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There's a great story about Buster Keaton,

who religiously previewed all his comedies, you know?

And took a picture out, I think it was called, "Seven Chances,"

and it was a wonderful reaction to the picture,

and it didn't have a good ending.

It just sort of laid there at the end.

It was a great chase, with women chasing him,

because they were all brides, a wonderful scene.

And it sort of petered out and that was it.

And the audience, and he felt something was wrong.

But, right toward the end of the scene,

he's running away from these women,

and he's running down a hill, and rocks got dislodged,

and rolled after him.

There was a big laugh from the audience and that was it.

And he said we're going to shoot a new ending.

And he went back, and he shot for about a week,

and he built an avalanche.

He started with three rocks, and he built it to bigger

rocks, and finally these huge boulders, you know,

the size of those cameras rolling down after him.

Well, it's one of the great sequences ever done.

Why did Keaton hit the skids?

That's one, seems to be one of the sad mysteries

of Hollywood.

Well, he was essentially a panto...

pantomime artist and when sound came along, they,

the pantomime artist went out of business really.

And also they were killed by, by something

brand new, cartoons.

Chuck Jones, who directed most of the

great Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner cartoons,

and he said he was totally influenced by Buster Keaton.

Joseph Frank Keaton was born October 4th, 1895,

in Piqua, Kansas.

He was the son of vaudevillians Myra and

Joe Keaton who were a married comedy team

touring the country.

That's how they happened to be in Piqua, Kansas,

a small farming community they were passing through

when Myra went into labor.

He was born literally in a trunk.

His parents were part of the Family Medicine Show,

and he was considered part of the company

at the age of 11 months.

He wandered on stage one day when they were doing

their act and bothered them.

And the audience thought it was funny.

By the time he was four years old,

little Joe Frank Keaton had actually become a star

in Vaudeville, the youngest ever.

Buster was dressed exactly the same as

his father, Galway whiskers and the bit.

Joe Keaton would be on the top of the table doing his

various acrobatic maneuvers, and Buster would come up

behind him with a broom, and he would sweep the broom

across, and knock him down.

And so that's how that act began.

Famous as a human projectile his father used to

throw at his mother during their act now known as

the Three Keatons.

The Three Keatons was considered one of the

roughest acts in Vaudeville at the time.

Were it not so funny, people would be appalled or aghast

at how Buster was treated on stage,

but it was all pretty much an illusion.

They had a handle on him, like a suitcase.

They would throw him around the stage.

Had a little handle on his back,

so they could throw him better.

In several states, his father was accused of child

abuse since the act mainly consisted of little Joe

being thrown everywhere imaginable on the stage,

and once famously he even had an annoying heckler

in the audience.

I said, he would throw you into the audience?

He said the old man wasn't a bad guy.

He would always say tighten up your ass

before he threw me.

They were arrested numerous times,

but managed to get around the law because as Buster put it,

the law read that no child under the age of 16 shall do

acrobatics, walk wire, play musical instruments, trapeze,

and it named everything.

But none of them said you couldn't kick him

in the face.

Really it defies logic that Joe Keaton would want to

seriously or intentionally injure his son because Buster

was the star of the act.

The Three Keatons, they were getting $750 a week,

$250 of which were Buster's.

This was at a time when a child get an allowance of a

nickel a week, and here he's tooling around in his own car

at the age of 12.

His father had taught him how to take a fall,

however, as well as other acrobatics.

And in fact out of over 10,000 performances,

little Joe only got hurt slightly twice.

But, boy, did this kid love making people laugh.

Every time he took a fall, they laughed,

which is how he got his famous moniker.

According to Buster's father Joe,

it was the famous magician Harry Houdini,

a personal friend of the Keatons,

after watching the kid fall down a flight of stairs

unhurt at the age of six months who said,

that's some buster your kid took.

Now it may not have been Houdini who said it,

but what the hell?

Buster in those days was known to mean a fall.

Nothing could have been more appropriate.

Eventually, Buster Keaton took the funniest falls

in pictures, a virtual symphony of them

throughout his career.

Any way, back to that later.

The Three Keatons, Myra, Joe, and Buster,

became one of the most famous acts in Vaudeville,

repeatedly touring the country.

And along the way, the act grew.

The Three Keatons became the Four Keatons.

Then, the Five Keatons.

But, in 1917, when Buster was 21 years old,

the Keatons' act broke up.

Our parents had to give up the Vaudeville act

and he set off to support us all.

Yeah, he was determined that Louise and

I would get the schooling that he never had.

Buster goes to New York and gets a contract

to appear in the Shubert Brothers annual variety show,

in this case the Passing Show of 1917,

booked to open at the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway.

But, the Fates had a different idea.

Walking down the Manhattan street,

Buster runs into an old Vaudevillian pal of his who

was accompanied by a tall, large man known all over the

world as Fatty Arbuckle.

As luck would have it, Roscoe Arbuckle a star since 1914

was just beginning to make two-reel comedies for a guy

named Joe Schenck at the Colony Studio

on East 48th Street.

Two reelers run about 20 minutes each.

Arbuckle says to Keaton, why don't you come over and watch

us make a couple of scenes?

And once he saw Fatty Arbuckle shooting,

he was changed.

He knew what the future held for him.

Buster falls in love with what he sees,

breaks his contract with the Shuberts,

and starts working under Roscoe Arbuckle's direction

for the Comique, they called it co-me-key,

film corporation, which was turning out a series of

two-reel comedies.

The very first screen appearance of Buster Keaton

takes place in an Arbuckle short called "The Butcher Boy,"

released in 1917.

In October of the same year, that's 1917,

Keaton and the entire Comique Company move across the

country to make their films from then on in a town called

Long Beach in California.

The following year with World War I raging in Europe,

Keaton is drafted into the army.

