Buster Keaton
BUSTER KEATON:I did that picture [The Butcher Boy in 1917], and I was fascinated by everything there was about motion pictures. The first thing I did, I wanted to get in the cutting room, see how they put the scenes together, in the projecting room, and tear a camera to pieces, and everything else.
TONY THOMAS: It was love at first sight with pictures?
BUSTER KEATON: Yes.
Buster Keaton’s Grand Slam Opera (1936) directly references a scene from the wildly successful Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film Top Hat (1935). In an attempt to let Ginger’s character sleep in the room below, Fred performs a soft shoe by laying sand beneath his taps, becoming her ‘sandman’. In Grand Slam Opera, Buster does the same, though was a far better comedian than he was a dancer.
The Cameraman (1928)
Once again, Keaton’s supposedly “emotionless exterior” is belied. Nothing could convey total dejection anymore effectivey than that descend into the sand.
Home movie footage of Buster Keaton in Paris.
The correct (and practical) way to make out, presented by C. Greenwood, DDS and B. Keaton, DTF
Dr. Avedon said I could live to be a hundred years old. I intend to do it. For who would not wish to live a hundred years in a world where there are so many people who remember with gratitude and affection a little man with a frozen face who made them laugh a bit long years ago when they and I were both young? (My Wonderful World Of Slapstick)
Buster Keaton tries his hand at track and field in College (1927)
Buster Keaton, c. 1923
