Buster Keaton in "Sherlock Jr." (1924)

There have been over 100 actors who have played Sherlock Holmes on screen at one time or another in the last century of film and television history. John Barrymore, Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Jeremy Brett and Christopher Plummer to name but a few. Perhaps the most unusual "Holmes" of them all was Buster Keaton who chose to play a character based partly on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's immortal detective  for his second feature film , "Sherlock Junior" (1924).

 

 Keaton plays a young small-town cinema projectionist and theater janitor who is trying to woo a young lady. When her faher's watch is stolen by a romantic rival, and Buster is framed for the theft, he goes back to the theater and dreams himself into the melodramatic detective movie about lost jewels playing at the movie house. With the help of a Holmesian persona and a motorcycle-riding Dr. Watson, this very American Sherlock saves his girl from a ruthless gang of crooks. Now if only his dream can come true and the how-to-be-a-detective book he is reading on-the-job will help clear his name and restore him in good graces with the girl of his dreams. The clips below feature some amazing physical and logistical gags. Watch how Buster finds himself in difficulty when he enters a movie in progress; he becomes the  subject of jump cuts that put him in a variety of dangerous situations.

 

 There is also a dangerous sequence he shot without a stunt double in the runaway motorcycle segement. "Sherlock Jr" runs only about an hour in length but it is one of the most clever and inventive comedies ever made. Just these few minutes only scratch the surface of how inventive and ahead of its time it was in terms of playing with the idea of a person in a movie dreaming he's actually in a movie in his own mind! Here's a bit of the flavor of the film below. The soundtrack is provided by a modern group called the Club Foot Orchestra, and this version was released on KINO films in the 1990's

Marty Feldman: Comedian

Seeing some of my Multiply pals post some great skits from Monty Python films and television episodes got me to thinking about the first British comedian I saw who struck me as being distinctly "off-the-wall".  That honor belongs to Marty Feldman (1934-1982) and the show I remember was a half-hour sketch comedy on called The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine" (1971) which was on for one season in America in 1972-3.  

It was clear after watching this program that, for me,  Feldman was not only funny but truly bizarre and more than a little subversive by American standards of television comedy.   I didn't know anything about Surrealism and such as twelve-year old, but it was clear this guy was coming on as if he had landed from another planet.    Actually, his "alien in a strange land" persona did have an American precedent; Feldman was a big fan of the work of Buster Keaton.  In a very real way, although he had other influences, Keaton was almost reborn in Feldman's capacity to mix imaginative situations on film with extreme physical risk.   

 

Keaton was a major hero for Feldman.  According to writer David Waddle in a "Sight and Sound" magazine article, he kept a photo of Keaton in his dressing room wherever he went.  "To remind me of my roots," he said.  One of the sad things is that he had been working on a script for a film about Buster, but it was never produced due to Marty's death from a heart attack down in Mexico while finishing up a role as a pirate in "Yellowbeard".

 

   It was much later, after reading about "Monty Python Flying Circus" that I discovered how much Feldman's format on his earlier shows in America and the UK had influenced the Python group (John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, et al)  most of whom had worked with and were mentored by Feldman as young writers him during the 1960's on shows like "The Frost Report" and "At Last the 1948 Show". 

Marty had become a comedian in front of the camera in Britain for several years by the time 'The Comedy  Machine" appeared.  My defining memories of the show included was the bizarre animation material that opened and closed the show (done by yet another Python, Terry Gilliam ).  and also the funny and socially daring skits--the funniest as I remember being something called  "Stalking the British Aristocracy".  The sketch was filmed in what looked like a park and showed a bunch of working-class city people driving around in cars and shooting at men and women--presumably titled gentry--dressed from feet to neck in giant grouse costumes and making weird bird noises.   (Marty was one of the hapless and earth-bound birds, primed to be shot!) 

 

What could have been simply cold-blooded was made actually quite silly--on the surface--by  those bird costumes. I wish I had that skit to play, but this other one gives an idea of how unusual and inventive he could be:

      

 

Most non-British film-goers probably remember Marty as Igor in "Young Frankenstein"(1934), a film generally recognized to be the best of Mel Brooks' cycle of film parodies. Here he channels another famous American comedian from the past:

In the first movie Feldman both directed and co-wrote, "The Last Remake of Beau Geste" (1977) he assembled an excellent cast of comedic and dramatic actors to make a quite funny film. Some of it was in the vein of his work with Mel Brooks, but many scenes were far beyond what Brooks could come up with as far as surrealism and drawing from older films to make not just a spoof, but a homage to great films (and tired action-movie cliches) of the past.  Here is a Keatonesque scene from the film, where Marty (as one of the Geste brothers) is helped to escape from prison so the villains can get a hold of a diamond they believe he might have stolen.  

Buster Keaton Baseball Pantomime--"The Cameraman" (1928)

Since this is the last year that venerable Yankee Stadium will be used by the most well-known baseball team in America, I wanted to post this little gem from the end of the Sillent Film era. It's 1928 and Buster Keaton (1895-1966) plays a small-time photographer trying to break into the newsreel business in New York City. He goes to film a ball game, but finds out that the Yanks aren't in town. Undaunted, and left alone in the park, Buster decides to pantomime a baseball game where he is both star pitcher and home-run hitter.


