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Joseph Frank Keaton VI (October 4, 1895 –
February 1, 1966), always known as Buster Keaton,
was a popular and influential American silent-film comic actor and
filmmaker. His trademark was physical comedy with
a stoic, deadpan expression on his face, earning
him the nickname The Great Stone Face. His
innovative work as a film director|director made
basic contributions to the development of the art
of cinema.

A 2002 world-wide poll by Sight and Sound ranked
Keaton's The General (1927 movie)|The General as
the 15th best film of all time. Three other Keaton
films received votes in the survey: Our
Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/index.h
tml

==Early life in vaudeville==
Keaton was born into the world of vaudeville. His
father, Joseph Hallie Keaton, and Harry Houdini
owned a travelling show called the Mohawk Indian
Medicine Company, which performed on stage and
sold patent medicine on the side. Keaton was born
in the town of Piqua, Kansas|Piqua (peek-WAY),
Kansas, the small town where his mother, Myra
Edith Cutler, happened to go into labor. The
boarding house in which he was born was later
destroyed by a tornado.  Currently on this site is
a memorial plaque, and nearby is a small power
plant that maintains a one-room Keaton museum.
Piqua is so small that the annual Buster Keaton
Celebration is held in nearby Iola, Kansas.

Keaton credited Harry Houdini, who was his
godfather, with dubbing him Buster after seeing
him, at the age of six months, tumble down a
flight of stairs without injury. At the time, the
word buster either meant bronco-buster or a fall.
It was only after Keaton was nicknamed the word
became a name — one example of this early
use is the comic strip character Buster Brown.

At the age of three, he began performing with his
parents as The Three Keatons; the storyline of the
act was how to raise a small child. Myra played
the saxophone to one side while Joe and Buster
performed on center stage. Buster would goad Joe
by disobeying him, and Joe would respond by
throwing Buster against the scenery, into the
orchestra pit, or even into the audience. The act
evolved as Buster learned to take trick falls
safely. He was rarely injured or bruised on stage.
Nevertheless, this knockabout style of comedy led
to accusations of child abuse. Decades later,
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! 
Despite tangles with the law and a disastrous tour
of the English Music Halls, Buster 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 Michigan, while
Buster travelled to New York, where his performing
career moved from vaudeville to film.



==Silent film era==
In February 1917 Keaton met Roscoe Arbuckle|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.
Keaton later claimed that he was soon Arbuckle's
second director and his entire gag department.
Keaton and Arbuckle became close friends, a bond
that would never break, even after Arbuckle was
embroiled in the Fatty Arbuckle|scandal that cost
him his career and his personal life.

After 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)|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 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 film-making style employs editing and framing
techniques that are more closely aligned with
modern sensibilities than the melodrama of other
films of the day. His style of comedy and humor
has been called timeless, in contrast to other
silent comedians whose approaches are more rooted
in their own era.

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
movie)|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. Unfortunately, many of
his most acclaimed films performed poorly in the
box office due to their
sophistication—audiences had a difficult
time seeing Buster as a cinematic artist of
considerable ambition.

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 promised an easier adjustment than
Chaplin's silent Tramp character, who Chaplin
thought could not survive sound.

==Marriages== 
In 1921, he married Natalie Talmadge,
sister-in-law of his boss, Joe Schenck, and sister
of actresses Norma Talmadge and Constance
Talmadge.  After the birth of their second son,
the marriage began to suffer. According to
Keaton's autobiography, Natalie turned him out of
the bedroom and sent detectives to follow him to
see who he was dating behind her back. In 1932,
Natalie divorced him, taking his entire fortune,
and refusing to allow contact between Keaton and
his sons. Keaton was reunited with them about a
decade later.

In 1933, Buster married Mae Scriven, his nurse
during an alcoholic binge that he remembered
nothing about afterward. When they divorced in
1936, she took half of everything they owned
— half of each dining set, half of each
table and chair set, half of the books, and even
Buster's favorite St. Bernard, Elmer.  

