Original subtitles

Downloaded from YTS.MX

- [Buster Keaton] They weigh about five pounds each.

These shoes are 11 and a half.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

I wear a seven and a half,

so I got a lot of room in here,

- I think we should see the tracks.

- Right.

- I think we should... maybe slightly wider.

- How about standing him in

where you think he should be, or somebody?

- Yeah.

- [narrator] He was born in 1895,

in the town of Piqua, Kansas.

Shortly afterwards, the cyclone came along

and Piqua, Kansas blew away.

However, Buster Keaton had already decided

that his future lay elsewhere.

(big band music)

- Turn 'em over any time you're ready.

- I think just slightly,

- Just off the side there.

- Yeah.

- [narrator] He spent his first 35 years

becoming one of the most famous comics in the world.

The last 35 years have been a bit rocky,

but Buster is still doing business.

- It's somehow better if don't walk over to the tractor,

You stay on this side and just.,.

...after you've looked at the sign

and we see a close up of the sign,

then you react to the distance, you see?

And then you look back, you look that way,

then you see the car there.

Then you kind of walk up towards the speeder

and you sit on it and just see you go off, down there.

- Standby.

- Okay, roll.

- [narrator] Here is Keaton on Canada's east coast

about to star in his 87th movie,

a 25-minute color short called The Railrodder.

In it, he will travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific

in a runaway railway speeder.

The director is Gerald Potterton,

whose films have been twice nominated for Academy Awards,

For Potterton, this is a rare opportunity

to work with a master.

A second film crew made this record of them at work.

- [director] Hey!

- Hey, come back here!

- [director] Come back here!

- Come back here!

- As I go over the sideline, he should raise?

- He should rise up, yeah, right,

He wouldn't even bother to chase you,

- Well, there's no use,

- No point, no.

I don't want to ask him to act,

- No, that's not it.

- Could take his head off and just..,

throw it down.

- Oh no, no.

- [director] He wouldn't do that though, would he?

- Not only that,

you're asking him to act when he does that, see?

That's when you're in trouble.

- Yeah.

(birds squawking)

- I always told Louis B. Mayor that too,

Every time they photographed

one of these weekly things or something like that,

Be just things like, "don't act,"

- Louis B. Mayer?

- But my God, he could act in an office.

- [director] Oh yeah?

- He'd put on the damnedest performances you ever saw,

- What sort of...

- Hysterical, cry, moan...

- Banging a desktop?

- Heartbroken.

A beaten down old man.

- Terrible,

- Oh.

- Terrible,

- Especially for the women.

(old piano music)

- [narrator] Around 1915,

everybody started going to the movies,

and the great days of slapstick comedy were on.

There was Larry Semon

and Ben Turpin.

There was Harry Langdon

and lovely Mabel Normand.

The greatest of them all was Charlie Chaplin,

And next to Chaplin

was the man in the horn-rimmed glasses, Harold Lloyd,

There was Stan Laurel

and Oliver Hardy

and Mack Sennett's Keystone Cops.

One of the cops was Fatty Arbuckle,

and before long, Arbuckle was working on his own.

In 1917, Arbuckle talks a young vaudeville comic

into trying his hand at the movies.

The young comic is Buster Keaton.

This is Keaton's first picture,

In it, he was hit by a bag of flour, bitten by a dog

and smeared with molasses,

It seemed easy after vaudeville.

Buster was in the movies.

In vaudeville, Keaton had learned

that the laughs came when he played it deadpan,

so he brought the great stone face to the movies.

On top of his deadpan, he laid the world's flattest hat,

He was free of the vaudeville stage,

He had all of Southern California to play with.

(big band music)

He had all the props

and all the space he could use.

In the midst of chaos, he placed his still, silent face

and proceeded to transfix a generation,

They surround him with kindred spirits,

give him his own studio,

and let him run free.

Soon, his pictures are grossing 10 times their cost

and Keaton is making $200,000 a year,

He has a stable of gag men,

and a press agent to churn out publicity stills like this,

He doesn't have the business sense

of is friendly rival, Charlie Chaplin,

but that doesn't seem to matter

when the whole world is laughing,

and you can spend $14,000 moving some trees

from the front to the back of your house.

(upbeat piano music)

At parties, Douglas Fairbanks swings from a trestle

above his swimming pool.

He plays baseball with Tom Mix,

trades insults with Sam Goldwyn over bridge,

and executes elaborate practical jokes on Adolph Zukor,

There are three cars, six servants, two children.

He is married

to one of the rich and famous Talmadge sisters,

It is 1927 and Keaton is riding high.

By 1933, his wife and children,

his house, his money and his job

are gone.

