When I was a kid growing up in Woodland Hills, California – a suburb in the San Fernando Valley we always had a July 4th parade. It was not very big. Zero floats. A few school marching bands all playing Stars & Stripes Forever and Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, girls twirling batons (which proved to be more dangerous to crowds than today’s maple bats), local dignitaries (“Hey, there’s Mr. Neider from Neider’s Auto Body!”), some elem
entary school classes, and local politicians (“We have a councilman?”). But for me the REAL reason to stake out my spot on Ventura Blvd was that the grand marshal was always Buster Keaton. He was probably 150 by then but still, there he was. Mostly forgotten today but Buster Keaton was a comic genius in the era of silent films and early talkies. His flair for physical comedy was so inspired that even today I don’t think there’s a single comic who can remotely touch him. If I couldn’t still see George Washington in person at least there was Buster Keaton.
I miss those parades. If you still have one where you live, go. Wave a flag. Cheer. Just duck when the baton twirlers go by.
HAPPY 4th OF JULY EVERYONE!
It seems I've always known who Buster Keaton was, even though I was born long after his heyday. How neat that you got to see him in person, even at a distance. The first celebity I saw was Tod Andrews (I think), who played Maj. Mosby on THE GREY GHOST.
ReplyDeleteHappy Fourth of July back to you Ken.
ReplyDeleteHere's a question for you, Ken. In shorts/movies such as Keaton's, the routines came first, then the story was developed around those bits (at least it appears that way). When writing a script, how often do you find yourself with specific jokes first, then trying to write a story around them? Everything I read says that you cut a good joke if it doesn't serve the story, so how practical is it (in the professional arena) to indulge in a development process of jokes leading to story?
ReplyDeleteSeeing the words "Mostly forgotten today" applied to Buster Keaton stung me like a scorpion. Is it POSSIBLE that this supreme master of silent cinema, this greatest of all physical comics, this one-and-only equal of Chaplin, this genius is mostly forgotten today? No. Not possible. Horrible to think that there are some who know him only as one of the two old men bridge players in SUNSET BOULEVARD.
ReplyDeleteI worship at the alter of Keaton. Only last month I bought a fresh DVD of THE GENERAL (After CITIZEN KANE, the greatest American film ever made) only to be appalled that public domain music (some from CARMEN, over THE GENERAL! French opera over a film about the Civil War!) had been slapped on it with no regard for what was on screen. Fast music on slow scenes, Slow music on fast scenes. Etc.
I have ALL of Buster's silent features, and all of his surviving solo shorts. (I do not have his Fatty Arbuckle co-starring shorts.) They are necessary to sustain life.
Walter Kerr said all people fall into two categories: People who prefer Chaplin, and people who prefer Keaton. (I suppose there are those who prefer Harold Lloyd, but they're just Republican nutballs. Lloyd was a HUGE Republican. SAFETY LAST was good, but no THE GENERAL or THE GOLD RUSH.) I've always been a Keaton man. In their one joint appearance, in Chaplin's turgid and overlong LIMELIGHT, Keaton steals their joint scene away from Chaplin, and Chaplin, ever a gentleman, allows him to. (Chaplin edited it, and anyone who understands film editing knows Chaplin could have edited it to his own advantage. He did not.)
30 years ago, after languishing in copyright hell, Basil Rathbone's film of HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES was re-released for the first time in years. I attended the premiere (Arranged by Pat Finley, Bob Newhart's sister on THE BOB NEWHART SHOW), an event for the Los Angeles Sherlock Holmes Society. They needed something to run with it, so Keaton's SHERLOCK JUNIOR was tacked on as a second feature. The audience of Holmes fans (Including John Carradine from the Rathbone cast) were there to see HOUND. SHERLOCK JUNIOR was just the thing they had to sit through to get to it.
Until they saw it, and it blew the audience away! The okay Rathbone film was mildly received, VERY mildly given that Keaton's film landed every laugh and got the house cheering, screaming and applauding. As well it should, since it's a masterpiece. And it's a minor Keaton film.
Jon Pertwee, the third Doctor Who, was in A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, which was Keaton's last film appearance. Pertwee told me that his wife at the time, stuck out on the Italian location with him with nothing to do, had told him that "a strange little old man" from the next dressing room had asked her to lunch. She had no idea who he was, and had frostily refused him. It was Keaton. Ten years later, at a flim festival, she saw four of his great silent masterpieces. Keaton was by then, long dead. Pertwee said she came home pulling her own hair. "This GENIUS asked me to lunch, AND I TURNED HIM DOWN! I am an IDIOT!!!"
