“When I found out that they could write stories and material better than I could anyway, what was the use of my fighting with them?”
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Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent films, in which he performed physical comedy and inventive stunts. He maintained a stoic, deadpan facial expression that became his trademark and earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".
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entertainment · American actor and filmmaker (1895–1966) · comedian · film producer · writer · film editor · military personnel · stunt performer · television actor · stage actor · mime artist · film director · also Buster Keaton, Joseph Frank Keaton, Joseph Keaton, Frigo, The Great Stone Face, Keaton
Born 4 October 1895 · Died 1 February 1966 · Q103949
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2026· 2 entries
The Guardian: REM x Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr review – classic comedy gets new alt-rock soundtrack
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2023· 1 entry
Keaton's life and work was depicted in the graphic biography Buster: A Life in Pictures, written by Ryan Barnett and illustrated by Matthew Tavares
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2022· 2 entries
Critic Dana Stevens published a cultural history of Keaton's life and work, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century
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Dollars); at the time of his interview, he said, they cost almost $13 (~$116 in 2022 dollars)
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2021· 1 entry
Snopes rated the claim “A video shows silent film star Buster Keaton performing a risky stunt on a moving train.” True.
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2020· 2 entries
The Guardian: Silent witness: unseen Buster Keaton sketches underline his comic genius
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The Guardian: Peter Bogdanovich: 'I missed my chance to tell Buster Keaton he was a genius – now I'm telling the world'
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2018· 3 entries
The International Buster Keaton Society laid a four-foot plaque in honor of both Keaton and Charles Chaplin on the corner of the shared block (1021 Lillian Ave) where each had made many of their silent comedies in Hollyw
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The Guardian: Buster Keaton obituary:'something of a genius' – archive, 2 February 1966
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Peter Bogdanovich released The Great Buster: A Celebration, a documentary about Keaton's life, career and legacy
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2016· 2 entries
The Guardian: The rundown on Samuel Beckett and Buster Keaton's tribute to silent chase comedies
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Tony Hale portrayed Keaton in an episode of Drunk History focusing on the silent comedian's supposed rivalry with Charlie Chaplin, who was played by musician Billie Joe Armstrong
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2015· 1 entry
The Guardian: Cinema Ritrovato: Hudson, Bergman, Keaton – a feast of film under Italian skies
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2014· 1 entry
The Guardian: Why Buster Keaton's The General is the one film you should watch this week – video review
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2013· 1 entry
Contains a scene where Jimmy and Culpepper talk on the telephone
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2012· 1 entry
Kino Lorber released The Ultimate Buster Keaton Collection, a 14-disc Blu-ray box set of Keaton's work, including 11 of his feature films
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2005· 1 entry
Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel included Sherlock Jr
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1996· 2 entries
Entertainment Weekly recognized Keaton as the seventh-greatest film director, writing "his films offer belly laughs of mind-boggling physical invention and a spacey determination that nears philosophical grandeur
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Entertainment Weekly named Keaton the seventh-greatest film director, writing that "More than Chaplin, Keaton understood movies: He knew they consisted of a four-sided frame in which resided a malleable reality off which
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1994· 1 entry
Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld penned a series of silent film stars for the United States Post Office, including Rudolph Valentino and Keaton
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1971· 1 entry
When Rohauer paid Friedman and the stockholders $50,000 for their percentage in the production company
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1966· 4 entries
Died 1966-02-01.
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“A picture without falls is as bad as Niagara in the same fix.”
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“Marriage is fine as an institution, but bad as a habit.”
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“Charlie Chaplin and I would have a friendly contest: Who could do the feature film with the least subtitles?”
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1965· 2 entries
In the episode "Now You See It, Now You Don't"
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Appeared on the CBS television special A Salute to Stan Laurel, a tribute to the comedian and friend of Keaton who had died earlier that year
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1964· 2 entries
Told an interviewer that in making "this particular pork pie", he "started with a good Stetson and cut it down", stiffening the brim with sugar water
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Keaton was featured in his first theatrical film series since 1941
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1962· 2 entries
By Jim Mohr in Buffalo, New York, Keaton revisited some of the gags from his silent-film days
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Signed on for a Canadian musical comedy feature, Ten Girls Ago, starring teen idol Dion and featuring Bert Lahr and Eddie Foy, Jr
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1961· 2 entries
Starred in The Twilight Zone episode "Once Upon a Time", which included both silent and sound sequences
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Keaton appeared in promotional films for Maryvale, a housing development in the western part of Phoenix
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1960· 1 entry
Keaton returned to MGM for the final time, playing a lion tamer in a 1960 adaptation of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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1959· 1 entry
Awarded Academy Honorary Award (1959).