The film is "The Cameraman" and it was shot on location in Manhattan and here in the Bronx, where Yankee Stadium was built and opened in 1923. This is the way the park looked when Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig played there. It was the first film he made for MGM pictures and,after losing all creative control over his work, his association with that studio would end his carrer as a film star by 1933 and land him a broke and alcoholic has-been in Hollywood.

But Buster would eventually sober up and revive his career in television and in guest parts in many films. Keaton did more than survive his self-inflicted and visited-upon setbacks...he endured as the 20th Century's Great American Silent Comedian.

Buster Keaton Delivers!

Here is some more material for your consideration on the greatest silent comedian America produced, Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton.

First off, a short memoir from one of Buster's female co-stars, Bartine Burkett Zane, who was in a classic two reeler with Buster called "The High Sign". The comedy features our hero as a hapless railway wayfarer who begins the film by thrown off a moving train onto the tracks near a small town depot. He and his girl get caught up in a nefarious crime syndicate of desperate men called "The Blinking Buzzards". (The latter also serves as the name of the British Buster Keaton Society, which meet regularly in Kennington, London.)

The article features some interesting insights into what small town Hollywood was like back at the beginning of the 1920's. It also reveals--no surprise here--that Buster Keaton was a good gent who enjoyed a bit of excitement away from the studio, some unpretentious social life at local night spots, and playing reasonably harmless practical jokes on friends.

http://www.hollywoodtimemachine.com/bartine

In keeping with the theme of Buster and the ladies, I also include a link to clips from a You Tube tribute to Buster, this time with a romantic theme. It was editted by El Kaye,who has several other fine Keaton compilations posted for viewing. The appropriate music is by Bryan Adams. What I really like about this compilation is how well you can see Buster's romantic side in his characters--he wasn't just an acrobat or pratfall expert, although he was a genius at gags that included such derring-do. Buster could be very subtle and a very convincing leading man.

http://www.youtube.com/v/6qQ6oXB1VyY

And last but not least here is a link to Buster himself being interviewed in 1958. It is from a Columbia University website. The audio of Buster speaking is far superior to the transcript and you should scroll down halfway through the page at each of the four "sessions" to get the full flavor of the interview .

http://www.fathom.com/course/10701030/index.html

pictured above: Keaton tries out for the ballteam in a stillshot from his first-rate feature film, "College" (1927) .

In real life, Buster played baseball avidly and his studio had their own teams that would play while he and his writers thought up more ideas and gags for the work at hand.

Buster Keaton: The Guy Was A Classic

"I have called Keaton the most silent of silent film comedians without quite explaining why. The silence was related to another deeply rooted quality -- that immobility, that sense of alert repose, we have so often seen in him. Keaton could run like a jackrabbit and, in almost every feature film, he did. He could stunt like Lloyd, as honestly and even more dangerously. His pictures are motion pictures. Yet, though there is a hurricane eternally raging around him, and though he is often caught up in it, Keaton's constant drift is toward the quiet at the hurricane's eye."

-- Walter Kerr,
The Silent Clowns

A bit of an introduction for a comic actor and director who really needs no introduction. His film "The General" is considered one of the great films of all time, of course, but there is a lot more to Keaton's genius at making people laugh than can be found in one feature.

Some of his best work was in his two-reelers, which he made between 1920-22. The "classical" color still above is from "The Three Ages" (1923) , Buster's monochromatic first feature, which features a sequence set in ancient Rome and contains a spoof of serious films subjects of a "Ben Hur" variety. (Buster is in a chariot race with his rival, played by Wallace Berry, and comes prepared to deal with any situation. When a rare snowfall hits the Circus Maximus, our hero pulls out a team of sled dogs from a basket.) Such inventive adaptation was a trademark of every Keaton film.

I love Keaton's humor and am always fascinated not only by the amazing stunts in films like "Sherlock, Jr" (1924), "The Navigator" (1925), and his first MGM film, "The Cameraman" (1928) but by his great subtlety in screen acting. Keaton could make you laugh with just a nod of his face because of his economy of expression. His motto on screen was "think slow, move fast" and he was a great athlete and acrobat to boot. He also was a keen fan of baseball and played it very often on the set with his crew.

Many of Keaton's two reelers are available for viewing on the Web. If you have a high-speed connection, you can see several of them at this site below:

http://www.archive.org/details/TheGoat

You can navigate around the site from "The Goat" and see other of his public domain works. If you want a bit of an introduction to Keaton's career, go ahead and try the site below. Check out the "biography" section which is loaded with quotes from Buster himself and several stills from his private life as well.

http://www.busterkeaton.com/

Walter Kerr's book, The Silent Clowns, by the way is the best book I've found on Silent Comedy. If you want a good biography of Keaton, I'd recommend Tom Dardis book, "Buster Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn't Lie Down" (1981). It may be only available at a library or on Amazon Books, but it is worth a read to get a sense of the man and the obstacles he overcame to continue and thrive in show business after a bad skid in the 1930's when both his marriage and his loss of creative control in the grip of Louis B. Mayer at MGM drove him to addiction and despair.

Ironically, in his art, Buster is one of the best cures for despair ever captured on the moving image. I suspect he will be around and enjoyed for as long as "classic" films are around to enjoy.