![]() ![]() Keaton tries on a number of hats, including his own trademark pork pie (which he immediately rejects) before settling on an overly-large Panama. After two deft flicks of a barber's razor remove Keaton's pencil-thin moustache, the father marches his son into a hatters to replace Keaton's beret with something he deems more suitable for a steamboat captain's son. One of my favorite early bits centers on the father's effort to give his son a makeover. Keaton conjures up an endlessly inventive series of gags-involving hats, collisions, chewing tobacco, a baby stroller, a jailbreak, an umbrella on a windy day, and many more-mostly turning on his misfit persona, his odd-couple relationship with his dad and his cheerful determination to succeed despite a preternatural inability to understand what it takes to do so. In the course of the seventy-minute story, Keaton contends with shipwrecks, hurricanes and an unreasoning prejudice against French berets to win over his father and get the girl. The son soon becomes a pawn in his father's battle with the town banker for control of the local riverboat trade. is a classic fish-out-of-water story, the reunion of a ukelele-playing, college-educated fop (Keaton) with his strapping, working class father ( Katie winner Ernest Torrence). Somehow, though, I suspect his reputation will survive. ![]() I'm afraid this reticence cost Keaton Katie nominations for writing and directing this year. He was one of the most useless men I ever had on the scenario department." When asked why Harbaugh then received sole credit for writing Steamboat Bill, Jr., Keaton said, "Well, we had to put somebody's name up that wrote 'em. (Of Harbaugh, Keaton later said, "He didn't write nothing. One difference between Keaton and Chaplin, however, was Keaton's very un-modern reluctance to take credit where credit was due, often as with Steamboat Bill, Jr., slapping names like Carl Harbaugh on movies that he had, in fact, written and directed himself. Like Chaplin, Keaton in the Silent Era was virtually a one-man act, writing, producing, directing, editing and starring in all his movies. Which is saying something considering the number of Katie Awards I see in the future for each of those acts. and The Cameraman, a body of work that for pure laughs-no song, no dance, no sentimentality-surpasses even Charles Chaplin, the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges. Soon after, Keaton formed his own production company, and in 1923 made his first feature-length film, Three Ages, beginning a run of classic comedies that included Our Hospitality, Sherlock Jr., The Navigator, The General, Steamboat Bill, Jr. The rotund, expressive Arbuckle and the slender, deadpan Keaton proved to be a highly-successful team, making more than a dozen films together before Keaton struck out on his own, directing himself in the classic short One Week, which was just last year included in the National Film Registry. Keaton made the leap from stage to screen in 1917 after meeting Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle who invited Keaton to shoot a scene with him in an upcoming short, The Butcher Boy. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat." I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. "The secret," he once said, "is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. He did stunts that rivaled those of Douglas Fairbanks, and when he was done, he doubled for his co-stars and did their stunts, too. Whether he was born with it, or developed it doing "knockabout" routines on stage with his father, if Keaton wasn't the most talented pratfall artist in movie history, I'd like to see the guy who survived long enough to be a better one. ![]() I had this pick ready to go months ago when I started this blog and watching Keaton's movies again has only deepened my regard for this wonderful talent.īorn Joseph Frank Keaton VI into a family of traveling vaudeville performers, legend has it he was dubbed "Buster" when escape artist Harry Houdini saw the infant Keaton take a fall down a flight of stairs and bounce up unharmed. rivals The General as the best movie of his career. If I found the choice between Lillian Gish and Maria Falconetti for the best actress of 1928-29 nearly impossible to make, the choice for best actor is a no-brainer: Buster Keaton may well have been the best actor of the Silent Era and Steamboat Bill. ![]()
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