In 1940, Buster married Eleanor Norris, who was 23
years younger than he. She saved his life and
helped salvage his career. All their friends
advised them against it, but the marriage lasted
until Buster's death. Between 1947 and 1954,
Buster and Eleanor appeared regularly in the
Cirque Medrano in Paris, in a highly-regarded
doubles act.

==Sound era and television==
Keaton's filmmaking unit was acquired by
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer|MGM in 1928 in film|1928, a
business decision that Keaton regretted ever
afterwards. He was forced to enter the ranks of
the studio system, working at the MGM studios in a
more restrictive environment that he had
previously worked in. He had difficulty adapting
to the studio system and lapsed into alcoholism.
His career declined within a few years, and he
spent most of the 1930s in obscurity, working as a
gag writer for various MGM films, particularly
those of the Marx Brothers—including A Night
at the Opera (movie)|A Night at the Opera (1935),
At the Circus (1939), and Go West (1940);and
various films of Red Skelton.

He made appearances in films, including Sunset
Boulevard (movie)|Sunset Boulevard (1950), It's a
Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), and A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966). He had a
brief cameo in Charlie Chaplin's late film
Limelight (movie)|Limelight (1952). For ten
minutes, Keaton and Chaplin share the screen for
the only time in their careers, playing two aging
former vaudeville stars trying to recapture a bit
of glory, decades after both Chaplin's and
Keaton's jumping the shark|fame had peaked —
though Keaton remarks, If one more person tells me
this is just like old times, I swear I'll jump out
the window.

He had two back-to-back television series, The
Buster Keaton Show (1950) and Life With Buster
Keaton (1951). Despite their
popularity, he cancelled the programs because he
could not create enough material to produce a new
show each week.  He also found steady work as an
actor for TV commercials, but he largely believed
that he had been forgotten. His classic silent
films saw a revival in the late 1950s and early
1960s. Shortly before he died, Keaton starred in a
short film called The Railrodder (1965) for the National Film
Board of Canada, in which he returned to the
classic deadpan style that he had known during the
peak of his career in the 1920s. He also played
the central role in Samuel Beckett's only film
project, Film (movie)|Film (1965).

==Death==
Buster contracted lung cancer after years of
smoking. His wife and doctors let him believe that
he had contracted chronic bronchitis and he was
never told that he was dying. Why exactly they did
this is uncertain, but it is clear that Keaton
required others to manage his daily living. Since
his condition was already terminal when it was
diagnosed, perhaps they were concerned that if he
had been told, he would have stopped working.
Performing before a camera or a live-audience was
what Buster enjoyed most, apart from model trains.
Buster Keaton is interred in the Forest Lawn -
Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles,
California. 

==Legacy and contribution==
Buster Keaton, Chaplin, and Lloyd are remembered
as the great comic innovators of the silent era.
Many regard Keaton as the superior filmmaker of
the three, although Keaton never made such
comparisons. He enjoyed Lloyd's films highly and
often praised Chaplin for his genius.

Keaton has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame: 6619 Hollywood Boulevard (for motion
pictures); and 6321 Hollywood Boulevard (for
television). In 1994, he appeared on a List of
people on stamps of the United States|United
States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al
Hirschfeld.

Many actors and filmmakers were influenced by
Keaton, including Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers,
Blake Edwards, and Jackie Chan.

==Filmography==
* imdb name|id=0000036|name=Buster Keaton
* Kino Video Studio (2001). The Art Of Buster
Keaton. Set of 11 DVDs.

