This Day in Buster… June 15, 1956

The Chicago Tribune reports Buster Keaton was having trouble getting his play, “Hell on Wheels,” on the stage: “When we had the money, we couldn’t find a New York theatre – all rented for TV. Now, we’ve lost the bankroll – and still no theatre.” A year later he would play the lead in “Merton of the Movies,” a play close to his heart.

This Day in Buster… June 15, 1956

The Chicago Tribune reports Buster Keaton was having trouble getting his play, “Hell on Wheels,” on the stage: “When we had the money, we couldn’t find a New York theatre – all rented for TV. Now, we’ve lost the bankroll – and still no theatre.” A year later he would play the lead in “Merton of the Movies,” a play close to his heart.

#TelevisionTuesday Buster Keaton appears in a March 1956 episode of the Martha Raye Show, in a version of the violin scene from Chaplin’s “Limelight.” Martha naturally takes on the Chaplin role.

Buster Keaton in a Simon Pure Beer commercial, 1960s

#MovieMonday Buster Keaton was a gag consultant on 1945’s “She Went to the Races,” but one of the gags was really only suited to one man.  Buster’s moment as a distracted bellboy may have been brief, but it was memorable!

#MovieMonday  “That’s the Spirit,” 1945, sees Buster Keaton cast as LM, an angel working the Complaints Department in Heaven, who is tasked with fielding Jackie Oakie’s requests to return to Earth to protect his daughter.  He might not have wings, but Buster cuts a dash in a zoot suit.

Buster Keaton, What Elephant?

Buster in his cameo as Sam the short order cook in That Night with You (1945).

Many happy returns to Gerald Potterton, director of The NFB’s ‘The Railrodder’ & ‘Buster Keaton Rides Again’ - 90 years young!

This Day In Buster…February 1st 1966…

Joseph Frank ‘Buster’ Keaton passed away, aged 70, at his Woodland Hills home with wife, Eleanor Keaton by his side.  Given the many dangerous stunts he performed throughout his career, it’s an irony that lung cancer shuffled him off this mortal coil. His doctor had once told him that he could live to see 100 & Buster intended to do just that.  And whilst he was out by thirty years, his memory has already made it past a century & a quarter.  We suspect that Buster Keaton’s legacy will continue far beyond that.

Three masters of comedy: Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati and Harold Lloyd, 1959.

Buster Keaton receives his George Eastman Award from Jesse Lasky at the Sawtelle Hospital where Keaton is being treated for a gastrointestinal ailment. Keaton had just entered the hospital a few days before the awards were presented for the industry's great artists of the silent film period of 1915-1926, and Lasky personally presented the award to Keaton at his bedside.

#WIPWednesday Buster Keaton tells Samuel Beckett how to do it on the set of ‘Film’, 1965

Home movie footage of Buster Keaton in Paris.

THIS IS PICTURE OF BUSTER KEATON TAKEN DURING THE FILMING OF “LIMELIGHT”

“— Keaton’s films portray the natural world as just another enormous machine, a vast organic engine prone both to over heating and breaking down - which is one of the reasons why there are so many storms, cyclones and floods in his work. Keaton’s is a universe of things, impersonal, physical, a comic study of bodies in motion. Nature is simply another primed and waiting booby-trap, albeit one deserving of respect for its lethal ingenuity and explosive power.”

— Alan Bilton, Silent Film Comedy and American Culture (Chapter on Buster Keaton) p. 183 (via elidoesresearch-blog)