59 Fun Facts About Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton's stoic, unsmiling screen expression earned him what nickname?

The Great Stone Face began as stagecraft: as a child in his family's act he found, in his own words, that 'the more serious I turned, the bigger laugh I got', so he stopped smiling.

What were Buster Keaton's real first and middle names?

Joseph Frank carried a name from each side: his father was Joseph, or Joe, and his mother's father was Frank Cutler, whose travelling show Joe had joined.

Keaton was born in 1895 in Piqua, a small town in which US state?

Kansas was an accident of the tour: his vaudeville parents were only passing through Piqua when his mother went into labour.

By Keaton's own story, which famous performer nicknamed him 'Buster' after he tumbled down stairs unhurt?

Harry Houdini worked travelling medicine shows with Keaton's father, and the nickname is said to be his word for the fall; a rival account gives the line to another actor.

As a toddler, Keaton joined his family's knockabout vaudeville act, billed as what?

The Three Keatons looked so violent that his father, to see off child-welfare investigators, had him inspected for bruises by New York's mayor; Joe threw him by a suitcase handle sewn to his jacket.

Which comedian starred in 'The Butcher Boy', the 1917 short that gave Keaton his film debut?

Roscoe Arbuckle. To join 'Fatty' in the movies for $40 a week, Keaton walked away from a $250-a-week part in a Broadway revue; by his account, his agent called it a wise move.

During World War I, Keaton left the movies to serve with the US Army in which country?

France. Serving there with the 40th Infantry Division, he caught an ear infection that left him so deaf he was nearly shot by a sentry whose challenge he could not hear.

Which short about newlyweds assembling a sabotaged kit house was Keaton's first independent release?

One Week. Keaton had already finished another short, 'The High Sign', but thought it too weak to launch with and held it back until the following year.

In the opening sequence of the 1921 short 'The Playhouse', Keaton famously does what?

Keaton plays every role, including the audience, through multiple exposures. He was kidding producer Thomas Ince, who gave himself every screen credit he could on his own films.

In the 1922 short 'Cops', a whole police force chases Keaton after he accidentally does what?

Tossing a bomb into a parade. He has blundered his horse-drawn wagon into the middle of a police parade when the bomb lands on him, and he throws it away without a thought.

Which Keaton feature turns a Hatfield-and-McCoy-style family feud into comedy?

Our Hospitality. The title is the joke: Southern manners forbid shooting a guest, so Keaton's Willie McKay is safe only while he stays inside his enemies' house.

Keaton broke his neck in a water-tower stunt for which silent feature, and only found out years later?

Sherlock Jr. The torrent from the tower's spout slammed his neck across a steel rail; he carried on filming, and a doctor spotted the healed fracture years afterward.

Keaton initially hired his disgraced friend and mentor to co-direct 'Sherlock Jr.' under which pseudonym?

William Goodrich. By Keaton's account he first proposed the punning 'Will B. Good', which was judged too facetious; the comeback went badly, and Keaton finished the film himself.

How does Keaton's rich idler Rollo end up on the drifting liner in 'The Navigator'?

He boarded the wrong ship. Keaton built the film around a real liner headed for scrap, the Buford, the 'Soviet Ark' that had deported hundreds of radicals to Russia in 1919.

Which Keaton feature ends with a mob of would-be brides chasing him through the streets?

Seven Chances. The avalanche of boulders that follows the brides was an afterthought, added only after a preview screening, and it became one of Keaton's most celebrated chases.

Keaton's 1926 masterpiece 'The General' was inspired by which real Civil War episode?

The Great Locomotive Chase. The real raiders were Union men stealing a Confederate train; doubting audiences would accept Southern villains, Keaton told it from the side of the railwayman chasing them.

Though set in Georgia, 'The General' was mostly shot around Cottage Grove in which western state?

Oregon. The wreck from the film's burning-bridge collapse was simply left lying in the Row River there until the scrap drives of World War II.

In 'The General', why is Keaton's hero rejected when he tries to enlist?

His job is too valuable: the recruiters decide he is worth more to the South at his work than in the ranks. Nobody tells him so, and his sweetheart shuns him as a coward until he is in uniform.

In 'Go West' (1925), Keaton's lonely drifter Friendless finds his one true companion in what?

A cow. Her name is Brown Eyes, and by Keaton's own account he trained her himself until she followed him like a pet; he called her his leading lady.

Which director called 'The General' the greatest comedy, and perhaps film, ever made?