Buster Keaton.,.

Is an acute alcoholic.

(vaudevillian music)

Today he can again make films in pantomime,

but when the talkies first arrived,

you were expected to talk.

And when Buster talked,

it seemed to destroy his intensely silent style,

Any chance he had was wrecked by bad scripts

and mass production methods.

By then, there was trouble with women

and a bottle of whiskey a day.

Somehow, Keaton hung on in the movies and picked himself up.

He churned out cheap shorts for Columbia Pictures

and worked as a gag consultant

for the big new comics at MGM.

- [director] Hold it a second, Buster,

We're just gonna boost you up a bit.

(laughter)

- [narrator] Through the thirties, forties, and fifties,

he took work where he could get it,

in European circuses,

bad Mexican movies,

Canadian burlesque houses,

Then, the air conditioning in a storage vault broke down,

and the negatives to some of his greatest films

were destroyed.

But the great talent was still working,

and he's again traveling first class.

On this film, he has a private railway car,

a chef, a steward, and a press agent.

His drinking now consists of an occasional beer.

His children and grandchildren are again part of his family,

and he and his third wife Eleanor

have been happily snapping away at each other for 25 years.

- [Eleanor] Why is that first string so tinny?

It should be raised a whole octave or something?

(guitar strumming)

Awful.

- It sounds like the string is...

- Well, in the first place, the whole thing is...

tuned too low.

- Well, you just have fun,

- [Eleanor] He's been insisting

for the last three or four years

that he is at least partially retired

and intends to retire completely

until the phone rings.

But then he'll turn right around

and tell somebody he's retiring,

It wouldn't work out,

because if the phone didn't ring for a month,

he would feel terribly neglected and abused

because nobody wanted him anymore,

nobody loved him anymore,

nobody wanted him to work anymore.

But deep down, I know darn well that he enjoys working

or he wouldn't say yes.

- [narrator] The movie crew follows Buster across Canada.

It's taken 10 days to get from Halifax to Montreal.

The crowds have all seen him on television,

live as a guest star preserved in the movie classics.

Three generations and a multitude of nationalities

have now all laughed in the right places,

There is no longer doubt of his immortality,

- Oh, how you doing?

- [man] Hey, Buster!

There you go,

- He's a Beatle.

- One of the local Beatles,

(laughter)

- [woman] That is beautiful.

- That's what you're gonna need for Banff and Jasper

when you get out there.

- Oh.

- [director] They've got snow out there,

- You heard that already?

- Yeah.

- [man] Mr. Keaton, may I have your autograph?

- [woman] Monsieur Keaton?

(woman laughing)

Oh, merci beaucoup.

Au revoir,

(train bell ringing)

(train bell ringing)

- Three trucks or more like that,

You're coming along this way,

and an engine just with a caboose.

- Yeah.

- With a big locomotive.

Cameras behind you, traveling with ya.

So that you got the thrill of that

being on the same track with ya, coming right at ya,

- Right.

- And just about the time he reaches this switch

is when you see him and all you do is this.

- Right, right,

- He goes on to that track and you go to this one, see?

- Right.

It's great.

Yeah, that's great.

- And it's assured.

- Yeah, that's a sure-fire.

- The suspense is you don't pay any attention to us.

(men laughing)

That's all there is to it.

Wave 'em off.

Get out of the way.

(horn honking)

And I don't want you to worry about it,

I'll miss him,

- Well, I'll worry about it if you worry about it,

but if you don't worry about it...

You think you'll miss him alright?

Eh? You're going to miss him okay?

- Oh, I'll miss him,

(director laughs)

- [director] Otherwise, it will be a very short movie.

Moses.

Perfect.

Beautiful.

He loved to watch the train go by like that.

- [narrator] At the age of four,

he was in his family's roughhouse vaudeville act,

billed as The Human Mop.

His father once picked him up

and threw him at a heckler in the audience,

The Governor of New York

once required him to strip naked

and prove that he had no bruises.

He spent one day of his life in school.

He also survived three train wrecks and five hotel fires,

- My best take was the rehearsal.

- I know.

Look, can we do it once more?

- How can we?

- [man] Want to get the train out first,

Gotta get the train out and then we'll do it.

- Just the slowing up, eh, on the switch.

- Well, yeah, the timing was off,

and Buster had to slow up a bit.

- I took my time starting out to give him a head start,

I saw his puff of smoke go up,

and I gave him what I thought was plenty of time,

And I was still at the God-blasted switch before he was.

- Well, he's also gauging his speed for you too.

- Well, he shouldn't

because I can pick up faster than he can.

- Yeah, that's the thing. That's what I thought.

