

He gave Buster complete artistic control over his films. In 1920, Schenck bought out Charlie Chaplin's old studio and let Buster have it as his studio. Buster worked with Arbuckle until 1919, when in September of that year he began making his own films. Buster agreed and a lifelong friendship began. He asked Buster to do a scene with him in The Butcher Boy.
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Arbuckle had been making movie shorts with Mack Sennett and was just starting at Joseph Schenck's studio. A chance meeting with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle changed his life forever. His deadpan expression got even more laughs. He also learned to keep a straight face through any funny bits. This is where Keaton learned all his falls and stunts. It soon developed into a very rough stage act, with Buster's dad hitting him with brooms and other objects on the stage. Buster joined his family's act at a very young age. The oldest son of Joseph and Myra Keaton, who were stage comedians. Born on October 4, 1895, in Piqua, Kansas, as Joseph Francis Keaton.

He was a motion picture comic actor, writer, producer, and director of the 1910s thru 1960s.

Neither have the movies, but sometimes there's a cleaner print and he'll notice something new.Pioneer in Film Industry. He skips the tours, he says, because the buildings haven't changed. In terms of perfect attendance, however, Jack Dragga of Bedford, Ohio, says that “we don’t count Ron, because all he has to do is walk down the street.”ĭragga, who’s somewhere north of 65, and an Englishman named David Macleod have been to every convocation. Pesch has been to every gathering of the buffs who refer to themselves as Damfinos, pronounced Dam-FIE-nose and referencing the way Keaton snuck "Damn if I know" into a film called "The Boat." “These folks are here, and they're going strong until 3 in the morning," Pesch says, "sharing images and stories and becoming friends.” The headquarters hotel is the Shoreline Inn, and do not underestimate the party power of a Keaton fan. Emphasizing the conviviality and peculiarity of it all, there's also a family-style Thanksgiving dinner. Keaton's granddaughter, Melissa Talmadge Cox, will offer a presentation. There are screenings, of course, and an auction, and a fellow from Chicago named Dennis Scott comes up to play a theater organ.Ī table-read will showcase a new play about Keaton and his third and final wife, Eleanor, who attended the first few gatherings and donated some of her family photos. Pesch, 60, leads tours of relevant landmarks, or places where landmarks used to be. Typically, there are 100 to 125 conventioneers, united in their devotion to the deadpan actor known as the Great Stone Face. “They fished, they partied, they worked on their acts for the following season.”īuster remembered it fondly and came back as an adult − and now people come to remember Buster.

“These guys bought the hottest boats on Lake Michigan,” he says. The more successful vaudevillians were able to take summers off, Pesch says, a nice perk when theaters weren’t yet air-conditioned. Which is what they called it: the Actor’s Colony, with assorted other residents including an elephant and a zebra from an “Oddities of the Jungle” act.
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Buster learned by necessity how to take a fall, and his dad figured out that if he could lure a bunch of his showbiz friends, they could have an actor’s colony.
