It is the angle that you remember: the figure perfectly straight but tilted forward, like the Spirit of Ecstasy on the hood of a Rolls-Royce [in The Three Ages], he drives a low-grade automobile over a bump in the road, and the car just crumbles beneath him. . The first was Sherlock Jr., in which a daydreaming projectionist who longs to be a detective becomes part of the movie he is showing. He stated that he learned to read and write late, and was taught by his mother. No Beer? The director was usually Jules White, whose emphasis on slapstick and farce made most of these films resemble White's famous Three Stooges shorts. Keaton is rumored to have gotten the name Buster from Harry Houdini himself. Caryn James wrote in The New York Times, "Keaton's television appearances are warm and enduring. The giant studio was run along strict factory lines, with everything planned and budgeted in advance. He supported them all. While the movie had an impressive tornado sequence and an interesting topic (a Mississippi riverboat race) which pleased critics, Steamboat Bill Jr. was not a commercial success. 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. He re-enacted a famous Keaton stunt for the finale of Jackass Number Two. He was handed a script titled Sidewalks of New York (1932), in which he played a millionaire becoming involved with a slum-neighborhood girl and a gang of rowdy kids. The laconic Keaton and the rambunctious Durante offered enough contrast to function as a team, resulting in three very successful films: Speak Easily (1932), The Passionate Plumber (1932), and What! He was a student at Blackfox Military Academy and a graduate of Santa Monica High School. [69] Three Ages also featured parodies of Bible stories, like those of Samson and Daniel. [42] MGM refused, because the film was more valuable in silent form; it could be shown around the world in theaters that had not converted to sound. Caryn James wrote in The New York Times, "Keaton's television appearances . He also admitted to borrowing the idea of the changing room scene in The Cameraman for his own film Silent Movie. In Seven Chances (1925), he faces a rockslide. Kinescopes were made for distribution of the programs to other parts of the country, since there was no transcontinental coaxial cable until September 1951. Joe and Myra were Vaudevillian comedians with a popular, ever-changing variety act, giving Keaton an eclectic and interesting upbringing. Connect to the World Family Tree to find out. The theatrical feature film The Misadventures of Buster Keaton was fashioned from the series. In 1949, comedian Ed Wynn invited Keaton to appear on his CBS Television comedy-variety show, The Ed Wynn Show, which was televised live on the West Coast. Keaton was a seminal comedian, actor, producer, screenwriter, and director that shaped the industry for years to come, even though the industry stole the creative control that made his early films so valuable. An error has occured while loading the map. Keaton's contract with MGM was ended in 1933. Record information. He was born in Piqua, Kansas on 1895-10-04. Realizing that his bride wanted a palace, he sold the cottage to MGM executive Eddie Mannix at cost, and commissioned Gene Verge Sr. in 1926 to build a 10,000-square-foot (930m2) estate in Beverly Hills for $300,000, which was later owned by James Mason and Cary Grant. Buster Keaton Remembered. Like Arbuckle before him, Keaton began directing films that he appeared in. He was soon offered a role in a Broadway show, The Passing Show of 1917, for the princely sum of $250 per week. The series benefited from a company of veteran actors, including Marcia Mae Jones as the ingenue, Iris Adrian, Dick Wessel, Fuzzy Knight, Dub Taylor, Philip Van Zandt, and his silent-era contemporaries Harold Goodwin, Hank Mann, and stuntman Harvey Parry. In his presentation for The General, filmmaker Orson Welles hailed Buster Keaton as "the greatest of all the clowns in the history of the cinema a supreme artist, and I think one of the most beautiful people who was ever photographed". He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face". Keaton died of lung cancer on February 1, 1966, aged 70, in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. [90] After undergoing aversion therapy, he stopped drinking for five years.