Well, let's.,.

(train horn)

I'll see what... thinks.

- We back up about another 50 feet this time further too,

- [woman] Keaton didn't sleep very well last night.

- No, he just said the night before last

he slept all right,

but last night for some reason he didn't,

She just thinks he's excited a bit,

- [woman] Yeah,

- But he says he feels okay now.

And he's the only one that doesn't seem to care at all.

- I think you're worrying too much.

- No.

- [woman] He's been doing this for years, Gerry.

- After that, you get over it,

- You know he broke his neck?

You know these towers, these walkie towers?

Well, it opened up on him and knocked him down on the rail,

and he didn't know for three months

that he'd broken his neck.

- Oh, my.

- You know, he's a bit stiff in the morning.

- Yeah.

- And he's broken every.,.

He said he's broken every bone in his body,

one way or the other.

- [narrator] Nobody ever thought to ask him

what he wanted to be when he grew up,

If they had, he expects,

he might have been a civil engineer.

Instead, he became the world's greatest inventor

of the mechanical gag.

(vaudevillian music)

His films were based on a fatalistic struggle

with the mechanical forces of the world,

His human beings were generally depersonalized,

but in his presence, inanimate objects came to life.

Deck chairs, steam boats, locomotives,

and water spouts,

(vaudevillian music continues)

There were no doubles and no special effects.

It was a real Buster Keaton on a real train,

and the cameraman had orders to keep shooting

until Buster yelled cut or was killed,

(explosion)

Of Keaton, the great critic James Agee once wrote,

"He brought pure physical comedy to its greatest heights,

"and underneath it all, there was a freezing whisper,

"not of pathos, but of melancholia."

- I think Laurel and Hardy, I mean,

you say they're sort of grotesque.

Also, very, very subtle.

- They did a two-reeler,

and the entire plot was not understanding a traffic officer.

That was the plot.

They picked out 7th and Broadway, Los Angeles,

and then put a cop like Ed Kennedy out there,

in those days, in the middle of the street

where the cop says to turn this way,

turns around this way and Stan Laurel in the first place,

and he says, "He wants to see us."

So they both got out of the car and came down to him, see?

Says, "What do you want?"

He says, "What, what, what, what, what!"

(man laughing)

"Who's car is that?"

He says, "It's our car,"

He says, "Well, get in it!"

All right, so they go back into the car

and he... gets back and says,

"Oh, so sorry, swipe, back up a little bit,"

"All right, you go through, All right, come on, come on."

They come back.

(woman laughing)

Well, now traffic keeps piling up orders, see.

So every time the cop did that,

the guy in the car says "yes."

That's all there was to the plot.

This is a two reel picture.

That's all they ever needed was something like that,

- Are you all ready for your ducks?

All right.

Ducks?

(woman humming)

- [narrator] Buster wanted a wild duck dinner

written into his contract.

The assistant cameraman came through for him,

- [woman] Oh sir, you shouldn't have.

- I thought he did.

He got him in the head.

There's no buckshot in the body at all,

He got him in the head.

- That duck's worth five bucks a pound,

- Middle of the season,

- [Woman] All that pretty blue,

- [director] Well, he won't get to Florida this year.

(laughter)

- And he always liked Florida,

Well, I gotta go wash now.

- [narrator] Keaton always claimed

he got his best ideas in the bathroom.

There is no place for the formal story conference

in the grand Keaton tradition.

- The hero of the day now.

- [narrator] Gags are improvised en route,

and the duck has given somebody the idea for one.

- [woman] Even if you had another tunnel sequence before...

- There's only one thing that sells the gag,

The duck hunter, once lining up on a duck,

gonna shoot, come hell or high water.

So... but that camera just missing the tunnel by three feet,

he's just missing it,

And as I can come up, he pans maybe a little bit with me.

But as I come into his shot,

I bring my gun up to follow a flight

and when I get here, I shoot.

And my gun is only about

five feet from the tunnel when I shoot,

- [director] Right.

- So, I shot it right into it.

- The whole gag is in panning, panning, panning,

tunnel, bang.

He goes in it, like that,

- All you can see probably is the top of my hat

and a big gun barrel about that far.

Slowly get that gun in position

and get it just once,

Now to this shot.

Bang.

- [director] Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

- Then we got it,

(vaudevillian music)

(rocks exploding)

(people screaming)

- That was good.

- We gotta be there,

We can't see anybody,

(laughter)

- Bueno, mucho bueno.

But you've gotta run up to here, see?

No further,

- Boys, come on down towards me,

- [narrator] Keaton has the ability

to use anything that comes to hand,

In this case, there is a railway tunnel

and a somewhat baffled work gang.

