And he reckons many of today’s comedians and movies, and certainly cartoons of every era from Mickey Mouse to The Simpsons, were hugely influenced by Buster’s work. Joseph Frank Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966), known professionally as Buster Keaton, was an American actor, comedian, film director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer. Buster Keaton's inspiration for this short might have started out as a parody, but One Week is more than a lesson in how not to build a house. “In a world where we are quite sophisticated and we understand visual effects, CGI, I think that when young people are introduced to Keaton they know that this isn’t CGI, that house is really falling on him! “Buster talked about that. Henry Barnes @HenryHBarnes. Peter Falk's character has a patch over his right eye. He Fractured His Neck Without Realizing It. In The Three Keatons, Buster was frequently tossed about by his father and learned to take his falls with a straight face in order to get more laughs. “And then there’s Cops, 20 minutes long, if you want a really good short movie.”. He reputedly made his first appearance on stage crawling on from the wings at the age of nine months (one improbable clipping says it was the day after he was born), to the audience's delight and his father's surprise. Subscribe for only £5.49 a month and enjoy all the benefits of the printed paper as a digital replica. “He grabbed the water spout, it slowly came down and the force of the water knocked him down on to the railway line. The danger was to due to the significant weight of the prop house and the fact that the window only offered a few inches of space around Keaton's body. While recovering from this and against doctor's orders, he did an extended dance sequence for "The Playhouse." On "The General" he was knocked out by a cannon. In 1940, he remarried, and 10 years later, he landed a minor role in a major movie, which rekindled public interest in his silent films. In the final scene at the hospital, all the participants had various injuries. David MacLeod, author of The Sound Of Buster Keaton, a Keaton historian and co-founder of the Buster Keaton Appreciation Society, is clearly a fan. And Buster Keaton, the stone-faced legend who drove his own car at the age of 12 and happily did stunts for 30 years while unaware his neck was broken, is still stunning today’s kids with his incredible movies, more than 50 years after his death. We keep seeing gags in Family Guy or The Simpsons that are clearly Keaton-influenced. “I think they feel really impressed that, my God, he really put himself in danger to make us laugh. Injuries may have slowed Buster down, but never stopped him working because his films had to be completed on schedule. He is best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face". Buster Keaton was born in 1895, and was like most people of that time: unfunny, proper and boring, even though his parents were stage performers. He was the comic genius to rival Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy and the Marx Brothers. “If he kept the straight face, it added to the fact that he was being thrown around like a prop.”. She still has no time for him, so he figures out how to get into the hospital and under her care. In the film he got up and ran away, but he said for about two or three weeks afterwards he was getting these terrible headaches. He earned the nickname "Buster" for his ability to take falls without injury (Keaton had sometimes claimed that Houdini gave him the nickname, though many historians believe this is a myth). Next, the facade of a two-story building toppled forward on top of him. In the scene, he stood and ran into the distance. A millionaire falls for an army nurse, who tells him she likes men in uniform. “A lot of the Disney guys and people at Warners freely profess to watching the silent movies and Keaton in particular for the visual gags and then putting them into their cartoons. The injury is most clearly visible in The Garage (1920), when Keaton steadies Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle's head with his right hand while wiping oil off his face with his left. “It’s full of celebrities, and Buster does seem to be one of those people who is much admired within the industry. Buster Keaton was no stranger to landing on his backside, but even he found the Steamboat Bill Jr (1928) shoot gruelling. “There was a Canadian pizza delivery advert a couple of years ago where the whole premise was a house falling on somebody as they’re walking away from it. He died the same day as his The Stolen Jools (1931), Speak Easily (1932) and Sunset Blvd. “If it can get the next generation interested and asking, ‘Who is this Keaton guy? With Buster Keaton, Elsie Ames, Dorothy Appleby, Monte Collins. We use content that has been licensed. Even his name, Buster, comes from childhood trauma: after