==Books==
* Book reference|Author=Blesh,
Rudi|Title=Keaton|Publisher=The Macmillan
Company|Year=1966|ID=ISBN 0025115707
* Book reference|Author=Keaton, Buster; Samuels,
Charles|Title=My Wonderful World Of
Slapstick|Publisher=Da Capo
Press|Year=1982|ID=ISBN 0-306-80178-7
* Book reference|Author=Keaton, Eleanor; Vance,
Jeffery|Title=Buster Keaton
Remembered|Publisher=Harry N.
Abrams|Year=2001|ID=ISBN 0810942275
* Book reference|Author=Meade, Marion|Title=Buster
Keaton: Cut To The Chase|Publisher=Harper
Collins|Year=1995|ID=ISBN 0060173378

==External links==
*http://keaton.comedyclassics.org Buster Keaton
Forum
*http://www.busterkeaton.com The International
Buster Keaton Society
*http://www.iolaks.com/keaton Annual Buster Keaton
Celebration, Iola, KS
*http://film.virtual-history.com/person.php?person
id=697 Bibliography
*http://www.metrogirl.com/thriftshop/keaton.html
The Keaton Character: Buster Keaton and the
Economy of Means (essay)
*http://www.ida.liu.se/~juhta/buster/ Juha's
Buster Keaton Page (link resource)
*http://silentgents.com/PKeaton11.html The Great
Stone Face Cracks Up (rare images of BK smiling
and laughing)
*http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000036/ IMDB.com
listing for Buster Keaton
*http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/
02/keaton.html Senses of Cinema: Great Directors
Critical Database

	Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Infobox_Biography |
  subject_name   = Buster Keaton |
  image_name     =
Buster_keaton_in_sherlock_jr,_1924.jpg |
  image_caption  = The Great Stone Face 
 in
Sherlock, Jr. (1924) |
  date_of_birth  = October 4, 1895 |
  place_of_birth = Piqua, Kansas, United
States|USA |
  dead=dead |
  date_of_death  = February 1, 1966 |
  place_of_death = Woodland Hills, California,
United States|USA

Joseph Frank Keaton VI (October 4, 1895 –
February 1, 1966), always known as Buster Keaton,
was a popular and influential United
States|American silent-film comic actor and
filmmaker. His trademark was physical comedy with
a stoic, deadpan expression on his face, earning
him the nickname The Great Stone Face. His
innovative work as a film director|director made
basic contributions to the development of the art
of cinema.

A 2002 world-wide poll by Sight and Sound ranked
Keaton's The General (1927 movie)|The General as
the 15th Films that have been considered the
greatest ever|best film of all time. Three other
Keaton films received votes in the survey: Our
Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/index.h
tml

==Early life in vaudeville==
Keaton was born into the world of vaudeville. His
father, Joseph Hallie Keaton, and Harry Houdini
owned a travelling show called the Mohawk Indian
Medicine Company, which performed on stage and
sold patent medicine on the side. Keaton was born
in the town of Piqua, Kansas|Piqua (peek-WAY),
Kansas, the small town where his mother, Myra
Edith Cutler, happened to go into labor. The
boarding house in which he was born was later
destroyed by a tornado.  Currently on this site is
a memorial plaque, and nearby is a small power
plant that maintains a one-room Keaton museum.
Piqua is so small that the annual Buster Keaton
Celebration is held in nearby Iola, Kansas.

Keaton credited Harry Houdini, who was his
godfather, with dubbing him "Buster" after seeing
him, at the age of six months, tumble down a
flight of stairs without injury. At the time, the
word "buster" either meant broncobuster or a fall.
It was only after Keaton was nicknamed the word
became a name — one example of this early
use is the comic strip character Buster Brown.

At the age of three, he began performing with his
parents as The Three Keatons; the storyline of the
act was how to raise a small child. Myra played
the saxophone to one side while Joe and Buster
performed on center stage. Buster would goad Joe
by disobeying him, and Joe would respond by
throwing Buster against the scenery, into the
orchestra pit, or even into the audience. The act
evolved as Buster learned to take trick falls
safely. He was rarely injured or bruised on stage.
Nevertheless, this knockabout style of comedy led
to accusations of child abuse. Decades later,
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!" 
Despite tangles with the law and a disastrous tour
of the English Music Halls, Buster 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 Michigan, while
Buster travelled to New York, where his performing
career moved from vaudeville to film.