Orson Welles. On release the film had been a financial disappointment; only later generations came to rank it as Keaton's crowning achievement.

In 1989 'The General' was one of the first 25 films added to what?

National Film Registry. Congress created it in 1988 amid the row over colorizing black-and-white classics, and the law made altered versions of listed films carry a notice saying so.

How does Keaton survive when a house front collapses on him in 'Steamboat Bill, Jr.'?

An open window falls around him. Keaton used a real two-ton wall with no trickery, and standing a couple of inches off his mark would have meant being crushed.

What natural disaster strikes the river town in the climax of 'Steamboat Bill, Jr.'?

A cyclone. The climax was built as a flood until real floods on the Mississippi made that look tasteless; producer Joseph Schenck ordered it out, and Keaton rebuilt his sets for wind.

'Steamboat Bill, Jr.' was Keaton's last picture for which distributor before he moved to MGM?

It was not a box-office success, which helped push him into the studio deal he later called his worst mistake.

Which 1928 film was Keaton's first under contract to MGM?

The Cameraman. On location in New York, Keaton talked production chief Irving Thalberg into letting him throw away the studio's script, and the film was a hit.

Which two rival comedians warned Keaton against giving up his independence for MGM?

Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. Both guarded their own studios, and by Keaton's account Chaplin told him 'They'll ruin you helping you'; he signed anyway, out of loyalty to his producer.

Which Hollywood studio chief signed the 1933 letter that fired Keaton?

Louis B. Mayer. In Keaton's telling, the last straw was skipping a Saturday show for studio visitors to be a college team's mascot; the dismissal came in a letter over the boss's signature.

At MGM in the early 1930s Keaton was teamed in three talkies with which loud, rambunctious comic?

Jimmy Durante. The three films made money, but Keaton thought the pairing a mismatch: 'we just did not belong in the same movies', he wrote, adding that he had heard rumours the studio meant to build Durante up at his expense.

What was the name of Keaton's first wife, a sister of film stars Norma and Constance?

Natalie Talmadge. After she divorced Keaton in 1932, she had their two sons' surname changed, so the boys grew up as Talmadges rather than Keatons.

What is the Beverly Hills mansion Keaton had built for $300,000 in 1926 commonly called?

The Italian Villa. Keaton had first built a smaller house as a surprise for his wife, who said it had no room for the staff, so he sold it to studio executive Eddie Mannix and built this one.

Keaton's late-career comeback began in 1947 with live shows at the Cirque Medrano in which city?

Paris. The circus run grew into a full-scale comeback and a fresh wave of interest in his silent films; he went back to the Medrano for years, with his wife Eleanor in the act.

What was Keaton's signature piece of headwear?

A pork pie hat. With almost every other comic in a derby, Keaton wanted a hat of his own, so he cut down good Stetsons and stiffened the brims with sugar water.

Keaton appeared as one of the 'waxworks' bridge players in which 1950 Billy Wilder film?

Sunset Boulevard. It was a brief cameo as himself, cast as a forgotten relic of the silents at the very moment his real comeback was gathering pace.

Keaton and Chaplin shared the screen as two inept stage musicians in which 1952 film?

Limelight. Chaplin cast him believing he was down on his luck, unaware that Keaton was working steadily again, mostly in television.

Which Oscar did the Academy present to Keaton in April 1960?

An Honorary Award, 'for his unique talents which brought immortal comedies to the screen'. The silent clown shared the honour that night with Lee de Forest, cited for bringing sound to the movies.

Keaton's 1961 episode 'Once Upon a Time', mixing silent and sound, aired on which series?

The Twilight Zone. Keaton plays an 1890 janitor whose employer's time helmet drops him into the 1960s, and his own era is shot as a silent comedy, complete with title cards.

Which Nobel-winning playwright wrote 'Film' (1965), his only screenplay, with Keaton in the central role?

Samuel Beckett. He flew to New York for the shoot and found his 68-year-old star tireless in the summer heat, though Keaton admitted he never understood what the film was about.

In the 1965 Canadian short 'The Railrodder', Keaton crosses the country on what?

A motorised rail handcar. He sits down on it in Nova Scotia for a nap, knocks it into gear by accident and putt-putts all the way to the Pacific coast without a word of dialogue.

Keaton supplied comedy scenes in the mid-1960s for which teen-movie series?

The Beach Party films. Nearing 70, after lean years of bit parts and cheap shorts, he had more film, television and commercial work than he could handle.

Keaton's final screen appearance, 'The Scribe' (1966), was made for what purpose?