falling down a flight of stairs, he earned the nickname, and Sanders and Lieberfeld write that by the time he was three he was forced to stand onstage with his circus performer father, clad in a miniature clown costume, so his parents could keep an eye on their accident-prone child. In Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, live birds were tied to Tippi Hedren and also thrown … The comedic persona he developed was a direct result of this supervision … During the filming of "The Electric House" his foot was crushed in an escalator. Two accidents out of 10,000 would be an injury rate of .002 percent. He would watch and ask about everything, and they would teach him. David, of course, hopes it will help inspire and enthral yet another new generation of film fans to fall for the timeless magic of Buster Keaton. Hopelessly in love with a woman working at MGM Studios, a clumsy man attempts to become a motion picture cameraman to be close to the object of his desire. Keaton was so tough his many severe injuries never would slow him down. He did get hurt. There’s no mystery about how Keaton toughened himself up to do the incredible stunts he did in films, jumping off moving trains, having buildings fall on him and so on. Buster Keaton in The General (1927). Try getting that past Health and Safety these days. Keaton, however, didn't realize that his neck had been fractured. He spent the rest of his life going on world tours and appearing on television screens. ... it wasn’t until many years after the event that a doctor’s appointment led to the revelation that a stunt-induced-injury on the set of Sherlock, Jr. (1924) had actually been a broken neck . So he enlists at Camp Cluster. Buster Keaton, who also suffered terrible injuries from his falls, even said that his very nickname came from stunts that came with the risk of injury. His parents literally threw him around the stage, and sometimes into the audience, when he was a child star, with a handle on his back to make throwing him easier. “The pay was an absolute three-way split between him and his parents,” David explains. The Great Buster: A Celebration is a new documentary film which will be out in British cinemas later this year. 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Such a sensation was he that perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to learn Buster was driving his own car by the grand old age of 12. That was part of his contribution to the act. Keaton passed away in 1966 at age 70 due to lung cancer. If you or I plan on buying some Buster Keaton classics, what does David reckon we should seek out first? “It’s like dancers, who always get hurt despite all the precautions they take.”. “Buster, certainly in the 1920s, was something of an acquired taste and he wasn’t anywhere near as successful as Chaplin,” David admits. “But what makes Buster interesting is that he came back. In vaudeville, he would love to stand at the side of the stage and watch the magicians. Ein weiteres Markenzeichen war sein Porkpie-Hut, ein runder, flacher Hut aus Filz. Directed by Jules White. The Warrens of … “So driving a car at the age of 12? Some writers have mentioned that Keaton’s father was occasionally taken before child labor authorities. Directors: Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton | Stars: Buster Keaton, Marceline Day, Harold Goodwin, Sidney Bracey. “He learned how to fall, which muscles to relax and which to tense,” says David. “Those are the people that, in 10 or 20 years’ time, you want to be making their own documentaries and running Keaton societies.”. His father tossed little Buster around with such abandon that he was arrested multiple times for alleged child abuse. Born Joseph Frank Keaton to a pair of medicine show performers, Joseph Hallie Keaton and Myra Cutler Keaton, on October 4, 1895, Buster seemed destined for show business. After making Sherlock Junior, for several years he suffered from severe migraines, until a doctor finally diagnosed the problem.Check out my stories and posts on Instagram and TikTok: https://www.instagram.com/mastan.travelhttps://www.tiktok.com/@mastan.travelImage sources:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KeatonPorkpie.jpghttp://www.natebutler.com/silentmovies.htmlClip Sources:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjl2Fj-_Hg0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC1aD7e4ZHsMusic:\"Work is work\" by by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com/)We are using the music under the Creative Commons License.Sources of informationhttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015324/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trvhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock,_Jr. “Try and get a hold of Sherlock Jr if you can, a terrific little movie, and absolutely get The General. “It’s a straightforward steal from Steamboat Bill Jr! “It