In early 1964, they opened an exhibit of the Keystone Kops at Movieland Wax Museum, and announced that Buster Keaton would be at the ceremony. I rode my bicycle six miles each way, just to see Buster in person. I've always been glad I did, as he died less than a year later.
Buster's life story is amazing. His first wife, Natalie Talmadge, took everything but his balls in the divorce. She took their two sons and CHANGED THEIR NAMES from Keaton to Talmadge. That horrible woman (Enjoy Hell, Natalie!) combined with the screwing Keaton got when Joe Schenk sold his contract to MGM, who didn't let this genius write and direct his films, but instead made him a second-banana to Jimmy Durante, drove Buster DEEP into alcoholism. Buster really did something I had my Tallulah do. He woke up married to a total stranger, met and married during a world-class bender.
But he fought his way back to sobriety, and married a good woman at last (Eleanor Keaton) who made the rest of his life much happier. And he never stopped working.
We have James Mason to thank for still having his masterpieces. Most of his great features were lost until Mason bought the house Buster had lived in with that Talmadge bitch, and he found, quite by accident, a secret underground storage bunker, while having some landscaping done. Inside were pristine prints of Buster's entire silent feature output.
All hail Buster Keaton. Turn this machine off and go watch one, say STEAMBOAT BILL JUNIOR, or SHERLOCK JUNIOR, or OUR HOSPITALITY, or the sublime THE GENERAL.
gnasche,
ReplyDeleteActually, in Keaton's features, a premise and a story generally came first, and then inspired the routines. Other comics worked the other way around, but not Keaton.
THE NAVIGATOR (Another Keaton msterpiece,) came about when a small, about-to-be-scuttled ocean liner became available to him very cheaply, so he bought it, devised a story for it, and then the routines within it. THE GENERAL, which is based on a true story (The same true story as Walt Disney's THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE, with Fess Parker.), obviously had the story first. The routines then arose out of the story, the settings, the locations, and even onset improvisations.
Happy 4th to you and your family, Ken! Talking about our Woodland Hills parade on the 4th brought back many memories. They were usually lame, but who doesn't love a parade? Especially when it's 110 degrees!
ReplyDeleteYeh, THE GENERAL! Wow and I thought our Keatonworship only went back to the 60’s. Anybody who can play “human quoits” with a two-story wall and an open window is aces with me. So why don’t we sing Happy Birthday America? Well, happy 4th from Texas. Just follow the Burma Shave signs”: “Fireworks”…”Fireworks. Buy one, get one free”…”Fireworks, buy one get two free”…”Fireworks, buy two, get five free”……….. "Free Fireworks!”
ReplyDeleteWhat are they crazy? I could lose one of my favorite fingers.
About Keaton. Last night, I caught Elvis Mitchell's show, The Treatment. He interviewed director Andrew Stanton of Pixar about their new movie, Wall-E. I haven't seen it, but Mitchell said the first third of Wall-E is essentially a silent movie.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Stanton said before they made the movie, Pixar people watched all the stuff they could get from the silent era. They concluded that silent movies were able to do anything in subject matter that could be done today, it wasn't the limitation we assume it is.
Stanton also said he felt the silent movies required actors and directors to do their jobs better, the "talkies" made today allow directors to be a bit lazy in making the best movies they can do.
And coincidentally, yesterday in Marin County I spotted the president of Pixar driving his hybrid car, with a smile-inducing license plate, PIXAR.
Thankfully, I've never felt like I had to choose between Chaplin and Keaton, both of whom were clearly comic geniuses. I'd give Chaplin the edge in artistry, and Keaton in technique, but both are essential.
ReplyDeleteAs for Harold Lloyd, he was not their equal in either artistry or technique, but he may be more accessible to modern audiences (regardless of political affiliation). He was an amazing physical comedian, and his films probably have more laugh out loud moments than those of his betters. I've seen most of his features and a great many of his shorts, and they hold up nicely (there's a great DVD box set available). I agree with d. that "Safety Last" isn't quite up there with "The General" and "The Gold Rush," but "The Kid Brother" very nearly is.
Anyway, don't choose -- see them all!
I really hope Keaton isn't being forgotten. The NYS Writer's Institute here in Albany, N.Y. shows Keaton films from time to time with live piano accompaniment. The audience is mostly full of people who've dragged their teenagers along so they can see something more complex than the standard YouTube fare and everyone seems to leave happy. My daughter, now 13, has been a rabid Keaton fan since age 6
ReplyDeletewhen we watched One Week, Go West, Cops, College, Sherlock Jr. and so on. If you've got young kids, expose them to Keaton. They'll be instantly addicted.