[91]. [39], Welcomed to the studio by Irving Thalberg, with whom he initially had a relationship of mutual admiration,[40] Keaton realized too late that the studio system MGM represented would severely limit his creative input. I do all that but I do a lot more with my three-year-old grandson. Battling Butler (1926), a boxing movie, was a commercial success. Vance, Jeffrey. (The restored version of that film, released in 2013, contains a scene where Jimmy and Culpeper talk on the telephone. Advertisement. [71] Keaton directed the film, along with Edward F. Cline. By 1923, Keaton was making full-length features. The child labor laws of which the Keaton family continually ran afoul; the very notion of institutionalized if widely varying child welfare practices; the state of the film industry in the first . Beginning in his early twenties, he enjoyed a decade-long stretch as the director, star, stuntman, editor, and all-around mastermind of some of the greatest silent comedies . Buster Keaton Remembered. In Our Hospitality (1923), a film about a mountain feud, Keaton shot both a novel train scene and waterfall scene on location. "[77] Critic Anthony Lane also noted Keaton's body language: The traditional Buster stance requires that he remain upstanding, full of backbone, looking ahead [in The General] he clambers onto the roof of his locomotive and leans gently forward to scan the terrain, with the breeze in his hair and adventure zipping toward him around the next bend. He was also a great director. 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. The stunt required precision, because the prop house weighed two tons, and the window only offered a few inches of clearance around Keaton's body. Working with independent producer Joseph M. Schenck and filmmaker Edward F. Cline, Keaton made a series of successful two-reel comedies in the early 1920s, including One Week (1920), The Playhouse (1921), Cops (1922), and The Electric House (1922). Buster Keaton is American by birth. He appeared in the early television series Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town. After Robert's birth, the marriage began to suffer. He appeared on shows such as Playhouse 90, Route 66, and The Twilight Zone. Keaton endured this treatment for two more feature films, and then exchanged his independent setup for employment at Hollywood's biggest studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). New York: St. Martin's Press. They had two sons: Joseph, called James[81] (June 2, 1922 February 14, 2007),[82] and Robert (February 3, 1924 July 19, 2009).[83]. [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). This was witnessed by the magician Harry Houdini (or, some say, actor George Pardey), who christened the hearty boy Buster. According to one biographer, Keaton was made to go to school while performing in New York, but only attended for part of one day. Father of Private and James Talmadge Keaton, however, did not own any part of the company. He made a series of two-reel comedies, including One Week (1920), The Playhouse (1921), Cops (1922), and The Electric House (1922). [51] Keaton had prints of the features Three Ages, Sherlock Jr., Steamboat Bill, Jr., and College (missing one reel), and the shorts "The Boat" and "My Wife's Relations", which Keaton and Rohauer then transferred to Cellulose acetate film from deteriorating nitrate film stock. 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. TCM voice-over, October 2011, "Buster Keaton Month". In 1920, Arbuckle left Comique Films for Paramount. The break brought new opportunities for Keaton. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment. login . Plus two cats, a dog, and a St. Bernard. 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. By the time he was 9, his reputation as a performer had reached both coasts of the US, which Stevens' details alongside evolving child abuse and labor law reform in . From left is Harry Keaton Jr.'s daughter, Lisa Geisler, and Keaton celebration committee chairman Frank Scheide. He had cameos in such films as In the Good Old Summertime (1949), Sunset Boulevard (1950), and Around the World in 80 Days (1956). [80], On May 31, 1921, Keaton married Natalie Talmadge, his leading lady in Our Hospitality, and the sister of actresses Norma Talmadge (married to his business partner Joseph M. Schenck at the time) and Constance Talmadge, at Norma's home in Bayside, Queens. 29. His first directorial effort, The High Sign, was a short that apparently did not work very well. Melissa Talmadge Cox is the granddaughter of Buster Keaton and a long time resident of Cloverdale. Wayne Barker on Piano. He continued to appear on television until his death. Melissa Talmadge Cox wonderful talk about her grandpa, Buster Keaton and the Talmadge sisters and family. None of them were very good. that MGM fired him after the filming was completed, despite the film being a commercial hit. Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life. The sequence furnished one of the most memorable images of his career. Allegedly, Keaton suffered a nasty fall, but displayed a nonchalant reaction to it. in Piqua, Kansas, USA , United States, Died on February 01, 1966 [38] But, given Schenck's desire to keep things "in the family" and Keaton's having to admit that his independent pictures hadn't done well, Keaton agreed to sign with MGM. Keaton's loss of independence as a filmmaker coincided with the coming of sound films (although he was interested in making the transition) and mounting personal problems, and his career in the early sound era was hurt as a result. His greatest works from . Myra played the saxophone to one side, while Joe and Keaton performed center stage. 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