had to look as if he was getting hurt, and that’s where the straight face came from. Buster Keaton first stepped into the spotlight at age five as part of his parents’ vaudeville show. Featuring interviews with everyone from Quentin Tarantino to Dick Van Dyke and Mel Brooks, it was directed by Oscar nominee Peter Bogdanovich. As David reveals, the damage of some Buster falls took a long time to reveal themselves. According to a popular story, however unconfirmed, Houdini saw a young Keaton fall down a flight of stairs and get up unharmed, which allegedly prompted him to exclaim, “That was a real buster!” Get a weekly round-up of stories from The Sunday Post: Thank you for signing up to our Sunday Post newsletter. Note: Copyright issues are an important matter to us! Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton, Jr. (1895-1966), was the original Stoic, also known as The Great Stone Face.Possibly the toughest man in show business history; during one film shoot, he broke his neck and continued with the day's shooting.. Buster literally grew up on stage as part of the Three Keatons, one of the roughest acts in vaudeville. "On Our Hospitality" he nearly drowned in a river. The act shocked and humored audiences with Buster’s uncanny athletic ability, when, as part of the act, his father Joe Keaton would throw him across an auditorium, only for Buster to … “He always said that by the end of his life he’d broken virtually every bone in his body,” David reveals. “Buster did drive a car at the age of 12. Falk lost his right eye as a child due … The sequence has now become one of the iconic scenes in his career.However, Buster Keaton wasn't always so lucky!For instance, during filming a sequence in the movie Sherlock Junior, a torrent of water fell on him from a water tower and washed him onto the nearby railroad track. © DC Thomson Co Ltd 2021. To find the cause of injury under the law there are several tests, but the one that applies here is the "but for" test. Even the name Buster came from those early days – back in his childhood years, Buster was a word to describe a fall. Photograph: Cinetext/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar. “Buster learned that if he looked like he was enjoying himself, the audience would not get the joke. Then they get hooked and have got to see more of this guy. Each new generation has discovered them for themselves, and everybody who likes him thinks he’s every bit as good as Chaplin and in some cases better than him. Buster Keaton Birth Date October 4, 1895 Death Date February 1, 1966 Place of Birth Piqua, Kansas Place of Death Woodland Hills, California Originally Joseph Frank Keaton IV. But it was all part of their act, and Buster had already proved he was a tough kid. But for the flaw in the electrical system, the fire would not have occurred, and the man would not have suffered the injury. Keaton emerged with no injury, thanks to a single open window, which passed directly over him. His parents were part of a traveling vaudeville act, and at the age of four he joined them, subsequently becoming known as the Three Keatons. They just tied the youngster to a support beam or stuck him in a trunk offstage to keep him out of the way while they performed, until the day he lost the end of his finger in a wash wringer accident . He was the comic genius to rival Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy and the Marx Brothers. Buster Keaton did stunts for 30 years with broken neck. Famous comedian Buster Keaton performed so many dangerous stunts himself that in some cases, he could have got himself killed! Buster took careful notes on where they played, how long for, how much they got paid. © Shutterstock. Votes: 10,548. However, the making of the film was not without its hiccups, to put it lightly. This resulted in fracturing his neck to the point of almost breaking it. I must check him out on YouTube!’ that would be fantastic. Having taken the tumble down stairs that got him his nickname at just 18 months, Keaton was making his first public appearances at the age of three. At six months old, he fell down a flight of stairs and crawled away unharmed. Piece of cake!”. Let's take a look at two of his popular stunts that nearly cost him his life!In a scene from Steamboat Bill Junior, Keaton had to remain stand-still on a particular spot. The General is a Buster Keaton classic from the 1920s that is now considered one of the finest comedies of our era. Something went wrong - please try again later. Wed 8 Apr 2009 05.23 EDT. Not bad. Von den insgesamt 19 Kurzfilmen aus den Keaton-Studios zählt heute Buster und die Polizei (1922) zu den … Sunday Post newsletter on television screens various injuries: a Celebration is a new documentary film which be... Survived well into the 1960s and his films were rediscovered down, but never stopped him because. 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