The bewilderment is caused largely by the fact

that the workmen speak nothing but Italian.

- You come to this spot.

- [narrator] Keaton specializes in sorting out confusion.

- You come down here, go about here.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,

put one more right in here,

and you on this side.

Yes, you,

You see about where you are?

- No, I don't think you should pose him like that.

- I don't mean to pose him.

I'm just giving him a general spot to run to.

- But they were all running

and standing like soldiers.

- Well, you're never going to do it

any other way with them,

If they come running out there,

they'll bunch up on you if you just told them to run out.

But if they hit approximately those spots.

That one man is completely hidden,

You want to try it once?

I'll be the scooter on foot,

Come to a stop.

I clear the way for them. Coming through.

- Senor?

- These boys here don't go quite so far.

Stop back in here some place,

- Senor Keaton?

- You can all come out just running like this

and just watch it go by.

Then pick up rocks and go like that.

- What happened?

What'd you say they did?

- They should come out running like this, fast.

- Oh yes, as fast as you can run.

- [director] There's no smiling.

- Men, like men.

- Okay, start my.,.

Start my scooter.

- We're gonna run it, okay?

(speaking Italian)

- You say "mad." What's mad in Italian?

- Mad.

- Angry.

(speaking Italian)

- Okay.

- I can't handle it.

- [narrator] Making movies on location is no bed of roses.

The clouds blot out the sun.

Trains come through the tunnel,

The actors go the wrong way.

The waiting is endless.

- Well, let's try it once this way anyway,

and maybe it will have moved up by then anyway.

- Well, I personally screwed up anyway, pal,

- Okay, stand by.

- Okay.

- Get back, Start rolling.

(woman yelling)

- [narrator] They have been working for three hours,

trying to make 10 seconds of funny film,

- [announcer] Don't forget, tonight, a special show,

When Comedy Was King,

with Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy

and money other roaring twenties..,

stars.

Two shows at 7:00 and 9:00 PM.

So come on in to see the stars

of the famous roaring twenties.

- It says "welcome to the town of Rivers,"

"Mayor and Council."

Oh, that's nice. Very nice,

- Aren't you an honorary mayor at home?

- Yeah, mayor of Woodland Hills.

That's in the San Fernando Valley,

right back of Hollywood in Beverly Hills.

I've been the mayor there for over five years.

I'm into my sixth year,

- Gonna have to tell him that when you see him, eh?

- Yeah.

Well now, here's what we got.

I think we ought to do

is to invite the mayor and his missus

and the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and his missus,

- Yes,

- That would be four people.

We've been feeding 10 in here.

Well, if four of us stay here,

with that four, eight,

send six of our people over to the local restaurant,

And notify them too,

that they're gonna be swamped with business,

- Right.

(woman laughing)

- The local restaurant.

- Six added people walking in on 'em like that,

they're liable to catch 'em short-handed,

("Scotland the Brave")

Last place in the world

that you expect to find a band as good as this.

- [soldier] Quick march!

(bagpipes and drums)

(piano music)

(women singing)

(woman laughing)

- [narrator] Keaton has always been suspicious

of the genteel, the sophisticated, the intellectual.

Learned critics can write of his profound humor.

He takes pride in the fact

that he can still score a direct hit

with a custard pie at 27 feet.

(women singing)

- Now, I've been asked to perform a little duty tonight,

which is a great pleasure, and it won't take too long.

And so on behalf of the Golden Boys of Manitoba,

I would like to make a little presentation

to our guest of honor here this evening.

Mr. Keaton, I want to make you a Manitoba Voyageur.

And whereas Buster Keaton has been a distinguished visitor

and a traveler through the Keystone province of Manitoba,

the gateway to the west,

and whereby in days gone by

this route has been followed by other men of distinction,

enterprise and repute,

voyagers, traders, trappers, missionaries, pioneers,

explorers, adventurers, and men of state.

Therefore, the said Buster Keaton

is hereby designated the title of Manitoba Voyageur,

dated at Rivers, Manitoba, Canada, September the 26th, 1964.

(audience clapping)

So we in the town of Rivers thought that we too

would like to present him with some little token

that he would remember us with fond recollections

of the few days he spent here.

And with it, Buster, is a key to our fair community.

(applause)

(laughter)

However, we give it to you from bottom of our hearts

and we wish you bon voyage, a good trip,

and there's an old Scottish song.

It has one line in it, Buster, that says,

"Will ye no come back again."

Thanks, Buster.

(applause)

- [Eleanor] He was known as the little iron man

around the studio,

Nothing stopped him, or there wasn't anything he didn't try.

