A vaudeville star before the age of ten, Buster Keaton was preparing to make his Broadway debut in 1917... (Learn more)
Top Projects: The Twilight Zone, The Bachelor, A Funny Thing... (View All)
- Watch on Fancast
- 4Full Length Videos
- 3Clips & Other Videos
"I think I have had the happiest and luckiest of lives. Maybe this is because I never expected as much as I got . . . And when the knocks came, I felt it was no surprise. I had always known life was like that, full of uppercuts for the deserving and undeserving alike." --Buster Keaton
"My old man was an eccentric comic and as soon as I could take care of myself at all on my feet, he had slapshoes on me and big baggy pants. And he'd just start doing gags with me and especially kickin' me clear across the stage or taking me by the back of the neck and throwing me. By the time I got to be around seven or eight years old, we were called 'The Roughest Act That Was Ever in the History of the Stage'" --Buster Keaton
"One of the first things I noticed was that whenever I smiled or let the audience suspect how much I was enjoying myself they didn't seem to laugh as much as usual. I guess people just never do expect any human mop, dishrag, beanbag, or football to be pleased by what is being done to him. At any rate, it was on purpose that I started looking miserable, humiliated, hounded and haunted, bedeviled, bewildered and at my wit's end." --Buster Keaton
"We used to get arrested every other week--that is, the old man would get arrested. Once they took me to the mayor of New York City, into his private office, with city physicians . . . and they stripped me to examine for broken bones and bruises. Finding none, the mayor gave me permission to work. The next time it happened, the following year, they sent me to Albany, to the governor of the state." --Buster Keaton (From "The Buster Keaton Myths", by Patricia Eliot Tobias in CLASSIC IMAGES)
The official website devoted to him can be accessed at www.busterkeaton.com
When scandal rocked Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle's world in 1921, Keaton remained a loyal friend to his mentor. Even though the courts absolved Arbuckle of any wrong doing in Virginia Rappe's death, Hollywood refused to forgive him, but Keaton stood by him, providing periodic financial support until Arbuckle's death from a heart attack in 1933.
While his mother gave him the birthname Joseph Frank Keaton, his father later changed it to Joseph Francis Keaton.
Something wrong with our information? LET US KNOW