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1957· 1 entry
Buster Keaton was surprised by Ralph Edwards for the weekly NBC program This Is Your Life
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1954· 1 entry
Buster and Eleanor met movie-theater manager Raymond Rohauer, with whom they developed a business partnership to re-release his films
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1953· 1 entry
By British Lion, and it began playing on American television in September 1953
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1952· 1 entry
As though they were entirely new, with the series now titled Life with Buster Keaton
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1949· 2 entries
And producers occasionally hired him for bigger "prestige" pictures
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Ed Wynn invited Keaton to appear on his variety show, which was televised live on the West Coast
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1948· 1 entry
Keaton's Pest from the West was chosen to launch the "Comedy Favorites" series ("A 1939 Buster Keaton film and one of his funniest," noted Boxoffice
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1942· 1 entry
The 18-year-old Robert and the 20-year-old Joseph made the name change permanent after their mother won a court petition
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1940· 1 entry
Keaton married Eleanor Norris, who was 23 years his junior
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1939· 2 entries
Brought back domestic rentals of $23,000, and subsequent ones tended to hover around that approximate figure (Nothing But Pleasure did $24,000, General Nuisance got $26,000)
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Columbia Pictures hired Keaton to star in two-reel comedies; he filmed two at a time over two years
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1937· 1 entry
The company could no longer afford to maintain two studios
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1936· 2 entries
They divorced in 1936 at great financial cost to Keaton.
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At great financial cost to Keaton
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1935· 1 entry
After finding him with Leah Clampitt Sewell, the wife of millionaire Barton Sewell II, in a hotel in Santa Barbara
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1934· 2 entries
Buster Keaton made a screen comeback in two-reel comedies for Educational Pictures
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Keaton accepted an offer to make an independent film in Paris, Le Roi des Champs-Élysées; it was not released in the United States
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1933· 2 entries
Married his nurse Mae Scriven during an alcoholic binge, about which he later claimed to remember nothing
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Ending his career as a leading man in feature films
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1932· 1 entry
And changed the boys' surname to "Talmadge"
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1928· 1 entry
Film executive Nicholas Schenck arranged a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for Keaton's services
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1926· 2 entries
Consequently, Keaton sold it to MGM executive Eddie Mannix at cost, and commissioned Gene Verge Sr. in 1926 to build a 10,000-square-foot (930 m2) estate, the so-called Buster Keaton Italian villa, in Beverly Hills for $300,000 ($5,141,000 in 2024).
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To build a 10,000-square-foot (930 m2) estate, the so-called Buster Keaton Italian villa, in Beverly Hills for $300,000 ($5,141,000 in 2024)
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1925· 1 entry
Dalí produced a collage titled The Marriage of Buster Keaton featuring an image of the comedian in a seated pose, staring straight ahead with his trademark boater hat resting in his lap
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1922· 2 entries
Limelight was the only time in which the two would ever appear together on film
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Had a son, Joseph, and in 1924 a second son, Robert
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1921· 1 entry
Keaton married Natalie Talmadge, his leading lady in Our Hospitality, and the sister of actresses Norma Talmadge (married to his business partner Joseph M
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1920· 2 entries
“s second director and his entire gag department. He appeared in a total of 14 Arbuckle shorts, running into 1920. They were popular, and contrary to Keaton”
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The Saphead was released, in which Keaton had his first starring role in a full-length feature film
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1914· 2 entries
Told the Detroit News: "The secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand
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“The secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It”
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1895· 2 entries
Born 1895-10-04.
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To a vaudeville family in Piqua, Kansas, the small town that his mother, Myra Keaton (née Cutler), was visiting at the time
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