"His flair for physical comedy was so inspired that even today I don’t think there’s a single comic who can remotely touch him."
ReplyDeletedear ken,
i beg to differ. charles chaplin was the greatest who ever was.
cheers,
me :D
ps. this is like the question of, 'pepsi or coke?' transported to the silver screen.
"They concluded that silent movies were able to do anything in subject matter that could be done today, it wasn't the limitation we assume it is."
ReplyDeleteIn the words of Tonto, when the Lone Ranger noted they were outnumbered by Indians: "What you mean 'We' white man?"
I am a huge devotee of silent films, pure cinema, rather than what Hitchcock called "Pictures of people talking." At least a quarter of my DVD collection are silents. Kino does a GREAT job of restoring them to their former glories.
Lately I've been dipping into Fritz Lang's German silent epics. Sure everyone knows METROPOLIS, but have you seen his 5-hour fantasy spectacle DIE NIBELUNGEN? Incredible film. Jaw-dropping. Just last week I watched his DIE FRAU IM MOND, a serious science fiction account of a trip to the moon made in 1928. Okay, Lang shows it with an atmosphere so they can tool about on the moon in street clothes (and wearing ties, even the woman!), and the trip from earth to the moon only takes 36 hours, and they're doing it to mine gold. (The expense of mining gold on the moon and getting it back to earth would make it about a million times more expensive than earth gold. Hardly a practical capitalistic venture), but it's still an amazing film.
Look at Lon Chaney's films, not just PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (Though I lvoe Phantom, and it has a cvouple scenes in color.) and HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, but The penalty, or LAUGH, CLOWN LAUGH, or best of all, THE UNKNOWN. He was a great actor, and these are mind-blowing films. Seriously, THE UNKNOWN will amaze you and thrill you. (And my grandfather worked on those three films.)
Look at Douglas Fairbanks's THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD. Incredible spectacle.
JBryant, I never meant one had to CHOOSE Chaplin or Keaton; only that some people are more drawn to one, others to the other. I am more drawn to Keaton, but you'll find THE GOLD RUSH, CITY LIGHTS, MODERN TIMES, THE GREAT DICTATOR, MONSIEUR VERDOUX (Which I love. Not a silent), and LIMELIGHT on my shelves. I have no Lloyd, and my lack of high regard for him predates my learning of his deep-rooted affiliations with the right-wing. Merian C Cooper was a big ole Republicana as well, but I love many of his films. I don't feel that any of Lloyd's films (And I've seeen most of them.) even approach the best work of Keaton or Chaplin, though in their day, they probably made more money. For sheer accessible laughter, I'd take Laurel & Hardy over Lloyd any day. But Lloyd gets stunt props. He shot SAFETY LAST, and most of his films, missing two fingers from one hand, blown off in a stunt gone wrong on an early film. Hanging off those buildings was hard enough, but with missing fingers? My God!
Steveh, you are so right. And GO WEST and COLLEGE are among Keaton's weakest silent features (BATTLING BUTLER was the nadir of them.) so imagine how your kids will respond to his best! You mentioned ONE WEEK. Isn't that the best damn 20 minutes of film comedy you've ever seen?
The two-story wall stunt A BUCK SHORT mentions is from STEAMBOAT BILL JR. Keaton's safety clearance was 3 inches in all four directions, and with wind machines going full blast. Because of the wind machines, it had to weigh TONS to fall right. If he'd been out of position by four inches in any direction, he'd have been killed. The cameramen all faced away as they shot it, too frightened to look.
There's a shot in one film (Not THE GENERAL) where he's knocked off a train car by the water from a water tower spout, and he falls on his back on the tracks. He got up with a blinding headache and finished the shot, and the film. A few years later, for health insurance, he was X-rayed. "When did you break you neck?" the doctor asked him, pointing out the healed fracture in the X-ray. It was doing that shot. He'd broken his neck, and went on working, and didn't realize it, only that it hurt like hell.
He not only did all his own stunts, he sometimes did other people's. In SHERLOCK JR. He's riding on the handlebars of a motorcycle. It hits a bump and the cop driving it falls off, with Keaton not knowing there's now no one steering. For the falling-off stunt, a double plays Keaton, while Keaton doubles the cop and takes the fall. That's right, the STAR and DIRECTOR of the movie doubles a minor character to do his stunt.
The only time in his silent films that someone did a stunt for him is the pole vault through a window in COLLEGE, and for that they got an Olympic pole vaulting champion.
Keaton WAS The Stunt Man!
I think I remember hearing that Keaton mentored Lucille Ball in her early career.