==Silent film era==
In February 1917 Keaton met Roscoe Arbuckle|Roscoe
"Fatty" Arbuckle at the Talmadge Studios in New
York City, where Arbuckle was under contract to
Joe Schenck|Joseph M. Schenck. He was hired as a
co-star and gag-man. Keaton later claimed that he
was soon Arbuckle's second director and his entire
gag department. Keaton and Arbuckle became close
friends, a bond that would never break, even after
Arbuckle was embroiled in the Fatty
Arbuckle|scandal that cost him his career and his
personal life.

After 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)|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 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 film-making style employs editing and framing
techniques that are more closely aligned with
modern sensibilities than the melodrama of other
films of the day. His style of comedy and humor
has been called timeless, in contrast to other
silent comedians whose approaches are more rooted
in their own era.

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
movie)|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. Unfortunately, many of
his most acclaimed films performed poorly in the
box office due to their
sophistication—audiences had a difficult
time seeing Buster as a cinematic artist of
considerable ambition.

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 promised an easier adjustment than
Chaplin's silent Tramp character, who Chaplin
thought could not survive sound.

==Marriages== 
In 1921, he married Natalie Talmadge,
sister-in-law of his boss, Joe Schenck, and sister
of actresses Norma Talmadge and Constance
Talmadge.  After the birth of their second son,
the marriage began to suffer. According to
Keaton's autobiography, Natalie turned him out of
the bedroom and sent detectives to follow him to
see who he was dating behind her back. In 1932,
Natalie divorced him, taking his entire fortune,
and refusing to allow contact between Keaton and
his sons. Keaton was reunited with them about a
decade later.

In 1933, Buster married Mae Scriven, his nurse
during an alcoholic binge that he remembered
nothing about afterward. When they divorced in
1936, she took half of everything they owned
— half of each dining set, half of each
table and chair set, half of the books, and even
Buster's favorite St. Bernard, Elmer.  

In 1940, Buster married Eleanor Norris, who was 23
years younger than he. She saved his life and
helped salvage his career. All their friends
advised them against it, but the marriage lasted
until Buster's death. Between 1947 and 1954,
Buster and Eleanor appeared regularly in the
Cirque Medrano in Paris, in a highly-regarded
doubles act.

==Sound era and television==
Keaton's filmmaking unit was acquired by
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer|MGM in 1928 in film|1928, a
business decision that Keaton regretted ever
afterwards. He was forced to enter the ranks of
the studio system, working at the MGM studios in a
more restrictive environment that he had
previously worked in. He had difficulty adapting
to the studio system and lapsed into alcoholism.
His career declined within a few years, and he
spent most of the 1930s in obscurity, working as a
gag writer for various MGM films, particularly
those of the Marx Brothers—including A Night
at the Opera (movie)|A Night at the Opera (1935),
At the Circus (1939), and Go West (1940);and
various films of Red Skelton.

He made appearances in films, including Sunset
Boulevard (movie)|Sunset Boulevard (1950), It's a
Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), and A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966). He had a
brief cameo in Charlie Chaplin's late film
Limelight (movie)|Limelight (1952). For ten
minutes, Keaton and Chaplin share the screen for
the only time in their careers, playing two aging
former vaudeville stars trying to recapture a bit
of glory, decades after both Chaplin's and
Keaton's jumping the shark|fame had peaked —
though Keaton remarks, "If one more person tells
me this is just like old times, I swear I'll jump
out the window."

He had two back-to-back television series, The
Buster Keaton Show (1950) and Life With Buster
Keaton (1951). Despite their
popularity, he cancelled the programs because he
could not create enough material to produce a new
show each week.  He also found steady work as an
actor for TV commercials, but he largely believed
that he had been forgotten. His classic silent
films saw a revival in the late 1950s and early
1960s. Shortly before he died, Keaton starred in a
short film called The Railrodder (1965) for the National Film
Board of Canada, in which he returned to the
classic deadpan style that he had known during the
peak of his career in the 1920s. He also played
the central role in Samuel Beckett's only film
project, Film (movie)|Film (1965).

