a pratfall can be a beautiful thing

In order to give a truly dramatic touch to a tragic pose, Buster Keaton, The Metro comedian who never smiles, proceeds to demonstrate that there is nothing to equal the effectiveness of a perfectly good velvet curtain for draper effects. In presenting this picture of poignant despair all that is necessary is to have a friend who owns a perfectly good curtain.

Silent film icon Buster Keaton in a photograph taken by Melbourne Spurr in 1926.

Sherlock Jr. (1924) dir. Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton

This is my life right now

Buster Keaton during the filming of "Steamboat Bill Jr," 1928

One Week (1920)

Old Frozen-Puss Cracks Buster Keaton, silent flicker's dead-pan catcher for many pie-throwing Hollywood pitchers, is in town, in the flesh, in "Three Men on a Horse," (at Meridian Park) --and not once during the comedy is his pan plastered with pastry. This, plus the extraordinary fact that Keaton is almost as funny off-stage as he is on, was learned yesterday afternoon when The News conducted a photographic interview-on-the-run with the comic. It was on-the-run because Keaton was busy with a last-minute dress rehearsal. But even as he worked, shambling around in baggy pants, he was funny. He was funny without doing anything. Or funny just by looking glum or wistful. Or funny just by getting his feet all twisted up in pretended shyness. But then being funny is his business. And he has been in the business a long time. Buster Keaton started his career 53 years ago as a baby in the "Three Keatons Act" in Vaudeville. Several years later he broke into the movies as a comic under Fatty Arbuckle. Since then, his deadpan and his ability to take a custard pie thrown flush in the face, has endeared him to film audiences the world over. Among the comedian's better-known flickers are, "The Navigator," "Sherlock Homles (there's no Holmes...) Jr.," Steamboat Bill [Jr]," and the "Doughboys." In 1938 Keaton joined MGM's director of shorts and as comedy adviser. He's touring the straw hat circuit this summer, "because show business is in my blood. I wanted to face an audience again," he said. The Washington Daily News - July 1949