He serves in France, mainly entertaining the troops.

In World War I, he lost some hearing

in one of his ears.

He was not a soldier on the front line,

but maybe in training or something he was near

a cannon or a gun that went off.

And that affected him for the rest of his life.

Buster comes back in April of 1919 to continue his

work with Arbuckle, from whom he learns a great deal about

directing films since Arbuckle directs all his

own work and enjoys mentoring his new pal.

Fatty Arbuckle had largely taught Buster Keaton

how to do film.

Buster Keaton had taken Fatty Arbuckle's camera

and taken it apart, and put it back together again,

just to see how it worked.

And Fatty Arbuckle nearly killed him.

The Fates entered the picture again in December of

1919, when Arbuckle is signed to a contract at Paramount to

star in feature length films.

In those days, remember, while features were considered the

main attraction, shorts like Arbuckle's or Chaplin's

were a very popular and commercial addition to them.

People would go out of their way to see these shorts,

sometimes they could be the whole program.

So, Joe Schenck turns Comique over to Keaton,

to direct and star in two-reel comedies to be

released through Metro.

Keaton sets up production at the old Charlie Chaplin

Studios in Hollywood, now named the Keaton Studios.

And so between 1920 and 1923, Buster Keaton directs,

writes, and stars in 19 quite popular two-reel comedies.

He first makes one called the "High Sign,"

a title referring to a ridiculous gesture which

identified members of a gang.

But, Buster isn't entirely satisfied with this short,

and doesn't release it until the following year.

Before he could make another two-reeler, however,

Douglas Fairbanks, at that time the king of Hollywood,

convinces Metro to star Buster in a feature,

his first starring role for "The Saphead,"

based on a Broadway hit.

Buster is good in the film, it helps to cement

his identity as "The Great Stone Face,"

but the picture is pretty badly dated today.

He has nothing to do with the behind-the-camera making

of the film, yet it adds luster to his reputation.

Right afterward, he creates his second two-reeler

titled "One Week," and that instead becomes the first

release of a Buster Keaton Production.

In the plot, Buster and his new wife receive

a prefabricated house as a wedding present.

But, a jealous rival of Buster's changes the numbers

on the boxes, resulting in a disastrous house.

"One Week," boy, you can't beat "One Week."

There's a great quote from Walter Kerr.

He said, seeing "One Week" is like that thing

you never see:

A garden at the moment of blooming.

I was taken by his cinematic artistry.

I said this is like the first time that anyone tried this.

And then what a great gag with the train.

Keaton has said I always want an audience

to out-guess me and then I double cross them.

The short comedy receives excellent reviews

and enthusiastic audiences.

The Buster Keaton Company is on its way.

Three more shorts follow in 1920 including "Convict 13."

Now if there was one thing Buster Keaton loved,

it was mechanical inventions, as is apparent

in this amazing scene from "The Scarecrow."

Keaton was really an inventor, an inventive guy.

He had an engineering mind that he turned

toward the business of making people laugh.

Outside in his backyard,

he had little railroad trains,

Lionel trains going everywhere.

In the corner, he had a picnic table and he would

fix the hot dogs in the kitchen, put them in the,

on the train, toot-toot, and send them out.

That was, that was him.

And the third short of 1920 "Neighbors."

I do like watching that,

I've seen some of the footage of him and his dad.

Buster's head is in the ground.

And his dad is trying to pull him up.

It is fun watching those because you're like oh

that's a guy messing around with his dad.

There's something very sweet about it,

them kicking the shit out of each other.

The following year, that's 1921,

Buster marries for the first time.

He and actress Natalie Talmadge tie the knot

at Joe Schencks' estate on Long Island.

Schenck is married to Natalie's sister,

popular actress Norma Talmadge,

so Buster is now his brother-in-law.

In that same year, Keaton releases a total

of six two-reelers.

"The Haunted House."

"Hard Luck."

The aforementioned "The High Sign."

"The Goat."

"The Playhouse," a comic experiment of Buster's in

which he plays every single role in the dream sequence.

And finally, one of his absolute classic two-reelers,

"The Boat," for which the toughest joke to achieve was

the instant sinking of the boat on its launch,

it just wouldn't go straight down.

Which is the only way Buster thought it would be funny.

Finally, Buster and his crew came up with an elaborate

pulley system to drag the boat under the water.

By now, the Great Stone Face has become a nickname as

familiar to audiences as the pork pie hat he always wears,

the last thing to go underwater.

If I can show you this,

this is a gift from Eleanor Keaton.

And she made me a hat, exactly the one

that Buster would wear.

My head blew up before we shot this,

I had a bad sandwich.

The boat itself is named Damfino,

a name the members of the International Buster Keaton

Society have adopted for themselves, the Damfinos.

In the picture, the joke is paid off when Buster

S.O.S.'s and is asked the name of his boat.

The boat itself is another of Keaton's wild

mechanical inventions.

One that is not exactly perfect.

He was born to be a silent movie comedian,

because his face, his non-expressive face

expressed so much.

Buster had those big eyes though any way.

Great legs too.

He had that blank face that you could sort of

paint your feelings onto.

The Great Stone Face.

They called him that, the Great Stone Face,

but it was far from accurate.

Buster's face had a great variety of expressions.

His eyes alone told many emotions,

he just didn't ever smile.

He's got a mime's face, it's like Jean-Louis Barrault

in Les Enfants du Paradis.

That beautiful white face, Buster had that face.

It just struck me in this way that this man could

do all these things without saying a word and without

moving his face and you knew exactly what the story was.

Acting is in the eyes, not the face.

It just shows you how little you have to do sometimes

to sell something.

Don't try to sell it, just be natural.

Buster Keaton always had that quiet tragedy

which is very, very funny.

It's such a strange thing to watch the Fatty

Arbuckle ones while, where he's still making big facial

expressions, and, and doing all those sort of

tropes of the era.