==Death==
Buster contracted lung cancer after years of
smoking. His wife and doctors let him believe that
he had contracted chronic bronchitis and he was
never told that he was dying. Why exactly they did
this is uncertain, but it is clear that Keaton
required others to manage his daily living. Since
his condition was already terminal when it was
diagnosed, perhaps they were concerned that if he
had been told, he would have stopped working.
Performing before a camera or a live-audience was
what Buster enjoyed most, apart from model trains.
Buster Keaton is interred in the Forest Lawn -
Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles,
California. 

==Legacy and contribution==
Buster Keaton, Chaplin, and Lloyd are remembered
as the great comic innovators of the silent era.
Many regard Keaton as the superior filmmaker of
the three, although Keaton never made such
comparisons. He enjoyed Lloyd's films highly and
often praised Chaplin for his genius.

Keaton has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame: 6619 Hollywood Boulevard (for motion
pictures); and 6321 Hollywood Boulevard (for
television). In 1994, he appeared on a List of
people on stamps of the United States|United
States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al
Hirschfeld.

Many actors and filmmakers were influenced by
Keaton, including Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers,
Blake Edwards, and Jackie Chan.

==Filmography==
* imdb name|id=0000036|name=Buster Keaton
* Kino Video Studio (2001). The Art Of Buster
Keaton. Set of 11 DVDs.

==Books==
* Book reference|Author=Blesh,
Rudi|Title=Keaton|Publisher=The Macmillan
Company|Year=1966|ID=ISBN 0025115707
* Book reference|Author=Keaton, Buster; Samuels,
Charles|Title=My Wonderful World Of
Slapstick|Publisher=Da Capo
Press|Year=1982|ID=ISBN 0-306-80178-7
* Book reference|Author=Keaton, Eleanor; Vance,
Jeffery|Title=Buster Keaton
Remembered|Publisher=Harry N.
Abrams|Year=2001|ID=ISBN 0810942275
* Book reference|Author=Meade, Marion|Title=Buster
Keaton: Cut To The Chase|Publisher=Harper
Collins|Year=1995|ID=ISBN 0060173378

==External links==
*http://keaton.comedyclassics.org Buster Keaton
Forum
*http://www.busterkeaton.com The International
Buster Keaton Society
*http://www.iolaks.com/keaton Annual Buster Keaton
Celebration, Iola, KS
*http://film.virtual-history.com/person.php?person
id=697 Bibliography
*http://www.metrogirl.com/thriftshop/keaton.html
The Keaton Character: Buster Keaton and the
Economy of Means (essay)
*http://www.ida.liu.se/~juhta/buster/ Juha's
Buster Keaton Page (link resource)
*http://silentgents.com/PKeaton11.html The Great
Stone Face Cracks Up (rare images of BK smiling
and laughing)
*http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000036/ IMDB.com
listing for Buster Keaton
*http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/
02/keaton.html Senses of Cinema: Great Directors
Critical Database

	Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Joseph Frank Keaton VI (October 4, 1895 –
February 1, 1966), always known as Buster Keaton,
was a popular and influential United
States|American silent-film comic actor and
filmmaker. His trademark was physical comedy with
a stoic, deadpan expression on his face, earning
him the nickname The Great Stone Face. His
innovative work as a film director|director made
basic contributions to the development of the art
of cinema.

A 2002 world-wide poll by Sight and Sound ranked
Keaton's The General (1927 movie)|The General as
the 15th Films that have been considered the
greatest ever|best film of all time. Three other
Keaton films received votes in the survey: Our
Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/index.h
tml

==Early life in vaudeville==
Keaton was born into the world of vaudeville. His
father, Joseph Hallie Keaton, and Harry Houdini
owned a travelling show called the Mohawk Indian
Medicine Company, which performed on stage and
sold patent medicine on the side. Keaton was born
in the town of Piqua, Kansas|Piqua (peek-WAY),
Kansas, the small town where his mother, Myra
Edith Cutler, happened to go into labor. The
boarding house in which he was born was later
destroyed by a tornado.  Currently on this site is
a memorial plaque, and nearby is a small power
plant that maintains a one-room Keaton museum.
Piqua is so small that the annual Buster Keaton
Celebration is held in nearby Iola, Kansas.