He slowed down and come around to the line of thinking

that he can do other smaller type things

or less dangerous things that can be almost as funny,

Well, he may not consider them as funny

as falling off the whole top of a building or something,

like he might've done earlier,

but they're funny enough to get by, let's put it that way.

He has to burn himself.

So now they're gonna have to give a pitcher

extra warm up pitches,

which is allowed if somebody gets hurt,

- Watch this first pitch, high and inside,

- [Eleanor] That'll be a little loose up there.

- Better be good and loose, my friend.

- [narrator] There was little that was normal

in Keaton's childhood,

but whenever the family act hit a new town,

he'd go looking for someone to play ball with.

Later, in Hollywood,

they'd interrupt a picture for a ball game

when they got stuck on an idea,

- Did you see the third base coach?

He has fallen down.

He got so hysterical, he fell down trying to get that guy.

- [Keaton] He was helping him slide.

- [Eleanor] Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho,

He didn't get it,

- The umpire says he caught it.

- [Eleanor] Weee, we're gonna have a fight!

- [narrator] He has a lifetime pass

to any major league ballpark,

but his enthusiasm has not always been shared,

Once he took Marcus Lo out to watch Babe Ruth.

There were 70,000 fans in Yankee Stadium.

Lo was deeply depressed.

He owned several hundred theaters

and baseball was killing his matinees.

- Oh my God!

Oh!

They touched third base and called the runner out.

They scored.

Get the hell outta the ballpark.

The umpire's thrown you out once,

Call the police and drag you out.

- [Eleanor] Bye, Bob,

- Bye bye.

- [Eleanor] Go get a shower, kid.

- Adios.

Out! Out!

Now the umpire's about to slug him.

- [Eleanor] His personal dexterity

in jumping around there like a mountain goat

doesn't bother me,

More what worries me than anything else

is him catching cold,

running around in rain and things

like he's done a couple of times,

because with this chronic bronchitis that he has,

he can go into pneumonia in about three days

without half trying

if you don't nip it in the bud.

See, I'm traveling with antibiotics,

pills and everything else,

so if he catches cold, I start him on them immediately.

- Okay, Buster, slow it.

- [Eleanor] He's had pneumonia once already,

The first morning when I talked to the doctor, he says,

"If he lives five days, I'll let you know what I think."

On the sixth day, that was it,

He was ready to go home, looking like an octopus

with all the tubes and the attachments here and there,

(trumpet music)

(camera clicks)

(laughter)

He's very shy when he's in public

around a lot of people that he doesn't know.

Strangers.

He feels terribly trapped

if he gets around people that mumble

because he doesn't hear too well,

I mean, I've known him to go through

complete whole interviews

and when they leave, he says,

"You know, I haven't heard half of what they said."

I don't know why,

but I've never been able to get him to say, look,

speak up and tell the man or the woman or whatever it is

that you can't hear them.

This is no great detriment to your male virility

or anything else.

But he seems to be ashamed of it,

and, of course, he hasn't heard properly since 1918.

You think he'd be used to it by now.

This is a condition he got in the First World War.

- We stopped doing impossible gags

because we knew an audience wanted to believe our story.

- [narrator] There are people hired

to keep a sharp eye on Keaton.

When he begins to look trapped, they go to the rescue,

and the conference is over,

- Thank you very much. That was great.

I'm sorry it was so big and fat,

- And crowded.

- [narrator] For Buster,

the press conference is one of the burdens of fame,

- One of the guys wanted Buster out on the window sill

like some kind of an acrobatic stunt,

- No, no, don't do it.

- [narrator] But there are advantages,

He doesn't have to tip a head waiter to get a good table,

and he has that other badge of stardom,

the unlisted telephone number.

- Lie down. That's the best advice I can give you.

(laughter)

Want a spotlight so you'll photograph prettier?

There.

That'll bring out the sweat on his brow.

- I gotta sell her.

(train horn honking)

- No.

I had a high heart.

- No, but on the board, you had a.., oh yeah,

- I had a high heart.

- He pulled out that car by a rope.

No, the other guy's pulling it out or something,

- He was playing baseball and the guy's throwing pies at him

and he was hitting.

(children laugh)

- He hit his toe,

- [narrator] He has always appealed to children.

At home in California,

the neighborhood kids often come around

to ask if Buster can come out to play.

- You have no choice,

The man threw an optional bid at you.

So in other words,

he intended to bid three clubs in the first place.

You have no choice.

- [Eleanor] None,

- [Man] I had avoided clubs.

- Three clubs is all you need,

- Then what's the matter with two no trump?

- Three clubs is all you need to bid.

