Buster Keaton Pics

Buster

Keaton

66

Slim

Brown - Dark

Black

Piqua, Kansas, USA

Libra

1966-02-01

Los Angeles, California, USA

Lung Cancer

White

Roman Catholic

The Great Stone Face

Male

American

Actor/Actress, Director, Writer

1

Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 '' February 1, 1966) was an Academy Award-winning American comic actor and filmmaker. Best known for his silent films, his trademark was physical comedy with a stoic, deadpan expression on his face, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face" (referencing the Nathaniel Hawthorne story about the "Old Man of the Mountain"). He has also been called "The Michelangelo of Silent Comedy". Keaton`s career as a performer and director is widely considered to be among the most innovative and important work in the history of cinema. He was recognized as the seventh greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly. A 2002 worldwide poll by Sight and Sound ranked Keaton`s 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. Buster Keaton was born into a vaudeville family. His father was Joseph Hallie Keaton, a native of Vigo County, Indiana. Joe Keaton owned a traveling show with Harry Houdini called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company, which performed on stage and sold patent medicine on the side. Buster Keaton was born in Piqua, Kansas, the small town where his mother, Myra Edith Cutler, happened to be when she went into labor. According to Keaton, in an interview that he and his wife Eleanor did with the CBC television program Telescope in 1964, Keaton acquired the nickname "Buster" at about six months of age. Keaton told interviewer Fletcher Markle that Harry Houdini happened to be present one day when the young Keaton took a tumble down a long flight of stairs without injury. After the infant sat up and shook off his experience, Houdini remarked, "That was a real buster!" According to Keaton, in those days, the word buster was used to refer to a spill or a fall that had the potential to produce injury. Thereafter, it was Keaton`s father who began to use the nickname to refer to the youngster. At the age of three, Buster began performing with his parents in The Three Keatons; the act was mainly a comedy sketch. Myra 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. Nevertheless, this knockabout style of comedy led to accusations of child abuse. Decades 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. He claimed he was having so much fun that he would begin laughing as his father threw him across the stage. This drew fewer laughs from the audience, so he adopted his famous deadpan expression whenever he was working. The act ran up against laws banning child performers in vaudeville. It is said that, when one official saw Keaton in full costume and makeup, and asked a stagehand how old he was, the stagehand then pointed to the boy`s mother, saying "I don`t know, ask his wife!" According to one biographer, Keaton was made to go to school while performing in New York, but only attended for one day. Despite tangles with the law and a disastrous tour of music halls in the UK, Keaton was such a rising star in the theater that, when his parents tried to introduce their other children into the act, he remained the focus of attention. Keaton himself stated that he learned to read and write late, and was taught by his mother. By the time he was 21, his father`s alcoholism threatened the reputation of the family act, so Buster and his mother left Joe in Los Angeles. Buster travelled to New York, where his performing career moved from vaudeville to film. Although he did not see active combat, he served in World War I, during which time his hearing became impaired. In February 1917, Keaton met Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle at the Talmadge Studios in New York City, where Arbuckle was under contract to Joseph M. Schenck. Joe Keaton disapproved of films, and Buster also had reservations about the medium. During his first meeting with Arbuckle, he asked to borrow one of the cameras to get a feel for how it worked. He took the camera back to his hotel room, dismantled and reassembled it. With this rough understanding of the mechanics of the moving pictures, he returned the next day, camera in hand, asking for work. He was hired as a co-star and gag-man, making his first appearance in The Butcher Boy. Keaton later claimed that he was soon Arbuckle`s second director and his entire gag department. Keaton and Arbuckle became close friends. After Keaton`s successful work with Arbuckle, Schenck gave him his own pro

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buster_Keaton

Joseph Francis Keaton Jr.

1

2

Porkpie Hat, Slapshoes, Deadpan Expression

Smirnoff Vodka (spokesperson)

Joe Keaton

Myrna Keaton

Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Fatty Arbuckle, Gilbert Roland, Alice Lake, Viola Dana

Harry Houdini (Harry gave him the nickname Buster as a child. Buster's parents performed in vaudeville with him)

1895-10-04

Actor/Director/Producer and Writer

70

Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".

12903

Francis

1

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