Keaton credited Harry Houdini, who was his
godfather, with dubbing him "Buster" after seeing
him, at the age of six months, tumble down a
flight of stairs without injury. At the time, the
word "buster" either meant broncobuster or a fall.
It was only after Keaton was nicknamed the word
became a name — one example of this early
use is the comic strip character Buster Brown.

At the age of three, he began performing with his
parents as The Three Keatons; the storyline of the
act was how to raise a small child. Myra played
the saxophone to one side while Joe and Buster
performed on center stage. Buster would goad Joe
by disobeying him, and Joe would respond by
throwing Buster against the scenery, into the
orchestra pit, or even into the audience. The act
evolved as Buster learned to take trick falls
safely. He was rarely injured or bruised on stage.
Nevertheless, this knockabout style of comedy led
to accusations of child abuse. Decades later,
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!" 
Despite tangles with the law and a disastrous tour
of the English Music Halls, Buster 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 Michigan, while
Buster travelled to New York, where his performing
career moved from vaudeville to film.



==Silent film era==
In February 1917 Keaton met Roscoe Arbuckle|Roscoe
"Fatty" Arbuckle at the Talmadge Studios in New
York City, where Arbuckle was under contract to
Joe Schenck|Joseph M. Schenck. He was hired as a
co-star and gag-man. Keaton later claimed that he
was soon Arbuckle's second director and his entire
gag department. Keaton and Arbuckle became close
friends, a bond that would never break, even after
Arbuckle was embroiled in the Fatty
Arbuckle|scandal that cost him his career and his
personal life.

After 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 (film)|One Week
(1920), Cops (1922)|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 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 film-making style employs editing and framing
techniques that are more closely aligned with
modern sensibilities than the melodrama of other
films of the day. His style of comedy and humor
has been called timeless, in contrast to other
silent comedians whose approaches are more rooted
in their own era.

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
movie)|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. Unfortunately, many of
his most acclaimed films performed poorly in the
box office due to their
sophistication—audiences had a difficult
time seeing Buster as a cinematic artist of
considerable ambition.

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 promised an easier adjustment than
Chaplin's silent Tramp character, who Chaplin
thought could not survive sound.

==Marriages== 
In 1921, he married Natalie Talmadge,
sister-in-law of his boss, Joe Schenck, and sister
of actresses Norma Talmadge and Constance
Talmadge.  After the birth of their second son,
the marriage began to suffer. According to
Keaton's autobiography, Natalie turned him out of
the bedroom and sent detectives to follow him to
see who he was dating behind her back. In 1932,
Natalie divorced him, taking his entire fortune,
and refusing to allow contact between Keaton and
his sons. Keaton was reunited with them about a
decade later.

In 1933, Buster married Mae Scriven, his nurse
during an alcoholic binge that he remembered
nothing about afterward. When they divorced in
1936, she took half of everything they owned
— half of each dining set, half of each
table and chair set, half of the books, and even
Buster's favorite St. Bernard, Elmer.  

In 1940, Buster married Eleanor Norris, who was 23
years younger than he. She saved his life and
helped salvage his career. All their friends
advised them against it, but the marriage lasted
until Buster's death. Between 1947 and 1954,
Buster and Eleanor appeared regularly in the
Cirque Medrano in Paris, in a highly-regarded
doubles act.

==Sound era and television==
Keaton's filmmaking unit was acquired by
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer|MGM in 1928 in film|1928, a
business decision that Keaton regretted ever
afterwards. He was forced to enter the ranks of
the studio system, working at the MGM studios in a
more restrictive environment that he had
previously worked in. He had difficulty adapting
to the studio system and lapsed into alcoholism.
His career declined within a few years, and he
spent most of the 1930s in obscurity, working as a
gag writer for various MGM films, particularly
those of the Marx Brothers—including A Night
at the Opera (movie)|A Night at the Opera (1935),
At the Circus (1939), and Go West (1940);and
various films of Red Skelton.

