Buster Keaton grew up on the stage with an abusive father, but demonstrated an uncanny sense of comic timing and a deadpan expression that kept audiences in stitches.
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton, who gained fame in the early 20th century as the serious faced comedic silent film actor, was born to a pair of traveling vaudevillians, Joseph Hallie Keaton and Myra Cutler Keaton, on October 4, 1895. Buster Keaton grew up on the road doing a vaudeville act with his parents.
The Three Keatons, Buster and his parents, traveled extensively doing their act. Houdini the escape artist was said to have been responsible for his nick name- catching him as he fell down a flight of stairs. Houdini, the child's godfather, said, "What a buster your kid took!"
Joe Keaton and the press developed a legend around his tiny son and his ascent to the stage. When Buster was three, Joseph said, a series of accidents happened all on one day. The young Buster got his finger caught in a clothes wringer and lost part of it. He threw a brick at a tree, it bounced back and gashed him above the eye. And he was sucked out the window by a cyclone and set down safely a few streets away.
Gerry Society workers were often after the family- these were social workers who watched out for children in the labor force and abusive situations. When Buster was just five years old, he and his father performed an act where Joseph hit the boy with a broom. Little Buster was not supposed to cry or to smile, but simply get up, decked in a bald wig, false beard, baggy pants and slap shoes, and say seriously, "I'm so sorry I fell down." If he reacted emotionally in any way, his father would hit him harder. By the time the Gerry workers were called, the family would be long gone to another city. Buster Keaton reported that the actress Sarah Bernhardt asked his father, "How can you do this to this poor boy?" Everyone asked that, he added. That was how he came about his deadpan expression, which would become his trademark. In spite of these beginnings, Buster demonstrated a keen sense of timing and comedy from a very young age. Until Buster joined his parents on the stage, the act had not been a particular success.
He worked with his parents for seventeen years. Often Joe Keaton started the show by telling the audience how to raise a child. Meanwhile, Buster played a hellion behind him. Buster Keaton learned to play several instruments, write gags, juggle, perform magic tricks and other stage jobs from his parents and by other great performers of the day. This was his complete education, for he attended only one half day of formal schooling. His behavior was too disruptive for the classroom and he wasn't welcome to return after lunch. His mother taught him a bit from her third grade education, and told the papers that he had regular tutors, although this is doubtful.
By the time Keaton was 21 Joe had become a violent drunk. The force with which he threw his son around the stage became serious enough to be noted in the papers. Keaton and his mother deserted Joe in California. Keaton took that as a cue to break off and pursue his own career. Keaton partnered with Fatty Arbuckle until 1920. After that he became the featured artist in his films.
In 1921 Keaton married Natalie Talmadge. She ran off the previous year and eloped, then wrote to Keaton to send for her, and he did. They had been friends for a while by then. Their marriage was miserable, however. "Nate" insisted that they build a palatial estate, ignoring Buster's desire for a comfortable cottage. Keaton built her a 10,000 square foot mansion in Beverly Hills. It's one of the last mansions of the silent movie stars still standing. Nate stopped sleeping with him in 1923, and let him know by sending her sister as a messenger. Once she had him detained at the Mexican border for kidnapping when he tried to take his two sons on vacation. However, he had inherited his fathers predisposition for drinking and life with him could not have been easy. Finally he was caught on his yacht with a mistress by his wife and two of her friends. The couple divorced in 1932. He married twice more. The second was short and not too sweet. The third was to a woman named Eleanor in 1940. They were happy together until Keaton's death.
He was excited when talking pictures came out and unlike many silent film actors he passed the vocal test with no trouble. Best known for his comedic acting in silent films, Buster Keaton was also an accomplished film maker. Some of the techniques he developed are still studied by film students today.
Keaton performed at least one serious acting role. It was for a television program called "Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Presents". The piece was called The Awakening, and it was part of an ongoing series of various television short movies. In it Keaton played a bureaucrat who cared more about the numbers on paper than the people they affected until he was personally affected by those numbers. Keaton thought it was far easier than doing comedy, even though it was a far different kind of work than he was known for, although his deadpan expression still enhanced the work. He'd done a great deal of comedy on TV by then.
In 1965 the mansion Keaton built for Natalie Talmadge was purchased and the new owner uncovered a cache of Keaton's old films in a vault. They were shown at a film festival in 1965, and he received a standing ovation. Keaton died in 1966 of lung cancer.