Construction-site safety. Ontario's construction safety association commissioned it in Toronto, with Keaton as a would-be reporter who lectures the workers on the rules and causes most of the mishaps himself.

Keaton died on February 1, 1966, aged 70, of what illness?

Lung cancer. Only months earlier the Venice Film Festival had given him a long standing ovation; fighting back tears, he reportedly said he hoped the invitation would not be his last.

Which action star restaged Keaton's collapsing-wall stunt in one of his own films in 1987?

Jackie Chan. He walks away from the falling wall in 'Project A Part II', nearly sixty years after 'Steamboat Bill, Jr.', and Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen restaged the gag again in 'Deadpan'.

Which critic called Keaton 'arguably, the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies'?

Roger Ebert. What set Keaton apart for him was nerve: other silent clowns were as funny or more moving, he wrote, 'but no one had more courage than Buster'.

Kevin Brownlow's acclaimed 1987 documentary series about the comedian is subtitled what?

Peter Bogdanovich made his own tribute, 'The Great Buster: A Celebration', in 2018.

In the 1940s Keaton became a comedy mentor to which rising actress, teaching her to handle props?

Lucille Ball. Years before 'I Love Lucy', Keaton taught her how to work with props and take a fall without getting hurt; her biographer traces her comic timing to his coaching.

From 1939 Keaton starred in two-reel comedies for which studio, which paid its short-subject comedians $500 a film?

The shorts were reissued to theatres in the late 1940s and again in the early 1960s.

Keaton's boyhood summers were spent at an actors' colony in which Lake Michigan port, where his fan society still meets?

Muskegon. His father built the family cottage in the Bluffton colony in 1908 and helped found the colony itself; Keaton wrote that the best summers of his life were spent there.

Keaton's first starring feature was which 1920 film, based on the play 'The New Henrietta'?

The Saphead. Douglas Fairbanks had played the part on Broadway and starred in an earlier film drawn from the play; asked who should take it now, he recommended a two-reel comic called Buster Keaton.

Three Ages (1923), the first feature Keaton directed, parodies which D. W. Griffith epic?

Intolerance. Griffith's epic cut between stories from several eras; Keaton cuts between caveman days, the Roman era and modern times to show that courtship never changes.

Which actor played Keaton in the 1957 biopic The Buster Keaton Story?

Donald O'Connor. Paramount paid Keaton $50,000 for his life story, then filmed a heavily fictionalised version of it; Keaton wrote that O'Connor kept confessing he could not do his teacup roll.

The Damfinos, Keaton's fan society, take their name from the 'Damfino' in which of his 1921 shorts?

The Boat. When the sinking Damfino radios for help and the coastguard asks who is calling, the answer reads as 'damned if I know', and the operator writes the call off as a prank.

Which comedy team's last three MGM films did Keaton supply gags for as a writer?

The Marx Brothers. It was no happy match: by Keaton's account, when he acted out a camel gag for them, Groucho sneered 'Do you think that's funny?' while Harpo and Chico just stared.

Which British actor found cans of Keaton's lost films after buying his old house?

James Mason. He came across the forgotten cans years after Keaton had left the house, and he made sure the prints inside were preserved rather than left to decay.

Which sport was Keaton's lifelong passion, one he organised teams for at his own studio?

Baseball. By his own account he looked for a sandlot game in every town the family act played, and each September he tried to finish his autumn picture in time to get to the World Series.

In 1960 Keaton toured as mute King Sextimus the Silent in which Broadway musical?

The role suited him: the king cannot speak for most of the show.

Who wrote 'Comedy's Greatest Era', the 1949 Life magazine essay on Keaton and his fellow silent clowns?

James Agee. His tribute is widely credited with rescuing the silent comedies from neglect, and in the years that followed critics and audiences rediscovered Keaton's films.

Which Woody Allen film about a character stepping out of a movie was influenced by Sherlock Jr.?

Mel Brooks also borrowed the changing-room scene from The Cameraman for Silent Movie.

Keaton's 1960 autobiography is titled 'My Wonderful World of' what?

Slapstick. The memoir calls one chapter 'The Worst Mistake of My Life', which is about signing with MGM, and another simply 'The Chapter I Hate to Write'.

Keaton shot scenes for the TV pilot Medicine Man with which comedian the day before that comedian died?

Ernie Kovacs. He played Doc, a travelling medicine-show salesman; after his fatal car crash, CBS shelved the pilot, and it never aired.