A Book Review by Thomas Gladysz.
A detailed, well-wrought look into the comedian’s early career(s)….”
Like Charlie Chaplin, there are more than a handful of books about Buster Keaton – the stone-faced comedian who sported a pork-pie hat. And like Chaplin, Keaton remains one of the truly great performers of early film – original, brilliantly creative, prolific and influential to this day. Keaton’s signature works – One Week (1920), Sherlock Jr. (1924), Seven Chances (1925), The General (1926), and The Cameraman (1928) – each rank among the great films of the 1920s, if not the 20th century. There are – at least, a half-dozen more of significant note.
Rather than a handful of books, make that a shelfful, or better yet, a bookcase…. There are multiple biographies and critical studies, books on particular films as well as broader aspects of Keaton’s filmography including his early collaborations with Roscoe Arbuckle, his shorts, his features (including the five films mentioned above), and his later talkies. There is, as well, an illustrated screenplay of the unlikely film Keaton made with the Nobel Prize winning Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. Add to these a book of interviews, a coffee table pictorial, a memoir, and an illustrated children’s book. One more book in this Keaton bookcase is Silent Echoes, a “then & now” illustrated look at the shooting locations used for particular scenes in particular films; it’s by the late John Bengtson.
To this growing list of titles add Lisa Stein Haven’s admirable Early Buster Keaton: From the Vaudeville Stage to Comique Films, 1899–1920 (Pen and Sword, 2025). It’s a detailed, well-wrought look into the comedian’s early career(s). It’s also a book anyone interested in Keaton, silent film, and entertainment history will want to read.
As the author writes in her introduction, it is important “to acknowledge those who have come before, in regards to Buster Keaton studies, biographies and analyses, for no twenty-first century writer on Keaton can claim total originality. Since nearly every aspect of Keaton’s story and work has been written about in some form.” Haven also notes, “it will be the goal of this book to present a new perspective on Keaton’s early life in the entertainment business, beginning with the ancestry, family tradition in vaudeville and moving through the Comique films, Keaton’s first foray into the industry.”
The author’s self-described “microscopic approach” to the first 24 years of the comedian’s life sheds a revealing light on Joseph Frank (“Buster”) Keaton’s formative years; in doing so – readers come to better understand the comedian’s later struggle to maintain his artistic independence.
As Haven notes, the biographers who have written about Keaton have told his story from different perspectives and with somewhat different emphasis. None, according to the author (and this is where things get interesting) has started far enough back in time to flesh out Keaton’s informing American-ness, a characteristic that is at the heart of Haven’s investigation to who Keaton becomes as a performer and filmmaker.
In ways, the sweep of Keaton’s ancestry reflects the sweep of American history. Haven writes that “Keaton’s ancestry includes Quakers, Mormons, and Lutherans. It includes Revolutionary War veterans, Civil War veterans, and veterans who served in every war the country became involved in. It includes both slave holders and abolitionists. It includes esteemed founders of universities, clergymen, Congressmen, and writers.” The characters Keaton played on film are informed by an American sense of striving – a romantic-tinker with a kind of D.I.Y., pull yourself up by your bootstraps, figuring out how do things work persona.
As Haven notes, the biographers who have written about Keaton have told his story from different perspectives and with somewhat different emphasis. None, according to the author (and this is where things get interesting) has started far enough back in time to flesh out Keaton’s informing American-ness….”
It’s often said that Keaton was born onstage, as it’s well known that his parents were both travelling entertainers and little Buster himself was part of a family act. What’s less known is that Keaton’s maternal grandfather, Frank L. Cutler, was a “creative” – a travelling performer and writer of plays and sketches who in all likelihood, Haven notes, influenced his grandson.
Another of the book’s reveals focusses on Harry Houdini and the Keaton’s association with the famed magician. It’s well known that Houdini and the Keatons were Vaudeville performers who paths sometimes crossed. Without a doubt, they knew each other, as there is correspondence between Houdini and Joe Keaton, Buster’s father, to back up the claim. The two acts even shared a bill in 1907 at B. F. Keith’s Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts.
Tucked into this documented friendship between the Houdinis and the Keatons is the legend of how little Joseph Keaton got his nickname, “Buster.” According to lore, Houdini witnessed the young child take a tumble down a flight of stairs – only to emerge unharmed, prompting the magician to remark that the boy was a “regular buster.” Over the years, the Keaton family repeated the story.
As Haven notes, the point in time in which the fall down the stairs occurred, around April of 1896, when Buster was about 6 or 7 months old, suggests any number of people might have made the exclamation – except for Harry Houdini. Despite the fact both acts were touring many of the same small Midwestern towns, the famed magician was nowhere near the Keatons at the time.
In later years, Joe Keaton insisted the Keaton’s and Houdini appeared together as members of the same travelling troupe. But, as Haven shows, it’s not true. So who named Buster “Buster”? We don’t know for sure, though Keaton’s parents, Joe and Myra, occasionally mentioned one George A. Pardey as the person who gave the actor his memorable monocure. Pardey was the manager of their troupe.
The great American writer James Agee once said:
Keaton’s face ranked almost with Lincoln’s as an early American archetype; it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful, yet it was irreducibly funny; he improved matters by topping it off with a deadly horizontal hat, as flat and thin as a phonograph record. One can never forget Keaton wearing it….”
Lisa Stein Haven’s Early Buster Keaton: From the Vaudeville Stage to Comique Films, 1899–1920 illuminates Agee’s remarks, and in doing so, presents new perspectives on the path Keaton took to inhabiting an archetype.
Thomas Gładysz is the author of articles and essays on early cinema, as well as five books on the films of Louise Brooks. The most recent is The Street of Forgotten Men: From Story to Screen and Beyond. Recently, Gładysz wrote the booklet essay and provided audio commentaries to the new Flicker Alley Blu-ray, Focus on Louise Brooks.