Buster Keaton

Joseph Frank Keaton, known professionally as Buster Keaton, was born on October 4, 1895, in Piqua, Kansas, the small town his mother Myra Keaton was visiting at the time of his birth. He was given the name Joseph to continue a paternal family tradition — he was the sixth in a line of men named Joseph Keaton — and Frank as a middle name honoring his maternal grandfather. His father, Joseph Hallie Keaton, operated a traveling show called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company, which combined stage performance with the sale of patent medicine.

Keaton entered show business as a toddler, joining his parents in a vaudeville act called The Three Keatons beginning at age three. His first stage appearance came in 1899 in Wilmington, Delaware. The act centered on physical comedy in which his father threw the young Keaton against scenery, into the orchestra pit, and even into the audience, with a suitcase handle sewn into the boy's clothing to assist with the tossing. Keaton learned to execute trick falls safely and was rarely injured, eventually earning the billing "The Little Boy Who Can't Be Damaged." He later credited the technical discipline of landing correctly for his ability to perform such stunts without harm. It was during this period that Keaton developed his signature deadpan expression, having observed that laughing while being thrown across the stage caused the audience to laugh less. A story frequently repeated, though possibly apocryphal, holds that he acquired the nickname Buster at eighteen months after surviving a fall down a flight of stairs without injury. By the time Keaton was twenty-one, his father's alcoholism had begun to threaten the family act, and Keaton and his mother departed for New York, where his career transitioned from vaudeville to film.

During World War I, Keaton served in France with the United States Army's 40th Infantry Division as part of the American Expeditionary Forces. While in uniform, he developed an ear infection that permanently impaired his hearing. Following his military service, he met comedian Roscoe Arbuckle in February 1917 at the Talmadge Studios in New York City. Keaton proved so naturally suited to film during his first day on set that he was hired immediately, and he went on to appear in fourteen Arbuckle shorts through 1920. Producer Joseph M. Schenck subsequently gave Keaton his own production unit, Buster Keaton Productions, through which he made nineteen two-reel comedies, among them One Week (1920), The Playhouse (1921), Cops (1922), and The Electric House (1922), the latter two made in collaboration with filmmaker Edward F. Cline.

Keaton then moved into feature-length filmmaking, producing a body of work during the 1920s that became central to his lasting reputation. Films including Sherlock Jr. (1924), The General (1926), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), and The Cameraman (1928) remain highly regarded. The General in particular drew exceptional praise; Orson Welles described it as the greatest comedy ever made and perhaps the greatest film ever made. Throughout this period, Keaton performed his own physical stunts and maintained the stoic facial expression that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face." His first starring role in a full-length feature had come with The Saphead in 1920, based on the stage play The New Henrietta.

Keaton's career entered a difficult period after 1928, when he signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and surrendered the artistic independence that had defined his earlier work. His first marriage ended in divorce, and he struggled with alcoholism. MGM dismissed him in 1933, concluding his run as a leading man in feature films. He recovered during the 1940s, marrying Eleanor Norris, and rebuilt his professional life as a respected comic performer. During this later phase he made cameo appearances in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Charlie Chaplin's Limelight (1952), and appeared in numerous television programs. In 1959, he received an Academy Honorary Award. The American Film Institute ranked him the 21st-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema in 1999.

In 1960, Keaton appeared on Broadway in the musical Once Upon a Mattress, adding a stage credit to a career that had begun on the vaudeville boards of the previous century. Buster Keaton died on February 1, 1966.