When you see that start to fade away,

it was just effortless.

It's the stone face performance

It's not forcing you to laugh.

And for me that just made me laugh.

I just did "Spider-Man" and there was a very

clear influence.

You know, "Spider-Man," other than having his eyes

move just a little bit, he's stone face.

Here I have this character who has almost no expression

in his face, but there's so much personality you want to

create, and so much humor that you want to bring out

in the physicalities.

So, I just went back and watched a bunch

of Buster Keaton films.

I use that as a baseline for so many "Spider-Man" moments.

A total of seven popular Keaton two-reelers

are released in 1922, "The Paleface."

"My Wife's Relations."

"The Blacksmith."

"Day Dreams."

"The Electric House."

And perhaps one of his most well-remembered shorts,

"Cops" debuts.

There are a lot of amazing things about his

film making, but more than anything for me the idea that

he would be in these really heightened comic scenarios,

played incredibly seriously.

Such a fun aspect of comedy that heightens not only

the humor, but also the stakes of every scene

that he was playing.

That thing in "Cops" where he grabs that car

and flies up, I mean that's, that's unreal.

Even he couldn't explain it.

I said was it the film speeded up?

He said no.

How he did that was superhuman.

There were no tricks, he just did it.

That would have jerked anyone else's arm off.

One of the things that always bugged me

about comedians when I was a little boy,

because I really liked comedy,

I really liked comedians, was the fact that they

had to be weaker than the other males in the movie.

They had to be infantile, they had to act like

a blithering idiot, or they had to be cowards,

or they had to be scared.

The joke is that Bob Hope is standing up

against Jesse James.

That always bugged me.

Why do they have to be lesser than?

Why can't they be males?

Why can't they be masculine?

And Buster Keaton was that.

And he would put himself against guys who were taller

than him, so he always had a slight like height deficit.

He was a real exciting hero.

That same year in 1922,

he also does a parody of Western star William S. Hart

called "The Frozen North" and the satire is merciless.

Hart always cried in his films,

so of course Buster laid it on thick.

Buster said Bill Hart did not speak to me for two years

after he saw that picture.

Meanwhile, Buster's pal Fatty Arbuckle is tried tragically

on charges of manslaughter.

After three trials, Roscoe is exonerated,

but the scandal nevertheless utterly destroys his career.

To avoid any connection with this Arbuckle tragedy,

Schenck changes the Comique Film Corporation to

Buster Keaton Productions.

His final two shorts are released in 1923,

"The Balloonatic."

And his last, "The Love Nest."

In a way, Buster Keaton is

the essence of movies.

He is one of the inventors of cinema.

"Buster Keaton Remembered" is the book,

I have it on my desk all the time because they were the

fathers of my, my industry, my art, my business.

The way they made movies,

it's still the same way that you make movies basically.

They made the art form.

He was such a great director.

He puts himself in these impossible situations.

It's definitely underplayed and therefore I think

it's more powerful.

For Keaton, cinema was important.

It wasn't the camera nailed to the floor,

or nailed to the moving truck,

it was jokes that worked because of the movie camera.

It was cinema itself that became the joke.

I think a lot of my daring in terms of

breaking the fourth wall came from Keaton,

who when Sherlock Jr. pointed out that it's a movie,

and I'm always pointing out somewhere in my films that

we're making a movie.

Like when I did "Spaceballs."

He did it.

Buster has always been with me and always

will be with me.

Our stunts always play in the wide, there's no fudging.

The guy doing the stunt is doing it for real and he felt

very strongly about that and I feel very strongly

about that.

I've stole as many moves as I could from him.

Buster said you hit the ground with your hand as

you're going down and it absorbs some of the impact,

and it works.

The influence that he had on me was that he could

do all these insane stunts and do these crazy things

with his body, but at the same time he was never like

pushing it in a performance.

Such control of his body, such agility.

He was like a ballet dancer.

Incredible control of his body.

Amazing stunts, really.

I think like nobody ever would dare.

He has no fear or he's crazy.

He's really doing what you see which is true

in almost all of his films.

What you see is what you get and to me the best

special effect in those films is Buster.

In that same year 1923,

Buster finally gets his long-time wish for film

and he starts to make his own feature films.

Already finishing two of them in that same busy 12-month

period, over the next five years, Keaton conceives,

directs, and stars in an additional eight feature

comedies, "The Ten" being the greatest work of his career.

There's no question that the films he made in the

20's are his masterworks.

We will be coming back to these in detail

after a while.

Following this extraordinary high point,

Buster makes what he would call the biggest

mistake of my life.

Joe Schenck convinces Keaton to sign with Joe's brother

Nick Schenck at MGM, the biggest studio in Hollywood,

and perhaps the most regimented.

Both Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd advised him

very strongly not to give up his independence,

but unfortunately Buster trusts Joe Schenck.

They were great friends,

they were married to sisters, but Schenck really

made a deal with MGM.

A perfect storm follows.

Buster is drinking too much, his marriage is falling apart,

and sound comes in and takes over

the picture business.

The silent era is finished.

As Chaplin would say:

Just when we got it right, it was over.

Right before he did the,

that stunt on the facade for "Steamboat Bill Jr." they come

up to him and said look, MGM just bought your rights

and he's going through all that with his wife.

He just got two terrible cases of bad news right

before you do a stunt that could take his life.

And he still did it.

If it was an inch or a half an inch one way

or the other, he could have been killed.

He was feeling so down and so depressed

that he didn't care.

That bit might have been used more than any bit in

the history of the world.

We did that in "Jackass Number Two,"

we did an homage.

Guy who rigged it said look, when you get on that spot,

don't move, this is a 20-foot high steel wall

and then he said, "Action."

So I walk a couple steps and then someone

says cut, cut, cut.