ReplyDeleteI was talking to a friend of my sons last night who is only twenty years old. Saddly he never heard of Jack Benny. He wouldn't know Buster Keaton from Buster Crabbe from Buster Brown.
ReplyDeleteI'm 46 and consider myself a little abnormal in my facination with old movies and radio. While doing some multihour drives I've introduced a co-worker to XM Radio's old time radio (164). He was surprised how funny some of those shows were.
Rich Shealer
From Jan:
ReplyDeleteI love Buster Keaton movies. I knew that he had broken his neck in a stunt, but I hadn't heard a lot of the other stuff, so I was fascinated by all the info from d.mcewan. Thanks! And along with all the other silent films mentioned, one of my favorites is NOSFERATU--the Max Schreck version. Kino just put out a new restoration that blows away their previous excellent one. I couldn't believe how great it looks. I hesitated to buy it because I already had their previous version, but am I glad I did.
Mostly forgotten today...
ReplyDeleteJust in Hollywood, Ken. Just in Hollywood.
And after all, widespread fame simply doesn't last a hundred years. Just ask the descendants of Minnie Maddern Fiske.
For those at a loss as to where they might find Buster Keaton movies these days, most of them are now in the public domain and can be downloaded for free from archive.org.
ReplyDeleteFor example Sherlock Jr.:
http://www.archive.org/details/SherlockJr
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOne of Keaton's last films was a Canadian NFB short called "The Railrodder" (1965). There's an accompanying "making of" feature, "Buster Keaton Rides Again".
ReplyDeleteFans of the great stone face should consider these both as a must see - check Amazon for the DVD.
On the U-Tubes in 3 parts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOSbOU8a_p8
wow, d.mcewen, thanks for all the info! Buster is God. When I was a kid and there was very little product made for TV outside of primetime, they filled the airwaves with the early comedies and "B" movies; silents and talkies alike. I liked Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy, but LOVED Keaton. I still do.
ReplyDelete(Ken, and you thought you were blogging about a parade!)
HAPPY 4TH ALL!
I don't think anyone here has noted Keaton's "Twilight Zone" time-travel episode; I'm sure Rod Serling appreciated Keaton's genius and worked a (largely) silent story around it. Not quite a classic, but if it introduced a number of TV viewers to Keaton's artistry, it was more than worth it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I believe Keaton aided Red Skelton on some of his MGM vehicles in the 1940s, many of which are better than they have any right to be.
I asked my niece what she thought of the comedy talents of Keaton. She said "Michael or Diane?"
ReplyDeleteMaybe last names should be like baseball numbers. The greats should have them retired.
Thank you d. mcewan for that wonderful biographical note about Buster Keaton. I have to agree with W. Kerr's statement about the two groups of people. Although I admire Chaplin, and find him ertaining and moving, my heart belongs to Keaton. Up to now I've never seen any one of his movies entirely through, thanks to the link provided by anonymous above, I believe I've found myself a new obsession.
ReplyDeleteBack in your seats class.
ReplyDeleteI second Warren Fleece's recommendation of THE RAILRODDER and the accompanying making-of doc. And if you're not into buying DVDs you haven't seen, it can be Netflixed, as can most of Buster's silent features as well.
Jan, I almost included NOSFERATU when discussing other silents one should make sure to see. I also have that new Kino edition you mentioned, and it IS magnificent. The orchestral recording of the music written for it's premiere also enhances it tremendously. (And increased my fury to find Beethoven and Bizet slapped over THE GENERAL willy-nilly.)
vp81955,
Buster's TWILIGHT ZONE (Probably on The Sci-Fi Channel at some point today, as they run their traditional marathon) is indeed gold. Buster did a lot of TV work in the 50s and early 60s. He made several memorable appearances on Candid Camera, that made excellent use of his talents. One that springs to memory was his sitting at a lunch counter next to unsuspecting victims (HOW could they not recognize him? He's even wearing the hat!) doing little slapstick bits with the utensils and salt shakers. Allan Funt knew just how to use him, which is more than can be said for MGM.
You are right that Keaton worked on some of Red Skelton's movies, as a writer and gag man. In fact, Skelton's A SOUTHERN YANKEE began life as a remake of THE GENERAL, with Keaton writing gags, but it strayed so far that it's relation to it's vastly superior parent becomes unrecognizable.
Ironic given that one can not conceive of two more different physical comedians: Keaton, The Great Stone Face, and Skelton, the rubber-faced mugger. Opposites. I remember as a kid that Skelton was, like Harvey Korman later, a comic whose best moments came from breaking up in the middle of sketches. Impossible to imagine Keaton doing that.
