Over half century ago the society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children complained to Mayor Van Wyck, of New York, that Joe Keaton, a vaudeville actor, was brutally mistreating his five-year old son. At each afternoon and evening performance the child, billed as “The Human Mop”, was slammed on the floor, hurled into the wings, and sometimes banged into bass drums. Unable to find a bruise or scratch on the lad, Mayor Van Wyck refused to ban the act. The “Human Mop” bounced on to worldwide fame as Buster Keaton, one of this century’s greatest comedians. In this intimate autobiography Buster Keaton tells his whole personal and professional story, beginning with his colourful and exciting childhood as the undentable tot in the “Three Keatons” whose proudest boast was having the rowdiest, roughest act in vaudeville. Buster has played with all the great ones, from George M. Cohen and Bojangles Robinson and Al Jolson to Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan and Red Skelton, during his sixty years as a star in vaudeville, silent and talking pictures, night clubs and television. Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle got him into the movies and taught him how to throw a custard pie. Buster could not even keep slapstick out of his eleven months as a draftee in our World War I army. He came out to help create the Golden Age of Comedy with his friends Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Arbuckle, Mack Sennett and the Keystone Cops. Marital troubles and alcoholism once got Buster down, but could not keep him down. MY WONDERFUL WORLD OF SLAPSTICK was written with the collaboration of Charles Samuels, co-author of His Eye Is On the Sparrow, Ethel Waters’ best-selling autobiography. Buster Keaton’s Life Story will enchant and thrill all those who enjoy looking past the glitter and the grease paint into a magnificent performer’s mind and heart.
Interviews from the beginning of Buster Keaton's career in the 1920s to the year before his death are brought together in a volume that provides a critical perspective on his acting and cinematic techniques and includes pieces by Studs ...
'Tracing Keaton's beginnings in vaudeville and how he eventually applied that form's traits to cinema, McPherson creates an excellent portrait of a formidable talent, also addressing the private demons that accelerated his eventual slide.
"It is brilliant—I was totally absorbed, couldn't stop reading it and was very sorry when it ended."—Kevin Brownlow It was James Agee who christened Buster Keaton “The Great Stone Face.” Keaton’s face, Agee wrote, "ranked almost ...
A Scott O'Dell Award-winning graphic artist visualizes the story of young Henry, who in 1908 Muskegon, Michigan, bonds with a young Buster Keaton over games of baseball while the latter summers locally with a troupe of vaudeville performers ...
Sure, he's gotta move back in with his parents, but these new business ventures take time. And anyway, he gets to team up with the Amazing Spider-Man - so things must be going pretty well, right? COLLECTING: SLAPSTICK 1-5
Meticulously researched, this book brings together four years of research and hundreds of interviews to paint a nuanced portrait of a compelling artist.
Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Buster Keaton is an epic look at a genius at work and at a Hollywood that no longer exists. Painstakingly researching...
... Henry Holmes Smith, Ton Smits, Karen Sneider, David Snell, Otto Soglow, Aaron Sopher, Edward Sorel, Leo Soretsky, M. Van Sort, Art Spiegelman, Mark Alan Stamaty, J. Stanley, Leslie Starke, Kemp Starrett, Edward Steed, William Steig, ...
Known for his legendary "stone face" and incredible physical gags, Buster Keaton (1895-1966) was a genius of silent-film comedy. Decades after their release, his movies remain unsurpassed marvels of comic...
Explores the complex nature of the enigmatic silent-film star through the eyes of his close friends and associates, recreating his vaudeville days, his great successes in the 1920s, and the years of decline