I just walk off my mark.

- Oh shit.

There was silence on the stage except for my

nine-year-old daughter and she's like, daddy, you idiot,

what are you doing?

And that kind of loosened the vibe up.

It was still funny, probably funnier.

For all his own shorts and features except

for "The General," Buster never had a script.

He and his people would come up with a good beginning,

and then figure out a satisfying finish.

As he used to say:

The middle would take care of itself.

I heard him say that.

So many things happened on the spur of the moment.

You see he would get an idea and just do it.

It allows for so much spontaneity,

and if you get gold, that could affect our story,

and instead of going this direction,

we could go that direction.

In "Three Ages" when he takes that leap from one

building to another that he was supposed to jump across

but he didn't make it, and so he leaves it in, right?

He creates a whole wonderful sequence.

At MGM, this was strictly unacceptable.

Scripts were essential, everything spelled out,

hashed over, budgeted, scheduled to the hour.

Buster lost all of his power.

He lost his freedom.

They threw him into the meat grinder that was

their production system.

Comedians like Buster were used to having the time to go out,

shoot things, try them in front of an audience,

re-shoot them, rethink the structure of the film,

preview it again, et cetera, and that's not the way

they were set up at MGM.

Keaton was used to making films that cost two,

three times what mainstream features were costing then.

"Steamboat Bill" for instance, that's a film that cost

nearly $500,000 to make.

The same year a Lon Chaney feature and Chaney

was very popular with audiences at $175,000.

Right with Buster's first movie at MGM

"The Cameraman," the difference is quite noticeable.

Even his pork pie hat has been replaced with a far

more upscale version.

There are some good moments in the movie,

but the overall timing and construction are off.

His last silent film which he neither conceived nor

directed "Spite Marriage" has only one memorable sequence

and the studio wanted to cut it.

Luckily they didn't succeed and Keaton scores one final

slapstick classic as he tries to put his

drunken wife to bed.

It is a routine he would repeat on stages throughout

the rest of his career.

In 1930, Buster stars in his first talking picture,

"Free and Easy."

All aboard with high blood pressure,

all the girls with too much flesh

your day has come at last.

Followed that same year by "Doughboys."

En guarde.

Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up.

Neither of them is any good, but they are popular.

When I first saw "Free and Easy" in 1969,

I wrote that it was "depressingly bad and almost

perfectly calculated to destroy its star.

A dismal mess in which one can literally

see Keaton drowning."

Dog gone it, the man said I was a big comedian,

and I was going to get a big contract,

and everything is great.

Of course Buster had nothing to do with

the direction or scripts of these films,

nor with any of the ones released through MGM such

as "Parlor Bedroom and Bath," which by the way was

filmed partially at his Italian villa estate

in Beverly Hills.

And includes a bit MGM recycled from that first

two-reeler of his "One Week."

Or the three movies he made co-starring Jimmy Durante,

they all date badly.

They're dreadful and you can tell

that he's unhappy.

I mean he seems miserable.

They don't realize like this guys is a genius,

you can't just slap him together with Jimmy Durante

in a, in some dopey movie.

What's that?

That's a kangaroo.

A what?

A kangaroo, a native of Australia.

Oh.

What's the matter?

My sister married one of them.

Buster was a very mild person,

he didn't say much to defend himself ever, he just stewed.

He blamed himself for anything that was wrong.

I would say those sons of bitches treated you badly.

Oh, they weren't so bad.

They treated you bad... nah.

He just lost his heart there.

In 1932, Buster's wife Natalie divorces him and

legally changes the last names of their two sons

from Keaton to Talmadge, which devastates him.

First marriage which ended so badly.

He said I wasn't the best husband in the world either.

Said, what are you going to do when you walk into your

dressing room and there's a naked girl standing there

waiting for you?

I said did that happen?

He said it happened all the time.

The following year in 1933,

Keaton is having more problems with alcohol,

and after sending him to rehab a number of times,

where he met a young nurse named Mae Scriven,

and whom he eventually married, MGM mogul Louis B.

Mayer, fed up with his drinking, fires him.

It was one of the worst mishandlings of a

creative talent in history.

They, they wrecked him for years, MGM.

Abbott and Costello made their worst movies at

MGM, Laurel and Hardy made their worst movies at MGM,

Marx Brothers after Irving Thalberg's death made their

worst movies at MGM.

The studio was just not a conducive place to make

that kind of visual slapstick comedy.

The drinking increases,

and after three years, Mae divorces Buster.

This, plus many financial issues,

is finally too much for Keaton.

He suffers a nervous breakdown and is taken

to an Army hospital in a straight jacket.

Newspaper reports of the day write that Buster

may never act again.

At that time, he had made all of his great movies,

he was in a low point in his life, and it's in the 30's,

he had just made a movie in France which never

made it to the states.

He was coming back on the ship,

some publicity people hooked him up it seems with Jack Pearl,

a great Vaudevillian, you know, fast talking,

Baron Munchausen, you know, he worked in accent,

and Keaton knew that stuff in and out.

And they were sort of set up to do a patter duo.

My aunt Sophie.

In the middle of the ocean,

you got off to see your aunt Sophie.

Yeah, so how did you get off?

I got off the boat, walked down,

and went over to see her.

Because Keaton would kind of go along with the

routine, but Keaton's heart wasn't really in it.

He looked tired, he wasn't really keeping the rhythm

going and Munchausen's whole thing was yeah.

And I tell you something,

there was a mermaid, she was playing the piano.

Playing, she was teaching the fishes their scales.

Why don't you say something?

And there was an anger between them.

You know, I saw one fish tuning the piano.

You know what kind of fish that was?

I haven't the slightest idea, what?

And Munchausen, Jack Pearl just grabs him.

It's a chilling thing, Keaton looks to me like he's saying

what am I doing here?