- Okay, two more clubs.

- Yeah, well, that's a famous shut out too.

And that lets me go into my three clubs,

- If you want to,

but you better stop and analyze the betting.

- [narrator] Keaton has played bridge with the Marx brothers

at 25 cents a point,

And at these stakes,

thousands can be won or lost at a sitting.

- He's got something besides a heart in his hand.

- As they say.

- We asked the man if we come back,

if we could have his autograph.

And he said yes. If we come back later.

And this is later,

- [man] Is it?

- Yeah.

- [Man] I'd go right over there right this minute

and ask him for it if I were you,

- Okay.

(children giggle)

- Let's go.

- We'll do everything to keep him out of it,

but he's gonna try it.

- [Eleanor] I'll lead the three-no then,

Have you settled?

- Yes. Pass.

I'll do it again,

Pass,

One heart.

- Come on in,

Well, now, is it Halloween?

- Got any special page?

- Under the K please,

- Under the K. That's right, Absolutely.

- You don't need anything on the tracks at all.

- No.

- Just getting that wide little noise.

- Uh huh,

(train horn blowing)

You can't see up through the ties, eh?

- No.

- It's not that distance.

- No, you just see the hedges.

Beautiful trestle bridge,

- [narrator] Each new gag must conform to Keaton's law.

The situations can be wildly outlandish,

but it must be possible that the events on the screen

could happen in real life.

- Now, get out the map.

Once I get it pretty well open and that wind catches it,

it's gonna wrap around me.

So I cross that trestle wrapped up in a paper,

standing up in the car, fighting the paper.

- I'll tell you, the locales were fine,

- That'd be the funniest way to do it.

- I tell you what we have discovered.

- Well, what do you think about that?

- [woman] We've got another idea,

- There's another thing come along,

You see these little houses over here?

- Yeah.

- Well, in those houses live little speeders,

about six of them,

- [Woman] Little colored ones.

- [Keaton] Oh, I see.

- Imagine this, the long shot of the bridge

and suddenly from left to right,

three or four of these other little box speeders

all come over,

- [Keaton] Across the single track trestle?

- [director] Yeah, single track, yeah.

They go across.

(director makes chugging sound)

Slight hold, then they all come reversed,

all going like mad,

and you're there waving them on,

- I chase them off.

- You're gonna chase them on.

Next shot you cut to those little houses,

The four guys come in,

very quickly stop, take them off the tracks,

just in like that and you just shoot through,

And that's the sequence,

- And they all look out at the same time?

- [Woman] Yeah.

- Exactly.

- I don't know why, but I like that,

Cleaning house.

Get out the map to look at it, just as I hit that trestle,

Getting on it and getting scared

you're not gonna mean anything.

- Look, I'll get my pack 'cause I want to draw it,

and I'll show you what we're gonna do.

- [Eleanor] Go shave, dear.

- This is the shot of the bridge that we get.

- Yeah.

- We get the valley like that

and this damned great big bridge.

- We find the two gags. The same thing.

I don't know.

I put my broom down, everything else,

and I wonder where I am.

Out with the map,

and once I get it spread, I'm helpless.

When I hear a shot going across that trestle,

all the funnier.

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

I'm still fighting paper going fast,

and four heads come out and look. That's all.

- [Eleanor] You don't know you've chased 'em out yet.

- I don't know I've chased 'em out.

I don't know I crossed the dangerous place either,

And they don't feel like being run into,

so it will all work out.

- [director] Are you going backwards?

What's happening to that little man?

Where's he going to?

Your three track cars come in from left of frame

and they go right through frame,

We keep the camera rolling.

Now when they get off the bridge,

they have to reverse as quick as they can and then back up.

And when they back up through frame,

Buster should be following,

But does Buster know, you know,

why the hell is he backing up so far?

Tell him time's running out,

- [man] Yeah, we've got a stretch of sun,

so if you want to let him go...

- [woman] Tell Buster to stand by,

and be ready to roll when you tell him.

- Yeah.

Okay, bring the machine down.

- Okay, rolling.

- Okay, just carry.,.

Take it right in

cause there's a train coming from the east.

- [woman] Okay, we're taking it right in,

- Stop, hold it, get back!

- [Narrator] The director has decided against Buster's idea.

Instead of being wrapped up in a map,

Keaton crosses the bridge doing his laundry,

- Okay, cut.

- [narrator] But Buster is a very stubborn man,

When he decides an idea is good, he hangs on tight,

- [man] What happened?

Didn't he tell you what he was gonna do?

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

- What did you expect it was gonna be?

- I thought it was gonna fouled up with the map

cause I decided that last night.

