Emotional support silent comedian

Buster Keaton + letterboxd reviews

In December 1951, Chaplin sent for him to discuss a scene in his new film, a drama of the English music halls called Limelight. The two men embraced; there was always great affection between them.

“That sequence was a very, very difficult sequence to do, the two of them together,” said Jerry Epstein (Chaplin’s assistant) “Buster came on the first day wearing his Buster Keaton hat, ready to go, and Charlie took him aside and said, ‘Buster, this is not that kind of picture. We’re playing different parts now. We’re not playing the old thing.’ And he said, ‘Yes, Charlie, of course. Sure. Of course. Anything you want.’ Which is what was sweet about him. It was like his first picture. He had all this enthusiasm of starting in pictures again, and that was terribly endearing….The crew just loved it, seeing Keaton and Chaplin working together.”

There was this kind of unconscious communication that went on,” said Norman Lloyd. “Not much talk. They would look and do something, then do it again. No talk. There was a kind of communication between them that was unspoken. But it happened as they would adjust the routine—maybe more music or maybe Charlie wanted to pull the pants up higher or whatever. But then—‘No, we’ll do it again.’ And Buster would keep adding stuff at the piano with having more music falling all over the place.”

The routine ends in applause and death, Calvero working himself into such a lather he tumbles off the edge of the stage and lands in a bass drum, from which he continues to play. They haul him up and carry him off, drum and all, to the laughs and the cheers of the audience. He has hurt his back, he thinks, but as he lies on a couch in his dressing room, the doctor determines he’s had a heart attack. While an ambulance is summoned, he asks to be carried to the wings to watch the performance of a ballerina he’s mentored. And there he dies. As the body is covered with a sheet, the camera pulls back to include those surrounding him, principally Keaton, Sydney Chaplin, Norman Lloyd, and Nigel Bruce. It continues out onto the stage where Claire Bloom, in mid-performance, twirls into the shot.

It was a deceptively complicated movement that momentarily summoned the filmmaker in Keaton. “The camera,” said Lloyd, “was on Charlie—centered on him—and, as we were going backwards, with no dialogue, just music, I heard a voice, very quiet, just above a whisper, saying, ‘It’s okay, Charlie. You’re right in the center of the shot. Yeah, you’re fine, Charlie. It’s perfect. Right in the shot. Right in there…” That was Buster. He just volunteered that. He had nothing to do with the making of the shot at all, but he was directing that scene. He wanted to make sure that camera never got off Charlie. And he’s making certain that Charlie gets his shot.”

While they were to the side with the director, Keeton, eyeballed it, made an X on the stage, and told the stagecrew to cut the ropes when he reached the X.

It was done safely, fortunately, in the single take.

The rest of these clips involved engineers, and sometimes, computers.

I’m not convinced it brushed his arm exactly. I think his sleeve billows out at that second because of the wind created. But it did only miss him by a couple of inches each side 😬