Why am I acting like a feed to this Vaudeville comic?

After one entire year of total sobriety,

he took what he called his final drink.

He downed it and only rarely thereafter

fell off the wagon.

In his later years, he would drink a single glass of beer

every evening, just one, with no ill effects.

- Help, help!

From 1934 through 1937,

Keaton stars in 16 short comedies for a company called

Educational Pictures.

He has very little to do with their construction or

direction, but certain Keaton moments shine through.

- Shh, be quiet.

By now, he has conquered his problems with

alcoholism, yet one of his co-stars reports that between

shots Buster would go into a corner of the set and cry.

In 1939, Columbia Pictures hires him to star

in 10 two-reel comedies.

Again, he has no control over the pictures.

♪ In a little Spanish town 'twas on a night like this ♪

♪ Stars were peek-a-booing down 'twas on a night like this ♪

They all have flashes of Keaton magic,

though little else.

Diehard Keaton fans are happy that they exist at all.

But they are a far-cry from his 20's work.

- Would you care to dance with me?

Would I?

He would refer to all these pictures as "cheaters."

From 1937 to 1950, Buster works intermittently for

MGM as a gag writer and occasional director

of certain sequences.

He helps Red Skeleton in remaking a couple of

his own silent classics.

- Major, after this, they'll probably make you a colonel.

Oh, well I would rather that they made me a civilian.

Suggests gags for the Marx Brothers and others.

Buster was so modest, he would always take me

over to one side any time he had an idea.

He would say I think this would be a funny thing to do.

And then I would go out and do it,

but he always tried to make other people believe

it was my idea, it was really Buster's.

His salary at MGM has gone from $3,000

a week to a weekly $100.

You're only getting paid this much to work

for them and you used to be one of the biggest

stars of the studio.

And he says, well, if I'm worth more, they'll pay me more.

Just kind of very down to Earth.

In 1940 Keaton marries for the last time

to the lovely and loving Eleanor Norris.

They had met when she was a dancer at MGM.

She was just the warmest, most wonderful woman.

She was so important to his midlife

and later years.

She saved his life, as far as I'm concerned.

She had that sort of forthrightness,

no b.s., tell it like it is kind of personality.

And at the same time she would do absolutely anything

to keep Buster's name out there.

Eleanor often plays the passed out wife in

Keaton's routine from "Spite Marriage" of putting

a drunken woman to bed.

They do this together all over the place,

including Ed Sullivan's popular TV show.

It is a very happy marriage and continues

for the rest of his life.

Lie down, that's the best advice I can give you.

Want, want a spotlight so you'll photograph prettier?

There, that will bring out the sweat on his brow.

I've got to sell her.

In 1947, Buster performs for a season at the

Cirque Midrano in Paris.

He is a big hit there and returns numerous times

over the next few years.

Two years later, in 1949, at the age of 54,

he returns to MGM in a supporting role to Julie Garland

for the musical "In the Good Old Summertime."

He even writes and directs one sequence in the film.

With Judy and co-star Van Johnson.

Oh, I beg your pardon, madam.

Well, I never.

Why don't you watch where you're going?

Here, I'll fix your hat for you.

No, that's not quite the right...

Leave my hat alone.

Here's your umbrella.

I don't really know what happened.

Oh, here's your bag, madam.

Oh.

Oh, I beg your pardon.

Heaven sakes.

Leave me alone.

Oh, I'm terribly sorry.

Here's your hat.

Thank you.

Something is missing.

- Where's my... - Bird.

- My bird. - Here's your bird.

Here we are, madam, I'm so sorry.

- What? - Wrong bird.

Look, here's my card, that's where I work, see?

Now you go buy yourself whatever I've ruined

and I'll be glad to pay for it, all right?

Thank you very much.

- Goodbye. - Goodbye.

Wait a minute.

Hey!

That same year, novelist poet film critic

James Agee publishes in Life magazine his famous article

about the silent period titled Comedy's Greatest Era,

in which Buster is heavily featured as being along with

Chaplin and Lloyd, one of the three greatest comedy stars

of that time, Harry Langdon is the fourth.

This leads to a weekly half-hour television show

in Los Angeles called "The Buster Keaton Show."

Nappy.

Who are you?

I'm Josephine.

Haven't we met someplace before?

But of course, I am your wife.

This in turn leads to other numerous

TV commercials, industrial films,

and television appearances.

We've got a wild applause,

are you a living American blonde?

Did I hear the question,

are you a living American blonde?

That's right.

No!

One down and nine to go, Mr. Kovac.

Buster Keaton was a God to me.

I heard about a commercial to be done in the style

of a silent movie, and I knew I had to be in it.

I was a keystone cop and there were about six of us

chasing Buster.

Most of the actors are about 35 or 40 and he's like maybe

late 60's and he outran us.

He gave 100 percent to everything

he did on camera.

Whether it was a cameo in a feature film.

Pardon me, young woman, I'm sorry, but...

Oh, what a lovely baby.

Or a TV commercial, I've seen a lot of those.

And they're all worth watching,

because he always gives you something.

Simon Pure Beer presents Buster Keaton.

He did a whole series for Northwest Orient.

- Give wings to your heart, fly Northwest to Florida,

enjoy champagne, filet mignon,

or lobster tail in flight.

♪ Northwest Orient Airlines. ♪

All part of Northwest Imperial Service.

Only Northwest Orient Airlines flies to sunny

Florida, adventurous Alaska, romantic Hawaii,

Coast to coast, and to the mysterious Orient.

♪ Northwest Orient Airlines. ♪

He did a series for Alka-Seltzer.

Pardon me, Sir, have you made a New Year's resolution?

Yes, always keep Alka-Seltzer handy.

He loved apparently the fact that he could do

a day's work and walk away with $5,000 or $10,000.

Everybody has fun at the circus.