And he decided not to, and I didn't know it.

- Oh.

- What makes it tough is that I can't match scenes

because I didn't have it in my mind that way,

so I don't know.

If I went back now to protect this chase in close ups,

I wouldn't have the slightest idea

what I was doing at the time I should be doing it,

So I can't make scenes match,

- Don't forget, there's still two other shots

to complete the sequence, Buster.

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

That's the whole center of the gag,

is that long shot of the bridge.

- No, the bridge is not your gag,

The bridge is only suspense, A thrill.

There's no gag on the bridge at all.

Not a goddam thing,

It's only a dangerous place to be

when there might be a collision,

That's the only thing that's funny,

It's only 465 cars, I think.

- [Eleanor] Well, I know the main reason

they didn't want you going over the trestle

all wrapped up in newspapers and things,

- Figured I took a good look...

the scene we did is a worthless scene,

a scene you can't use,

So it's a nice scene to have,

and sometimes I just want to go up

and show it to their friends or something like that,

They don't use it in the picture.

- Said it was too dangerous,

- I said, "Who suggested the gags?"

He says, "You did,"

I says, "I generally know what I'm doing."

That is not dangerous,

That's child's play, for the love of Mike,

- [Eleanor] Don't tell me about it.

- I told them,

I do worse things in my sleep than that.

- [Eleanor] I know,

- In my own backyard with a swimming pool,

I take more chances than I did.

- [woman] Here's the map.

It's terribly strong.

- [Eleanor] Director doesn't carry white paper?

- No.

- I made that look like it was a big sail going..,

- [woman] And you won't fall off?

- No, certainly not,

I took more chances washing clothes doing it,

because my feet were sliding all over the place in that car.

Any time you're shooting gags

or laying them out in advance,

you so often are running into guesswork.

Well, maybe his way is better than doing it mine.

And you try to sell yourself one way or the other

because there is a certain amount of guess. Has to be.

But every now and then ain't no guesswork.

This is one of 'em.

(vaudevillian music)

- [narrator] And so, as has happened fairly often

in the past 60 odd years,

it is decided to do it Buster's way.

- Look.

- Oh, God.

- Give it back.

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday, dear Buster

Happy birthday to you

(laughter)

- That's comfortable, - [Eleanor] Now blow!

(cheering)

- [director] On behalf of the National Film Board,

I would like to wish you many happy returns of the day,

October the 4th, 1964.

Also, the Queen sends her regards,

- [woman] Cheers,

- Thank you, Mr. Chairman,

but I'm not very good at public speaking.

But to show that me heart's in the right place,

I'll fight any man in the house,

(laughter)

- Oh, no!

Good heavenly days to Betsy,

Isn't that cute?

- I better get a whistle.

- [woman] Isn't that cute though?

- [narrator] Buster was born into show business.

For most of his 70 years,

his birthday has been a traveling event,

- [woman] Ooh, what is that?

- [woman] It's a real one, now.

- A real steam engine, a really steam engine.

- [man] It's got a whistle on it and a valve.

- Oh, the whistle,

- [woman] They work,

- [narrator] When he was a baby,

his parents were operating a traveling medicine show.

In partnership with an artful young man named Harry Houdini,

they peddled snake oil to rustic America,

The Keaton baby was called Joseph, Jr.

Until Houdini saw him take a nasty tumble,

From then on, he was Buster.

When he was three, his parents left the sticks,

and headed for the cities and the vaudeville stage.

(vaudevillian music)

Two-a-day vaudeville was the national pastime.

One historian called it a dig in the nation's ribs.

It was rude, rough, sunny and naive.

(vaudevillian music)

1899, Dark Status Theater, Wilmington, Delaware,

Buster Keaton, aged four,

joins his parents' act for a children's matinee.

The adults laugh as hard as the kids.

Buster promises to sleep late in the mornings,

and is allowed to stay in show business,

It is an Irish knockabout act, the roughest of its kind,

It consists largely of Buster

being punched, trampled, and thrown at the scenery,

His father's right arm is twice as strong as his left

from throwing Buster around.

His mother is billed

as the only lady saxophone player in America.

(vaudevillian music)

Although Buster loves the work,

the law sometimes threatens.

Then it is explained that Buster is really a midget.

At five, he does his own makeup.

At seven, he is clouted for onstage mistakes,

At nine, he is in charge of travel arrangements.

At 11, he is creating gags,

There were movies now, but they weren't taken seriously.

Buster's dad says that nobody's going to put the Keatons

on a bed sheet at 10 cents a throw,

Vaudeville was the big time.

(vaudevillian music)

They cheered when Field beat up Weber.

