Buster Keaton, who died yesterday in Hollywood, was something of a genius, and even today there are men who spend hours arguing whether Charlie Chaplin or Harry Langdon or Buster Keaton was the greatest of the comedians of Hollywood’s vintage years, when custard pies were delivered in every reel.
No one will ever provide the answer to suit everyone. But Keaton, who would have been 70 this year, is enshrined in the memories of all who saw him as one of the three great comedians who made silent pictures an art. Unlike his rivals, he continued to act until almost the end of his life; he retired only four months ago when the lung cancer, which killed him, made work – even in television commercials – impossible.
Few entertainers could claim with as much justification as Buster Keaton to be “born to show business.” He was born between acts while his parents were performing in vaudeville in Kansas in October, 1895, and before he started school he was a performer.
His name was Joseph Francis Keaton, but his ability to tumble without a bruise earned the admiration of the magician. Harry Houdini called the boy “Buster” and the name endured. His first act was as part of a trio with his parents and Buster sat in a harness and was swung back and forth across the stage. Later he and his father hit each other with brooms. His solemn stare before yelping “Ouch” became his trademark and earned him names like Frozen Face or Old Stoneface.
At 21 he met Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and later, with Mack Sennett, he appeared so frequently in one and two-reelers that his deadpan expression became familiar to movie-goers. The Electric House, The Frozen North, and Balloonatic were among the films in which Keaton endured all sorts of alarming indignities without a change of expression and his early training as an acrobat endowed him with a sense of timing and an elegance of tumbling.
His great period began in 1923 when he appeared in The Three Ages and a year later he made a full length comedy, Our hospitality, which preceded a run of astonishing successes. Films like The General and Steamboat Bill Jr. made it evident that a new star had arisen. He lacked the pathos of Chaplin and the lost bewilderment of Langdon, but he had a magic of his own that was sufficient for his admirers: perhaps his stoicism, his incredible stolidity, symbolised the qualities so much admired in the era of silent films – qualities shared by pioneers and others fighting overwhelming odds and invariably succeeding in spite of them.
The decline of the silent film brought with it the temporary decline of Buster Keaton. He appeared in some talking films, but never repeated in them his enormous success, and in 1935 he suffered a nervous breakdown after his marriage to Natalie Talmadge broke up. He married twice more and his third wife survives him. Keaton’s return to fine prominence began with an appearance in Chaplin’s Limelight in 1952. He also appeared in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and worked frequently in night clubs and on television.
Perhaps his happiest moment came last year when he was acclaimed for his performance in a 22-minute film written by Samuel Beckett, called, simply, Film. For Buster Keaton there was never the terrible eclipse, the descent from fame, that came to so many of his silent film colleagues.
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