![]() ![]() A contract dancer in the MGM musicals of the late 1930s and ‘40s, she met Keaton in 1938 while learning to play bridge, his lifelong passion. The next seven years were lost in the fog of a disastrous second marriage, more drinking and a pile of forgettable short comedies and second-banana parts.Įleanor Norris saved his life, though, when she became the third Mrs. ![]() Despite the money he made for MGM, in 1933, Louis B. He behaved erratically his absences delayed filming his first marriage deteriorated. MGM turned him into a scripted comic, and he disliked these pictures because they came at the expense of comedy and at the promotion of farce.Īs Eleanor Keaton and Jeffrey Vance point out in “Buster Keaton Remembered,” he disdained farce “because it is based on simple misunderstanding or mistaken identity, which in a legitimate story would be quickly resolved.” He responded to this misuse of his talent as his father had handled his own distinct problems, by drinking. In his early films, Keaton was a controlled improviser. Many of the half a dozen MGM films that Keaton made in the 1930s were his greatest commercial successes, but the studio clearly didn’t know how to transfer the silent specialness of Keaton to talkies. Nothing was as articulate as his carefully planned pratfalls.Īlthough Keaton worked almost steadily until his death in 1968, none of his performances in those ensuing 40 years match the incandescence of his early work. The problem for Keaton after the silent era was not his voice, but rather the studios’ insistence that virtually every second of talkies have somebody saying something, regardless of whether it advanced the story. The advent of talking pictures in 1927 ruined the careers of many actors who looked great mouthing dialogue but had terrible delivery or accents. (Keaton felt this earned the biggest laugh of all his gags.) There was, in fact, no use for dialogue in any of the 45 two-reel and feature silent films he made starting with “The Butcher Boy” in 1917 and ending with “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” in 1928. In that last story, for instance, the scene fades, followed by a card that reads, “Years later,” and then Keaton emerges from the hole, dressed in Oriental clothes, followed by his Chinese wife and two children. ![]() What needs to be said as Keaton opens a newspaper that unfolds and unfolds until it is the size of a bed sheet and envelops him in “The High Sign,” or as he spills a bottle of glue on his counter in “The Haunted House,” or as he does a swan dive, in “Hard Luck,” into the cement next to the pool, leaving a large hole? The visual punch lines speak for themselves. Whether it was Harold Lloyd dangling from a clock, or Charlie Chaplin spinning on roller skates, or Lillian Gish on an ice floe, actors soon developed an eloquence that needed no words, and few matched the majestically stony countenance of Buster Keaton. The service took place on February 26, 1965.įormat 1 photographic print :b&w 26 x 21 cm.For anyone who delights in cinematic sight gags, silents are golden. Please see the Ordering & Use page at for additional information.ĭescription Pictured are Buster Keaton and his wife, Eleanor attending the funeral of comedian Stan Laurel at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills. Images available for reproduction and use. Made accessible through a grant from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation and Photo FriendsĬollection Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian Title Buster and Eleanor Keaton Alternative Title Valley Times Photo CollectionĬontributor This project was supported in whole or in part by the U.S. ![]()
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