They were wild for the Canadian, Eva Tanguay,

who, by her own admission, had neither talent nor looks,

but who made $2 million anyway,

There was a young black face singer called Al Jolson,

and a comic juggler by the name of W.C. Fields.

The great Bill "Bojangles" Robinson

taught Buster the soft shoe and the tap,

and Harry Houdini, who had given Buster his name,

had gone on from the medicine show

to become the biggest vaudeville draw of all time.

The Keaton act would lay off while mother had a baby.

Buster would memorize 30 pages of dialogue,

and go on to legitimate stage as Little Lord Fauntleroy.

For a while, the act grew with the family,

but by 1916, it was breaking up.

They had offended the powerful Martin Beck,

and were taken off the big time circuit.

Anyway, mother Keaton preferred playing pea-knuckle.

Father Keaton was spending most of his time in the saloon

and little Buster was getting too big to throw around,

He decided to try the movies

and brought his family out

to share the golden years in Hollywood.

He always remembered where it all began.

Through the years, when he had the world by the tail,

through the years of humiliation and despair,

the spirit of the vaudeville stage,

the spirit to entertain and, above all, to endure

has carried Buster Keaton into an active, graceful old age.

Give me

A June night

And you

In my arms

And with all your charms

The stars above

And we'll make love

I'll hold you

And then enfold you

Dreams will

Come true

Just give me

A June night

The moonlight

And

Come all you rounders

And gather you near

The story I'm gonna tell you about a brave engineer

Casey Jones was the gentleman's name

Went on a six-eight wheeler

Boy, he won his fame

Pulled out the station with a big heavy train

Kept on going until he struck the main

Switch Man knew by the end of John's moan

That the man at the throttle was Casey Jones

Casey was going at a terrible pace

When 4:44

Stared him right in the face

Turned to the farmers and boy you'd better jump

Cause two locomotives are going to pump

Casey said just before he died

There's two more roads I would like to ride

Fireman said what can they be

It's the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe

Mrs. Casey got the wire that Casey was dead

All the children cried so hard

They wouldn't go to their bed

Mammy says children stop your crying

Cause you got another papa on the Salt Lake line

Casey Jones, you got another papa

Casey Jones, he's on the Salt Lake line

(laughter)

Casey Jones got another papa

Got another papa on the Salt Lake line

(train whistle)

(train bell)

(train whistle)

(train bell)

(train rumbling)

(train whistle)

(train chugging)

(clock tower chimes)

(dramatic adventure music)

(subdued music)

(water splashes)

(waves breaking)

(water splashing)

(seagulls)

(mellow music)

(playful music)

(mellow music)

(waterlogged footsteps)

(pensive music)

(engine starts)

(energetic banjo music)

(speeder whistle)

(engine hums)

(speeder whistle)

(train whistle)

(cheerful music)

(speeder chugging)

(speeder squeaks)

(mellow, mysterious music)

(deep horn)

(upbeat music)

(banging, crashing)

(engine cutting in and out)

(gentle lullaby)

(boat bell and engine)

(water sloshing)

(gentle lullaby continues)

(engine starts)

(train horn blares)

(upbeat banjo music)

(engine popping)

(gentle music)

(energetic piano music)

(ceremonial trumpet music)

(cannon booms)

(clock tower bell)

(cannon booms)

(upbeat music)

(train horn blares)

(speeder chugging)

(violin music)

(gentle banjo music)

(can clanking)

(upbeat banjo music)

(birds chirping)

(fragmented music)

(upbeat banjo music)

(quiet banjo music)

(energetic music)

(vehicle chugging)

(tense piano music)

(engine humming)

(subdued music)

(reflective music)

(speeder chugging)

(gentle lullaby music)

(engine pops)

(elegant harpsichord music)

(moody cello music)

(elegant harpsichord continues)

(thunder)

(thunder)

(thunder)

(upbeat music)

(somber music)

(upbeat music)

(camera clicks)

(speeder rattles)

(wind)

(whimsical music)

(whimsical music)

(sheep)

(speeder chugging)

(wind)

(suspenseful music)

(dramatic music)

(explosion)

(upbeat music)

(speeder chugging)

(tense music)

(geese honking)

(speeder braking)

(spare music)

(tense music)

(geese honking)

(gun fires)

(speeder chugging)

(upbeat banjo music)

(horns blaring)

(mellow music)

(horn blaring)

(upbeat piano music)

(brakes squeal)

(engine hums and pops)

(gentle music)

(waves breaking)

(water splashing)

(gentle music)

(seagulls)

(energetic music)

(engine popping)

(upbeat music)

(engine rattling and popping)

(engine pops)