Keaton also did some gag-creating work at MGM for the Marx Brothers. In AT THE CIRCUS, a film Keaton worked on uncredited, once in a while Harpo does a gag that doesn't really work for his character, but if you mentally substitute Keaton, it becomes a perfect gag. Buster's handprints are there, so to speak.
To recount another amazing episode in Buster's life, the town Buster was born in no longer exists, wiped off the map a few months after Keaton was born by a tornado. Keaton, as an infant, not even yet a toddler, was snatched up out of his crib by the tornado and carried away to Certain Death.
Except the storm showed him mercy, and deposited him gently on the ground. He was found sitting calmly (Of course calmly. Even at less than a year old, he was still Buster) in the middle of a street three blocks away from where he was snatched.
This incident was extremely formative. Throughout his work, the universe can unleash fury upon you and leave you helplessly riding it out, but then it can just as easily and unexpectedly turn in your favor, and grant you what you need.
And the whole tornado-wipes-out-a-town incident became the climax of STEAMBOAT BILL JUNIOR, right down to a now-adult Buster riding through the air only to be gently set down again. One imagines him watching the cyclone sequence in THE WIZARD OF OZ and thinking, "Been there. Done that."
Of course, Buster was born into show business, and was part of his parent's vaudeville act from before he learned to speak. He could stunt double people because he'd been doing wild knockabout physical comedy onstage literally from infancy.
His father, with whom he had "issues" (Hmmm. Father issues from the man who made SHERLOCK JUNIOR and STEAMBOAT BILL JUNIOR?), appears in several of his films. And Ernest Torrence, who played Steamboat Bill Senior In SBJ (A film entirely about a son trying to win the respect of a disappointed father), was a near-double physically for Old Joe Keaton. (Torrence was Captian Hook to Betty Bronson's PETER PAN, a silent fantasy film that is, sad to say, pretty lousy. They're not all masterworks.)
One last tidbit. Joe Keaton Junior was given the name "Bster" by Harry Houdini when he was still a young boy, the name referring to the many "Busters" he took onstage in the Keaton's slapstick act, which primarily consisted of his dad using him as a prop to be hurled about the stage in a frantic and frenzied manner (Child abuse as slapstick. That WAS their act!), endured by the little boy with a calm, stone-faced look.
One of the finest final shots ever made was Chaplin's last frames of CITY LIGHTS, as the tramp looks up - hopefully? hesitantly? - at the blind girl now able to see who he truly is.
Imagine that shot with Buster instead. No begging for pathos, just patiently awaiting the verdict. My heart just broke again.
Doug, you mentioned METROPOLIS....you did hear that they just found a copy of the original 3 hour version of that movie in Argentina?
ReplyDeleteTo bring it back to Keaton, I have some of the TV commercial he did in my video collection...Simon Pure Beer, Kaiser Jeep, Ford Econoline Van.
Keaton did a couple of the teenage beach movies in the 60s, one with Elsa Lanchester. It featured a credit scroll at the end in which each actor dances to a kitschy surf tune. Most were predictably lame, even in bikinis; then Buster and Elsa share a screen and bust their moves. Suddenly you're in the presence of two geniuses, and their performances had more wit, fun, hipness and pizzazz than the rest of the cast combined. All in 10 seconds.
ReplyDeleteI am also a longtime silent movie buff and huge Keaton nut. I enjoy Chaplin and Lloyd (I have the box set of DVDs and highly recommend it; Lloyd is good for getting modern audiences into silent films, since some of his movies seem more modern than Chaplin's, which are more sentimental and have a whiff of the Victorian music hall about them). I'd also like to put in a good word for the forgotten silent clown, Harry Langdon. You have to be as immersed in silent movies as I was to really get him, but he deserves to be remembered. He also later worked as a gag man for Laurel & Hardy, and Hal Roach even tried to create a Langdon & Hardy team when Stan's contract ran out first. But one movie, "Zenobia," was the all that came of it.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of the newly-discovered full print of "Metropolis," the full story is here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/missing-reels-from-langs-metropolis-discovered-860006.html
It's 25 minutes longer than the most complete known version up until now, and apparently includes all the scenes thought lost. And, thank God, no Queen music.
Fellow Keatonites, may I direct you to an organization established just for the appreciation of Buster Keaton's works: The Damfinos (its more formal title is The International Buster Keaton Society, Inc.) at www.busterkeaton.com. Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteThanks BBH,
ReplyDeleteThe Mafia Crime Family Tallulah gets involved with in my book MY LUSH LIFE are called The Damfino Family.
I wonder where I got the word "Damfino"? Damfino.
Like Buster's boat, The Damfino, The Damfinos are all last seen sinking into the ocean.
What a coincidence.