Except me, I'm tired.

Attention please, Bravo the lion tamer has

had a slight accident.

Balloon man 13 has just volunteered

to take his place.

I did?

Oh, the poor guy.

He's got an aching head, an upset stomach.

And a lion.

What you need is some Alka-Seltzer.

He was very active in television.

I saw him on the "Ed Sullivan Show,"

I saw him on "Candid Camera."

"Candid Camera."

"Candid Camera."

"Candid Camera," which I was on myself I might add.

And they paid me $10.

Allen Funt, Allen, God bless you,

I hope you're having fun up there ripping the angels off,

son of a bitch.

Now watch the pepper, the top will come off.

His wrist watch went in his soup.

She's trying to hold it in.

It was fantastic and it was effortless.

His timing just had that razor edge.

He's such a master at this, watch him very carefully.

You know, it's magic.

Oh, it's unreal.

Watch carefully, carefully.

This is Your Life, you see a man who's used to

being quite stone faced, who's seemingly overcome by

emotion, in a way that's pretty touching to see.

Then later on when things got rough,

you move in with your mom, into the first little house

that you had bought for her.

Into your home comes a girl who has made friends with

your family, a girl who is to remove any possible remainder

of disappointment in your life.

Here she is, Eleanor Norris, who became your devoted wife

16 years ago, Mrs. Keaton.

Here is the pretty gal.

Come on, sit here, by Buster.

I didn't even get my tie on.

I know.

Fix it up there, mommy.

What have these years married to Buster meant, Eleanor?

We've been very happy,

of course we've had some lean times too.

But, Buster has been so happy he's wanted to go back to work,

and I've been very proud of the way he's come

back into prominence.

You bet and America is happy to have him back.

You developed an act so that Eleanor could appear with you,

didn't you, Buster?

Did you rehearse this?

Completing this reunion of those nearest to you,

here are your two sons.

From Reno, Nevada, your son Bob; from Los Angeles,

Jim, here's Bob.

And here's Jim.

Bob, you're a builder in Reno,

what do you say about this dad of yours?

Oh, he's always been a great guy to us, Ralph.

Wonderful.

I thought of him in addition to his great skills

as a comedian, as a terrific actor.

If he had turned his attentions as he did

sometimes later on to straight dramatic work,

he would have done very well at it.

You can keep dismissing them,

striping them of all power, disgracing them,

and replacing them until the end of time and it still

won't get my overcoat back.

And when I protest, they'll still throw me into prison,

because it's not they.

They're just part of a machine,

a machine that was to give us so much happiness.

This machine that reduces a broken heart to a number

in a catalogue that says a hungry child is nothing

more than 26583-Y.

- Stop him.

A machine that has forgot what kindness, warmth,

and pity means.

When you say you care, you lie.

You can't possibly care.

None of us can care, we've forgotten how.

In 1950, Buster is seen briefly in Billy

Wilder's savage Hollywood drama "Sunset Boulevard"

playing one of the uncharitably named waxworks.

The others around the table would be actor

friends, dim figures you may still remember

from the silent days.

I used to think of them as her waxworks.

One diamond.

- One heart.

- Spade.

Pairs.

Three no trump.

- Pass.

Pass.

In 1953, he appears with Charlie Chaplin

in a few scenes from Chaplin's "Limelight."

For silent movie buffs it is a golden moment.

I never thought we would come to this.

The one and only time these two giants of early

Hollywood appeared together.

That's a most extraordinary scene.

I was in awe of them.

I thought this is a man who's descended

from another sphere.

I had tons of memorabilia of Keaton.

And Eleanor, beautiful Eleanor,

she's walking around and saying yeah I was with him

when he shot that, and yeah I was with him

during "Limelight."

And so I was able to ask, I said how did Charlie

treat Buster?

She said he treated Buster just like a, like a king.

The last scene of the picture,

Buster had taken it on himself to see that

Charlie got the best shot he could possibly get

of his death scene.

Charlie designed the shot, he's in the center of the

camera seemingly unconscious.

He couldn't see the shot and there was no one there

to direct Charlie.

Buster he happened to be beside me.

I wasn't aware of him until I heard whispering.

And as we're pulling back, I hear Buster saying

don't move, Charlie, you're in the center of the shot,

that's good.

They were two geniuses collaborating

with each other.

Out of the blue in 1957,

Paramount buys the rights to Buster's life and they

produce a bio pic starring Donald O'Connor titled

"The Buster Keaton Story," which has almost nothing at all

to do with his real life story.

But the $50,000 he had paid for these rights enables him

to buy his ranch in Woodland Hills, California,

where he lived for the rest of his life.

I'm Buster Keaton, vaudeville star,

where do you get a pass?

- In there, studio manager's office.

Thanks.

- Wait a minute, where's your pass?

I'm going inside to get it.

- You can't go in unless you got one already.

How can I...

- Easy, if the studio wants you, they'll send for you.

- It's Oscar night in Hollywood.

In 1960, Buster is awarded a special Oscar from

the Academy celebrating his over 40 years in pictures.

It is only proper that the people who made these

pictures should also be rewarded in some fashion.

In 1964, he appears in a short film written by the

Avant guarde Irish writer Samuel Beckett titled

simply "Film," all shot in lower Manhattan.

Buster claims not to have a clue as to what the little

picture is all about, and some of his fans

detest the short film.

To this day it remains a controversial choice

for him to have made.

And the following year 1965, he stars in a short film

made for the Canadian National Railways

titled "The Railrodder."

It's like his 20th in silent short film.

He had a chance with that after all the years

of the studio system.

It was just him and a young director

who was enthusiastic.

And they had the time and space,

they had six or eight weeks, and they were

creating gags on the fly.

And he's that same guy that he was in 1924.

It's great that he had a chance to make one last film

as that character.

