Classic Movies described the film as a "silent film for which no apologies need be made to modern viewers."
He also stated: "The greatest of the silent clowns is Buster Keaton, not only because of what he did, but because of how he did it. Harold Lloyd made us laugh as much, Charlie Chaplin moved us more deeply, but no one had more courage than Buster."
Mel Brooks has also credited Keaton as a major influence, saying: "I owe (Buster) a lot on two levels: One for being such a great teacher for me as a filmmaker myself, and the other just as a human being watching this gifted person doing these amazing things. He made me believe in make-believe."
In 1989, 'The General' was selected by the Library of Congress to be included in the first class of films for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In 1991, 'Sherlock Jr.' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
In 2000, the American Film Institute, as part of its AFI 100 Years... series, ranked the film #62 in its list of the funniest films of all time (AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs).
In 2005, 'The Camerman' was added to the National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
In 2008, 'One Week' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In 2016, 'Steamboat Bill, Jr.' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
The film is known for what might be considered Keaton's most famous film stunt: The facade of an entire house falls on top of him while he stands in the perfect spot to pass through the open attic window instead of being flattened.
In 2018, 'The Navigator' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
The trademarks in Keaton's films include wearing his pork pie hat, slapshoes, donning a deadpan expression. and doing all of his own stunts.
His films also include elaborate gadgets of his own devising, using the camera to help comedy, small and slight frame, and sympathetic characters who can never quite catch a break.
Although his career lacked the resilience of Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, Keaton may well have been the most gifted comedian to emerge from the cinema's silent era.
And while his skills as a gag writer and physical comic were remarkable, Keaton was one clown whose understanding of the film medium was just as great as his talent for taking a pratfall.
Keaton, however, had a roller-coaster career in which he fell just as far as he rose, though he was fortunate enough to enjoy a comeback in the later years of his life.
The “Great Stone Face” of the silent screen, along with his signature pork pie hat, Keaton was best known for his deadpan expression and his imaginative and often elaborate visual comedy.
Renowned for his death-defying stunt work and permanently deadpan facial expressions, Keaton revolutionized the silent comedy with his essentially comedic and cinematic classics.
Nicknamed The Great Stone Face or Malec, Keaton had been active from 1898–1966.
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