Buster Keaton

Joseph Frank Keaton, better known by his stage name of Buster Keaton, was a filmmaker and former vaudevillian/comedian who made a name for himself from his films in the 1920's. He was known for performing physical comedy with a deadpan expression, which got him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".

Keaton got into the film industry after meeting Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, becoming his co-star and gag man, and appearing in 14 of Arbuckle's short films before his first starring role in 1920's The Saphead. From his work with Arbuckle, Keaton got his own production company, which he used to create a series of short comedy films, before moving to feature-length films.

Keaton's films in the 1920's all met with success, until the mixed reviews and middling reactions to 1927's The General (a film that, today, is widely considered one of his best) made it so he was never trusted with complete control over his own films anymore.

At the dawn of the sound era of film, Buster signed on with MGM - which he would later come to deeply regret, realizing that the studio would greatly limit his output too late to back out of it. The stress of the pressures put on him by the studio caused him to descend into alcoholism, ruining his family life. The studio films he made during the 1930's, working for MGM, and also Educational Pictures and Colombia, were among the films he considered his worst. After leaving Colombia, however, and getting remarried in 1940, Keaton's life started stabilizing, with him taking things a little easier. He appeared in his last starring role in a film in 1946's El Moderno Barbra Azul, a Mexican film that was unseen in the U.S. until it's release on VHS in the 1980s. In 1950, Keaton turned his talents towards television, starting "The Buster Keaton Show", among others.