- Standby.

Okay, roll.

There's also a documentary of its making

that was shot simultaneously containing some very

interesting and revealing moments of Keaton

working out a gag.

This is the shot of the bridge that we get.

We get the valley like that and this

damn great big bridge.

Combined the two gags, the same thing.

I don't know, I put my brogue down, everything else,

now I wonder where I am?

Out with the map, and once I get it spread, I'm helpless.

When out here, shot going across that trestle,

it's all the funnier.

I'm chasing them but fighting a paper at the same time.

- The director has decided against Buster's idea.

Instead of being wrapped up in a map,

Keaton crosses the bridge doing his laundry.

- What happened, didn't he tell you what

he was going to do?

No, I didn't know, he shifted gags on me.

There's still two other shots to complete

the sequence, Buster.

There's the long shot of the bridge with them going over.

That's the, that's the whole center of the gag is that

long shot of the bridge.

The bridge...

The bridge is not your gag, the bridge is only suspense.

A thrill, there's no gag to the bridge at all.

Doesn't mean a goddamn thing.

It's only a dangerous place to be when there might be a

collision, that's the only thing that's, that's funny.

Well, I know the main reason they didn't want

you going over the trestle with all wrapped up in

newspapers and things.

Said it was too dangerous.

I said who suggested the gags?

I did, said I generally know what I'm doing.

That is not dangerous, that's child's play,

for the love of Mike.

♪ So I'm going to take my money ♪

♪ And I'll pick it up tonight ♪

But his most noticeable acting work here

at the end of his career was in a couple

of movies in the inordinately popular

teenage beach party series of the 60's.

Including "Beach Blanket Bingo" and

"How To Stuff A Wild Bikini."

- Bwana?

Sorry, I was on a house call.

The young kids seemed to like old Buster,

but had not a clue of his storied past.

Tell daughter to come here.

Daughter is real pro.

They call her the witch's witch.

Frankie here wants to get back to beach where Dee Dee is,

like right now.

Daughter, you good kid.

He was working right up until the last,

I mean he was dying when he made "The Scribe."

The director of that film told me that they had a

double on set and Keaton was appalled that

he would be expected to use a double anywhere.

There were a couple of long shots where the double is

actually seen because he was terminally ill at that point.

He died in '66, February 1st.

I was working on a television show in New York and my son

called and said, are you done?

I said, no, we're not done yet.

He said, oh, call me when you're done.

And I called him when I was done, I said, yeah, I'm done,

what's up?

He said, we lost our Buster.

He died standing up, you know?

He was a great bridge player, one of the greatest bridge

players in the world.

For a long time, he supported himself by playing bridge

with a lot of the big guys at MGM.

Louis B. Mayer and those guys who had dropped him,

but they played bridge with him.

In his house, he had a little room which was

set up for a card game.

This last day, he was restless,

and he was playing badly.

And he was standing up playing.

And he sat down, and he was dead.

I did the eulogy for Stan Laurel,

one day in February.

Exactly a year later in February,

in that same chapel, I did the eulogy for Buster.

And everybody was there except for Buster.

In the Fall of 1965, just a few months before his

death, Buster is honored at the Venice Film Festival for

his entire career with special mention of course

for those 10 priceless features he made in the 20's.

And the first of these was titled "Three Ages,"

in which Buster parodied D.W. Griffith's multi-epoch

drama "Intolerance," sketching out the relationship

between Keaton, his beloved, and the villain,

always Wallace Beery, over three wildly different

time periods.

The stone age.

Ancient Rome.

And the then-current 1923.

However, the first feature of his to tell one continuous

story was the brilliantly sardonic and uproariously

funny "Our Hospitality," a mordant comic masterpiece

inspired by the infamous Hatfield and McCoy feud,

with Buster the main target throughout.

As soon as the family of the girl he's fallen for learns

of his identity being the inheritor of the feud,

Buster becomes a walking target.

Of course this was in the days dominated by

single-shot handguns.

Eventually, he figures it out,

but also learns that the father told his sons that

they couldn't kill him while he was actually

a guest in their home.

Again, Keaton relishes making fun of a dark,

murderous situation.

In fact, the beginning of the movie is played completely

straight, and is very dramatically shot,

worthy of D.W. Griffith.

No doubt Keaton decided to make this opening as dark as

he could in order to set up the very real danger for

Keaton's character, which therefore helps to elevate

the humor once Buster arrives on the scene.

Keaton also insisted on historical accuracy,

starting with the ridiculous but true replica of an early

train which actually combined elements from two of the

very first trains, one British, one American.

The finale features perhaps Keaton's most spectacular

stunt, as he saves his girl from the waterfall.

The girl is his then wife Natalie Talmadge.

Two classic Keatons are released in 1924,

"Sherlock, Jr." in which as a movie projectionist,

he imagines himself in a picture he's projecting.

With some amazing and innovative trick photography.

The dream sequence, it's an amazing feat today,

and to think that he worked it out as beautifully

as he did back in 1923 is just astonishing.

And one sequence that proves what an accomplished

pool player Buster was.

The 13 ball has been established to have a bomb

in it, so Keaton manages superbly to avoid

hitting that ball.

Yeah, it was so sweet of him,

he left me his pool cue.

He was a shark.

And it ties together.

Got his name on it.

Probably worth a lot of money by now.

I would never let go of it.

It was also during this film that Buster

suffered a serious injury.

While nobody would argue that he had a fair share of damage

throughout his career...

On "Sherlock, Jr.," however, Buster broke his neck and

didn't know it for years.

Water burst out and slammed Buster onto the tracks

causing the break, but you certainly couldn't tell

from the way he was moving, jaunty as ever,

all done in one shot.

He had headaches for a while, but didn't

feel anything wrong.

Years later a doctor said to him,

when did you break your neck?

