Buster’s Best Loved Stunts
Two tons of house front falls on top of Buster in what is surely his most famous stunt, if not the most famous stunt of all time. His salvation comes in the form of a small upstairs window, wider than his shoulders by only a couple of inches.
Were he to fail to stand exactly where the nails that had been driven into the ground to mark the spot, were he to move forward even slightly, he would be killed instantly.
Co-director Chuck Reisner couldn’t bear to witness the scene. “My father, who was a very religious man, a Christian Scientist, had a practitioner up there,” his son, Dean, remembered, “and they were praying all day because here comes this stunt and my father couldn’t bear to see it. He and the practitioner were off praying in one corner and waiting to find out whether Buster came through it or not.
“Two extra women on the sidelines fainted,” Keaton said in 1930, relishing the memory, “and the cameramen turned their backs as they ground out the film.” The thrilling shot came off beautifully. “But it’s a one-take scene and we got it that way. You don’t do those things twice.” He would later claim that the house scene was one of his "greatest thrills," before noting, "I was mad at the time, or I would never have done the thing."
Although by his own admission Buster only ever had one day of schooling, he must have learned a little about physics along the way.
I don’t know how else he was able to convince himself that he could perform this iconic stunt Cops without ripping his arm out of its socket.
No special affects were used here, and no camera trickery either. Just incredible timing, incredible strength and somehow managing to factor his height and weight with the speed of the car and deciding to risk it.
This scene was originally intended to be filmed in a swimming pool, but Buster wanted deeper water, so after destroying an indoor pool in Riversdale California by over-filling it with water and cracking the bottom, he decided to film in Lake Tahoe where the water was deep, very clear but very cold. Buster could only stay underwater for a few minutes at a time.
As always Buster insisted on doing it himself despite the dangers and even had a special divers helmet made with a clear front screen so that the audience could see his face and know he wasn’t cheating them.
In what filmmaker James Blue would call “a moment of almost almost pathetic beauty,” Buster sits dejectedly on the coupling rod that connects the great metal wheels of the General and remains there, frozen in place, as the engine begins to move towards the tunnel. For this stunt Buster only had to sit very still, but as with the Steamboat Bill stunt, it also required nerves of steel.
“I was running the engine myself all through the picture. I could handle that thing so well I was stopping it on a dime. But when it came to the shot, I asked the engineer whether we could do it. He said “there’s only one danger. A fraction too much steam and the wheel spins, and if it spins it will kill you then and there”. We tried it four or five times and in the end the engineer was satisfied that he could handle it. So we went ahead and did it”
Two stunts could have resulted in Buster’s death in Our Hospitality.
The film climaxes in a daring rescue of the heroine Virginia, whose boat is being swept downstream through the rapids. As usual, Buster had refused to use a double. As a safety precaution, wire was attached to his body and to make sure he would stay within camera range.
When the cameras started to roll, he plunged into the fierce current of the Truckee River and began to swim. A few seconds later, the wire snapped and he shot forward, tumbling over rocks and boulders, swallowing great mouthfuls of foam as he was borne toward the rapids. It took all his strength to maneuver himself to the river's edge so that he could grab an overhanging branch.
The cameraman did as was always ordered to by Buster and kept filming. When he was found ten minutes later, Buster lay in the underbrush along the riverbank facedown in the mud, his feet still dangling in the water. He did not move when they pulled him out. His first words as he lifted his head were: "Did Nate see it” Nate was Natalie Talmadge his wife and co star. She had seen it.
The footage of the accident was used in the final film.
Back in Hollywood, he completed the rescue sequence on the lot. A waterfall was constructed over the swimming pool. To create the distant valley below the falls, a miniature set was planted with hundreds of tiny trees. As Virginia's boat plunges over the falls, Willie uses a rope to swing out over the waterfall and grab her at the last moment. Although a dummy was substituted for Natalie, Buster performed the dangerous stunt himself. Hanging upside down underneath the waterfall, he swallowed so much water that a doctor was called to give him first aid.
The film critic David Thomson described Keaton's style of comedy thusly: "Buster plainly is a man inclined towards a belief in nothing but mathematics and absurdity ... like a number that has always been searching for the right equation”
Many of Buster’s stunts comprised of a perfect combination of “mathematics and absurdity” including this stunt from Sherlock Jr. which involved his holding onto an upright roadblock gate that swings down, with him jumping onto an oncoming car at the right moment. It has an almost James Bond like quality of humour and coolness about it.
Buster did not want to do Seven Chances. He was not happy with the script but was compelled to make it as the studio had already bought it.
At the first test screening he was disappointed by how disengaged the audience were. The only time they seemed to perk up was towards the end of the movie. He is being chased by the pack of brides and runs down the side of a hill to get away when some boulders start falling behind him. He manages to dodge them just in time.
Buster took note of this reaction and just went with it. He had papier-mâché boulders made in various sizes and created a whole new scene carrying on from that point. It is one of the most memorable moments in the whole movie.
Although the boulders were fake, due to the size of some of them if they’d hit him they would no doubt have caused some damage. Buster had to be super fast and super nimble to avoid getting hit. Fortunately he was both.
I sometimes wonder if this scene influenced the famous boulder scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
"Of course all my weight pulls on the rope, and I pull the spout down and it drenches me with water. I didn't know how strong that water pressure was. Well, it just tore my grip loose as if I had no grip at all and dropped me the minute it hit me. And I lit on my back with my head right across the rail right on my neck. It was a pretty hard fall, and that water pushed me down....I had a headache for a few hours.... I said, 'I want a drink.' I turned at the next block coming back from location-it was out there in the [San Fernando] Valley someplace. I went in to see Mildred Harris, Charlie Chaplin's first wife, and I went into her house and she gave me a couple of stiff drinks. During Prohibition, see, when you couldn't just stop anyplace to get a drink. So, that numbed me enough that I woke up the following morning, my head was clear and I never stopped working”.
Reader, he’d broken his neck.
“So, my scene was that with the cops chasing me, I took advantage of the lid of a skylight and laid it over the edge of the roof to use as a springboard. I backed up, hit it, and tried to make it to the other side, which was probably about eighteen feet. Well, I misjudged the spring of that board and didn’t make it. I hit flat up against the other set and fell to the net, but I hit hard enough that I jammed my knees a little bit, and hips and elbows and I had to go home and stay in bed for about three days. And, of course, at the same time, me and the scenario department were a little sick because we can’t make that leap. That throws the whole chase sequence, that routine, right out the window. So the boys the next day went into the projecting room and saw the scene anyhow, ’cause they had it printed to look at it. Well, they got a thrill out of it, so they came back and told me about it. I say ‘Well, if it looks that good let’s see if we can pick it up this way: The best thing to do is to put an awning on a window, just a little small awning, just enough to break my fall.’ ’Cause on the screen you could see that I fell about sixteen feet. I must have passed two stories. So now you go in and drop into something just to slow me up, to break my fall, and I can swing from that onto a rainspout, and when I get a hold of it, it breaks and lets me sway out away from the building hanging onto it. And for a finish, it collapses enough that it hinges and throws me down through a window a couple of floors below. Well, when this pipe broke and threw me through the window, we went in there and built the sleeping quarters of the fire department with a sliding pole in the background. Well, it ended up…It was the biggest laughing sequence in the picture…because I missed it in the original trick.”
