Slices of Buster Keaton’s Life

One thing I like about reading biographical material on Buster Keaton is the light it sheds on aspects of his films.  Having done a bit of reading, I can now see the echoes of Buster’s past in his films, and his areas of interest come wonderfully to the fore.

A look at Buster’s real life through his films finds its logical starting point in his history as a vaudeville star.  There are a few occasions where some of his old vaudeville acts are dusted off and brought to the screen, like the Princess Rajah dance in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, the spinning ball in Convict 13, or the “Anvil Chorus” routine in Grand Slam Opera.  The gags in The Play House and Back Stage are built entirely around his vaudeville upbringing, there are memorable on- and offstage scenes in Daydreams, Mixed Magic, Spite Marriage, and numerous other films, and Steamboat Bill Jr. takes time out in the middle of the cyclone sequence for Buster to clown around in an abandoned theatre.  Even Buster’s first scene on camera in The Butcher Boy cribs from one of Buster’s vaudeville staples:  weaving terrific comic business from a simple broom.

One of Buster’s pastimes that started in childhood and continued throughout his life was inventing clever gadgets and labor-saving devices, a hobby shared by many of his characters.  Virtually everything he did in which he had any creative control involves this creative engineering, so I’ll only mention a few here.  The most prominent example of this is of course the Rube Goldberg house in The Scarecrow, and many of the rigged-up conveniences here are actually based on ideas he realized as a boy during his summers in Bluffton.  In adulthood, he had model train tracks running from his kitchen to his dining room, and just like in The Electric House, the electric trains could be used to carry food and drinks to his guests.

A number of Buster’s other loves feature prominently in his work as well.  His love of baseball figures into The Cameraman, College, and One Run Elmer, and the latter also dramatizes some of the pranks he used to pull at celebrity ballgames during his heyday.  Buster’s fascination with vehicles served him well, too.  There are terrific car gags in The Garage, Three Ages, and Seven Chances, to name a few, Our Hospitality and The General (the latter of which is regarded as his masterpiece) derive comic magic from their trains, and The Boat, The Navigator, and Steamboat Bill Jr. are several of the fantastically funny seafaring comedies Buster made.  In fact, the only reason The Navigator exists is because Buster learned of a passenger ship he could buy at a good price.  And his talent for camera wizardry gives us memorable and, at the time, near-miraculous scenes in The Play House, Sherlock Jr., and The Cameraman.

There’s plenty of additional overlap between Buster’s real life and his films.  Doughboys and Tars and Stripes draw from Buster’s experiences in the army during World War I.  His own house is the major set-piece for Bedroom, Parlor and Bath.  Similarly, members of Buster’s family were cast in a number of his films; he plays opposite his first wife Natalie Talmadge in Our Hospitality (where his son is also enlisted to by the infant version of Buster’s character in the prologue,) Palooka from Paducah and Love Nest on Wheels are the big Keaton-family shorts, his sister Louise did stunt work for the leading lady in Steamboat Bill Jr., and his father Joe appeared in many of the Arbuckle-Keaton shorts and Buster’s independent films (most memorably in Neighbors and Our Hospitality.)