Trivia of Buster Keaton

 Trivia of Buster Keaton (4 October 1895 - 1 February 1966)

*His parents, Joe and Myra, were both veteran vaudevillian actors, and Keaton himself first began performing at the age of 3 when he was incorporated into their act.As legend has it, he earned the name of "Buster" when he was 18 months old, after falling down a flight of stairs. Magician Harry Houdini scooped up the child and turning to the boy's parents quipped, "That was a real BUSTER!".

*In his first film, a 1917 two-reeler called The Butcher Boy starring Roscoe ("Fatty") Arbuckle, Keaton was extreme slapstick, with the young actor being subjected to a range of abuses, from being submerged in molasses to getting bit by a dog.Keaton do all his own stunts and he became somewhat of a Hollywood legend not just for his falls but for his lack of injuries.

*Working with independent producer Joseph M. Schenck and filmmaker Edward F. Cline, Keaton made a series of successful two-reel comedies in the early 1920s, including One Week (1920), The Playhouse (1921), Cops (1922), and The Electric House (1922). He then moved to feature-length films; several of them, such as Sherlock Jr. (1924), The General (1926), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), and The Cameraman (1928), remain highly regarded. The General (1926) is viewed as his masterpiece: Orson Welles considered it "the greatest comedy ever made...and perhaps the greatest film ever made".

*His career declined when he signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and lost his artistic independence. His wife divorced him, he lost his home, and he descended into alcoholism around 1930.Keaton kicking his habit and regaining his self-esteem when he married Eleanor Norris (Eleanor Keaton), his wife from 1940 until his death in 1966.

*In 1949 producers occasionally hired him for bigger "prestige" pictures. He had cameos in such films as In the Good Old Summertime (1949), Sunset Boulevard (1950), and Around the World in 80 Days (1956). In In the Good Old Summertime, Keaton personally directed the stars Judy Garland and Van Johnson in their first scene together, where they bump into each other on the street. Keaton invented comedy bits where Johnson keeps trying to apologize to a seething Garland, but winds up messing up her hairdo and tearing her dress.

*Contributed gags (uncredited) to the Red Skelton film A Southern Yankee (1948). No one could figure out a simple, yet funny way to get Aubrey out of the house when he was being held captive by the angry dog. Buster, employed by MGM as a roving gag man, was called to the set, looked at the set up, and came up with the idea of removing the door hinges and letting the dog in as Aubrey got out. The most famous gag in the movie took him all of five minutes to devise. Some of the other gags he contributed were some he had done himself years earlier.

*Keaton's last commercial film appearance was in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), which was filmed in Spain in September–November 1965. He amazed the cast and crew by doing many of his own stunts, although the Thames Television documentary reported that his increasingly ill health did force the use of a stunt double for some scenes. His final appearance on film was in The Scribe, a 1966 safety film produced in Toronto by the Construction Safety Associations of Ontario: he died shortly after completing it.

*He died the same day as his The Stolen Jools (1931), Speak Easily (1932) and Sunset Blvd. (1950) co-star, Hedda Hopper.