Buster Keaton was an actor from the cradle, since, when he was just nine months old, his parents made him appear on stage and in a few years he became the great attraction of the show. Later, he rose to prominence as one of the biggest silent film stars, but at the peak of his success he signed a contract that he should never have signed and his entire career fell apart.
Joseph Frank Keaton, such his real name, was born on October 4, 1895, in Piqua, Kansas, in the southern United States. He was the son of two vaudeville actors, who, as was said, very soon brought him out on stage with them.
His parents took advantage of Joseph’s innate ability to fall, bend, and hit himself to attract more audiences and increase their earnings. By age five, Buster had already become the star of the family show, which was quite violent as it consisted of being thrown across the stage and even into the orchestra pit.
As published in the newspaper The country, from Spain, Buster Keaton himself recounted in his memoirs how he had started his career. “It was in 1899, before I was four years old, when I officially joined my parents’ number,” he recalls. This is how she assumed the role of La Baie Humana. “One of the things I discovered was that whenever I smiled or allowed viewers to suspect how much fun I was having, it seemed like they weren’t laughing as much as usual,” he said.
He learned to fall by watching his parents and soon his father used him as a human bullet, “cloth, doormat, potato sack or soccer ball”, which caused as much hilarity among the spectators over the years as some prohibition in different Status of their actions; the legislators thought that this child suffered with the show. After receiving several lawsuits, his parents were prohibited from continuing with what he considered to be child exploitation. Keaton was 11 years old.
The Spanish publication points out that it is often said that the nickname “Buster” was given to him by Houdini, the great magician and escapist, who was a friend of the Keatons and that one day, after seeing him fall when he was six months old, he picked it up and said: “Wow! go a buster [porrazo]! “No one will ever know if this is nothing more than a legend, but the truth is that the actor would go down in history with that nickname.
At the age of 20, Buster went alone to try his luck in New York, where he began a career in silent films. He paired with Roscoe Arbukle, a funny fat man with whom he shot a dozen shorts, but in 1921, the pair disbanded because Roscoe was accused of murdering an actress, and ended up committing suicide. That fateful event, considered the first major movie scandal in California, paved the way for Keaton’s success.
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The figure of Buster, who made people laugh just by entering the scene, became more and more relevant. He achieved the art of never smiling in front of the camera, which is why he was nicknamed “Wooden Face”, and was known because, except for one occasion, he never allowed himself to be dubbed in stunts.
Regarding his face, Keaton always said: “Over the years they have called my face disgusted face, dead face, frozen face, the big stone face and, believe it or not, ‘tragic mask’ […]. People will say what they like, but my face has been a valuable trademark to me. “
The “jazz era” was its maximum period of splendor, with films such as The modern Sherlock Holmes, Seven occasions and above all, The machinist of the general, considered one of the best classics in the history of cinema.
His success made him one of the most famous comedians in the world. Much of the criticism considered him the best silent film comedian (not a minor fact, if one takes into account that they were the times of the great Charles Chaplin). At the same time, his fortune was increasing: he was paid $ 3,500 per week (double what any worker earned in his time).
That son of vaudeville artists, who had made his debut in the show almost from the cradle, was now the king of physical humor, he was considered one of the best comedians in silent movies and his wallet kept growing. He was in his prime. Touching the Sky with their faces of nothing. But … there is always a “brush” that ruins everything.
In 1928, Keaton signed an exclusive contract with Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), which took away all control over his productions. Overnight, Buster was forced to make films that he considered to be of poor quality and never adapted to the studio system that was beginning to flourish in the film industry.
Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, who filmed The great buster, a film about Keaton’s life, tells The country that, by signing for MGM, pushed by other stars, the actor sold his soul to the devil. “They didn’t let him direct or write his films,” he says. To top it all, this was compounded by the irruption of sound in the cinema, to which it was not fully adapted either.
This situation dragged Keaton into alcoholism, he fell into depression and within a few years his entire world collapsed: he spent much of the 1930s in hiding, working as a gag writer for several Marx Brothers films. Thus, at the age of 33, the career of one of the best silent film actors was cut short (many years later he would have revenge as a director and would be honored with an honorary Oscar, but that is another story).
Is there anyone comparable to Buster Keaton today? Bogdanovich was asked. “No, for various reasons,” he replies. “Color does not help the comedy, but it distracts the viewer from what is important: the gag. Nor does anyone combine so much wisdom in directing, in exhaustive control of his physique – currently only John C. Reilly is comparable in mastery of the body- and inventiveness in gags, as he demonstrated, for example, in The Modern Sherlock Holmes, when he breaks the fourth wall. Another Keaton? Impossible. “
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