Buster said, never.

The doctor said, oh yes you did.

Keaton hired Roscoe Arbuckle to co-direct under another

name because of the scandal.

Buster suggested Will B. Good,

but Roscoe chose William Goodrich which was

his father's middle name.

However, Buster found to his sorrow that Roscoe just was

no longer the same guy.

That same year, 1924, saw the release of another

Keaton classic, among his most popular features,

"The Navigator," which came about simply because one

of his associates heard there was a certain

large ship for sale.

What could Buster do with a ship?

He only created a comic masterpiece in which both

Buster and the girl he loves, who rejected his marriage

proposal, end up alone through numerous coincidences

on a deserted ocean liner.

One of the most memorable is the sequence that follows

they're both figuring out there is someone

else on the ship.

Keaton brilliantly establishes his character's

hopelessly spoiled background in a superbly

economical opening.

But there are a lot of gags you can do on a ship.

The following year 1925, Buster made a picture with

subject matter he wasn't particularly interested in,

but Joe Schenck had bought the stage play for Keaton to

film, and Buster felt obliged to give it his best shot.

The picture "Seven Chances" isn't one of his finest,

but it does contain one of Buster's most extraordinary

creations, the one with thousands of women chasing him,

and then an avalanche as we showed at the start.

Here's a little more of that amazing sequence.

Also released in 1925 was Buster's eccentric

love story between Keaton and a full-grown cow

named Brown Eyes.

"Go West" is by no means his funniest film,

but it's strangely touching, and the love between

the two is palpable.

Eventually, the real Brown Eyes just followed Buster

wherever he went.

In 1926 among Keaton's most hilarious and currently least

known pictures was released.

"Battling Butler" is not so much a mistaken identity

farce as a comedy about a guy saying he's a famous

prize fighter, they have the same name,

to impress the girl he's smitten with.

Of course Buster's character thinks he'll never have

to really fight to win the girl, but he does,

and the first time he gets in the ring to be trained is one

of the funniest sequences.

Near the beginning of "Battling Butler,"

spoiled rich kid Keaton tries to go fishing.

Or maybe shoot a duck.

And the single-shot sequence is a wonderfully

timed series of gags perfectly constructed.

And there was the first cut.

Good evening, this is Orson Welles, and it's my,

my great pleasure to introduce this evening

in this series of great silent films,

one of the great films of all time, one of my favorites,

"The General" by and with Buster Keaton.

Released later in 1926 came

what many people today believe is

Keaton's greatest work.

"The General" is a daring, beautifully photographed

Civil War comedy.

Was recently voted in a poll of film critics and

historians at number 18 among all movies ever made.

It was also the highest polling silent picture.

Very few films in all history ever equaled it.

Now the subject is certainly nothing,

it's 100 times more stunning visually than

"Gone with the Wind."

At the time of its release, however,

"The General" was not considered all that terrific,

and indeed was harshly criticized by some

who said it wasn't funny seeing men get killed.

The Great Stone Face had made a dark comedy before

that phrase really existed.

The film was not a huge success either.

Nevertheless, Buster himself always referred to "The General"

as his best film.

Not only is it just a constantly hysterical film,

I am a big proponent of action cinema and it's one

of the great action movies.

He chose to play a Southern soldier because he

felt that audiences would not have as much sympathy

with a Northern soldier, since they won the war.

He does a more lethal version of the cannon joke

from "The Navigator."

He also filmed what turned out to be the single

most expensive shot in silent picture history.

Buster's last two independent features are strictly

speaking of laughs perhaps his funniest of all.

In 1927, "College" was released.

It was not a huge success, but it's hard to understand why,

because it is filled with hilarious sequences.

Harold Lloyd had had a huge success with "The Freshman"

in 1925, a college story that featured some very funny

material about football.

Keaton took on every other possible sport.

Early in the movie, Buster tries to get a job as

a soda jerk and watches the pro at his position.

He claims he can do as well.

The resulting sequence is one of Keaton's tour de force

comedy routines.

In a later sequence, his classmates are giving him a

hard time in a brilliantly constructed number.

Buster's last independent feature was released in 1928,

the extraordinary final year of the silent era,

and "Steamboat Bill, Jr." remains among his most

uproarious works.

Climaxed by an amazing hurricane sequence.

Basically, it's the story of a boy trying to impress his

long-lost father who takes an instant dislike to

almost everything about his unimpressive son,

especially his hat.

First get a new hat.

Buster even sneaks an inside joke into the midst of this,

by quickly hiding the pork pie hat already long

associated with him.

Of course, Buster is in love with the daughter of

the rich new steamboat owner who's actively trying to

put Buster's old steamboat father out of business.

The daughter's father has banned Buster from ever

coming onto his boat.

Buster's father insists that Buster stand up for himself

and get right onto his girlfriend's boat.

This leads to one of the funniest sequences

in this final sunny, beautifully constructed

silent masterpiece, his tenth in five years.

And so ended the great Keaton decade.

His independence, his marriage, silent movies,

everything he had achieved was forgotten.

And pretty soon, he fell prey to the country Gore Vidal

referred to as the United States of amnesia.

But back in 1965, the year before Keaton passed away,

the Venice Film Festival gave a tribute to the great Buster

and he received the longest standing ovation

in the history of this Italian festival.

For more than 10 minutes, the applause rolled on,

Buster was moved to tears.

He couldn't believe that anyone would care about

these movies that he had made so long ago.

Eleanor was telling me he didn't understand it,

it was 50 years after he made these films and they were

being appreciated like they were just opening

for the first time and he didn't get it.

It's amazing how timeless he is and how that

type of physical comedy will never be unfunny.

It was funny then, it's funny now,

it will be funny in 100 years.

And how many filmmakers can you say that about?

They remembered him, he said,

and yes he will indeed never be forgotten.

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