He made appearances in films, including Sunset
Boulevard (movie)|Sunset Boulevard (1950), It's a
Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), and A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966). He had a
brief cameo in Charlie Chaplin's late film
Limelight (movie)|Limelight (1952). For ten
minutes, Keaton and Chaplin share the screen for
the only time in their careers, playing two aging
former vaudeville stars trying to recapture a bit
of glory, decades after both Chaplin's and
Keaton's jumping the shark|fame had peaked —
though Keaton remarks, "If one more person tells
me this is just like old times, I swear I'll jump
out the window."

He had two back-to-back television series, The
Buster Keaton Show (1950) and Life With Buster
Keaton (1951). Despite their
popularity, he cancelled the programs because he
could not create enough material to produce a new
show each week.  He also found steady work as an
actor for TV commercials, but he largely believed
that he had been forgotten. His classic silent
films saw a revival in the late 1950s and early
1960s. Shortly before he died, Keaton starred in a
short film called The Railrodder (1965) for the National Film
Board of Canada, in which he returned to the
classic deadpan style that he had known during the
peak of his career in the 1920s. He also played
the central role in Samuel Beckett's only film
project, Film (movie)|Film (1965).

==Death==
Buster contracted lung cancer after years of
smoking. His wife and doctors let him believe that
he had contracted chronic bronchitis and he was
never told that he was dying. Why exactly they did
this is uncertain, but it is clear that Keaton
required others to manage his daily living. Since
his condition was already terminal when it was
diagnosed, perhaps they were concerned that if he
had been told, he would have stopped working.
Performing before a camera or a live-audience was
what Buster enjoyed most, apart from model trains.
Buster Keaton is interred in the Forest Lawn -
Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles,
California. 

==Legacy and contribution==
Buster Keaton, Chaplin, and Lloyd are remembered
as the great comic innovators of the silent era.
Many regard Keaton as the superior filmmaker of
the three, although Keaton never made such
comparisons. He enjoyed Lloyd's films highly and
often praised Chaplin for his genius.

Keaton has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame: 6619 Hollywood Boulevard (for motion
pictures); and 6321 Hollywood Boulevard (for
television). In 1994, he appeared on a List of
people on stamps of the United States|United
States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al
Hirschfeld.

Many actors and filmmakers were influenced by
Keaton, including Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers,
Blake Edwards, and Jackie Chan.

==Filmography==
* imdb name|id=0000036|name=Buster Keaton
* Kino Video Studio (2001). The Art Of Buster
Keaton. Set of 11 DVDs.

==Books==
* Book reference|Author=Blesh,
Rudi|Title=Keaton|Publisher=The Macmillan
Company|Year=1966|ID=ISBN 0025115707
* Book reference|Author=Keaton, Buster; Samuels,
Charles|Title=My Wonderful World Of
Slapstick|Publisher=Da Capo
Press|Year=1982|ID=ISBN 0-306-80178-7
* Book reference|Author=Keaton, Eleanor; Vance,
Jeffery|Title=Buster Keaton
Remembered|Publisher=Harry N.
Abrams|Year=2001|ID=ISBN 0810942275
* Book reference|Author=Meade, Marion|Title=Buster
Keaton: Cut To The Chase|Publisher=Harper
Collins|Year=1995|ID=ISBN 0060173378

==External links==
*http://keaton.comedyclassics.org Buster Keaton
Forum
*http://www.busterkeaton.com The International
Buster Keaton Society
*http://www.iolaks.com/keaton Annual Buster Keaton
Celebration, Iola, KS
*http://film.virtual-history.com/person.php?person
id=697 Bibliography
*http://www.metrogirl.com/thriftshop/keaton.html
The Keaton Character: Buster Keaton and the
Economy of Means (essay)
*http://www.ida.liu.se/~juhta/buster/ Juha's
Buster Keaton Page (link resource)
*http://silentgents.com/PKeaton.html Buster Keaton
Photo Galleries (includes rare images of BK
smiling and laughing)
*http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000036/ IMDB.com
listing for Buster Keaton
*http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/
02/keaton.html Senses of Cinema: Great Directors
Critical Database