Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924).
I don’t know what I expected. For some reason, when booking my plane ticket from Chicago to Muskegon, Michigan (a relatively short, three-hour journey by car, but having lived in the city for over ten years, I no longer have a driver's license and thus had to seek another mode of transportation), I just assumed it would be a “normal,” albeit probably smaller, plane that would chariot us intrepid travelers to the neighboring state. So when I turned up at O’Hare, I thought nothing of being asked to provide my weight and having my carry-on bags weighed as well, nothing of the smaller-than-usual waiting area, nothing of taking an elevator directly to the tarmac rather than descending via the usual jet bridge.
The sight of the nine-seat Cessna shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. More disconcerting was the passenger who reveled in telling the lot of us why the plane flew around Lake Michigan, not across it: in case it crashed, it could more easily be found.
This seemed an appropriate way to get to the International Buster Keaton Society's 2023 Convention, its 29th overall and, per usual, held as close to Keaton’s October 4 birthday as possible (the convention took place on October 6 and 7). The Great Stone Face was certainly prone to feats of bravery; I’m exaggerating a bit here, but smaller planes are more susceptible to accidents than larger ones, and when is flying ever fun? The sort of jovially funereal countenance with which Keaton faced comic adversity seemed the most fitting response to this puddle-jumper—nay, the only response, if one is to consider themselves a true Buster fan.
The International Buster Keaton Society is a volunteer-run nonprofit. Their mission, according to their website, is “to foster and perpetuate an appreciation and understanding of the life, career, and films of Buster Keaton, to advocate for historical accuracy about Keaton’s life and work, to encourage dissemination of information about Keaton, and to endorse preservation and restoration of Keaton’s films and performances.” As for what drew me, a devoted Buster fan but a convention novitiate nevertheless, to this rather niche cinema-centric event, I had it on good authority that this convention was the most fun a person could legally have. This was imparted to me by Dennis Scott, house organist at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, who regularly attends the convention and accompanies its attendant film screenings at Muskegon’s majestic Frauenthal Center. As I trust every silent-film accompanist unquestioningly and I adore Buster Keaton, this seemed like a worthwhile investment of time and money.
Keaton is an iconic figure, his non-smiling facade and ever-present porkpie hat as familiar to cinema lovers as Chaplin’s bowler hat and toothbrush-style mustache. His lasting appeal ranges from his everyman stoicism, to his bold feats of acrobatics and special effects, to his impact as a consummate auteur. Orson Welles said of Keaton that he was “the greatest of all the clowns in the history of the cinema” and considered him to be one of the most beautiful people ever photographed. Jackie Chan admires the comedian enough to have recreated many of his famous stunts in his own death-defying spectacles of cinema.
In many ways Keaton’s star power has endured into the 21st century as that of other classic cinema stars—especially from the silent era—has not. Within just the last decade, he's been both celebrated and studied in Peter Bogdanovich's 2018 The Great Buster: A Celebration, featuring the likes of Johnny Knoxville, Mel Brooks, and Werner Herzog waxing poetic over their eidolon, and a pair of new books published in 2022: Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life by prolific biographer James Curtis (who appeared at the convention via a prerecorded interview with one of the organizers) and Slate critic Dana Stevens’s Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century.
Keaton’s legacy surpasses these more “inside-baseball” sources. There are references to Keaton in all four John Wick films, and a headline in GeekTyrant, a self-branded “source for geek culture,” goes so far as to claim that “Buster Keaton was the Tom Cruise of the silent film era.” (Another recent headline, in Queerty, exclaims, “Why the gays are still thirsty for silent film star Buster Keaton, the original short king.”) Keaton was undeniably ahead of his time, allowing him to be perennially of the times, whenever that time may be. In a recent screening of Sherlock Jr. (1924) with an audience that included children, hearing their laughter cemented this for me. His brilliance supersedes verbal language, and he uses his body as a tool to communicate broad truths with a quick wit. Keaton is a singular physical talent, but his persona is ultimately relatable: an underdog who emerges as the hero of his own story, unflappable in the face of adversity. His 1921 two-reeler The High Sign begins with an intertitle that reads, “Our hero came from nowhere—He wasn’t going anywhere and got kicked off somewhere”; film writer Brad Stevens remarked in a 2006 roundtable for Eureka’s complete box set of Keaton shorts that the adage “so neatly demonstrates why Keaton appealed to the existentialists.”
Members of the Society, Scott included, proudly adopt the label “Damfino” to identify themselves as Keaton fans. This is the name of the titular vessel in Keaton’s 1921 short film The Boat; Keaton’s character had built the craft, which leads to one among many mishaps after he and his family set sail. Then, when all is said and done, and the family has been washed ashore following the loss of their boat, his wife asks where they are. “Damn if I know,” Buster mouths. The phrase, the Society’s website declares, “is also what we encourage anyone in the world to say, anytime and anywhere that times are tough, the questions are tougher, and the answer is just too elusive: Damfino!” How very existential, indeed.
The Boat (Buster Keaton, 1921).
The group that makes a yearly sojourn to this cinema-history mecca is so tight-knit that, upon arrival at my hotel, I could sense the eyes of regular attendees on me, trying to assess whether or not I was a newbie. After that, the first official event of the convention was a welcome reception, held at the visitors center of the Muskegon Union Depot.
But why were we in Muskegon? Keaton was born in Piqua, Kansas, though it may be more accurate to say he was born into vaudeville. His parents, Joe and Myra, toured as the Two Keatons, an act that evolved into the Three Keatons in 1898, when a three-year-old Buster was first introduced to the stage. Naturally, traveling was a huge part of the Keatons’ lives, but they still managed to find a home in Muskegon, where they spent idyllic summers with other itinerant performers in the city’s Bluffton neighborhood. “The best summers of my life were spent in the cottage Pop had built on Lake Muskegon in 1908,” Keaton wrote in his 1960 autobiography, My Wonderful World of Slapstick.
A historical marker in the Beachwood-Bluffton neighborhood elucidates:
In 1908, Joe Keaton, actor Paul Lucier, and agent Lew Earl founded the Actors' Colony. By 1911 over two hundred theater personalities flocked to Bluffton each summer. They included Keaton, his wife, Myra, and son Joseph Frank, nicknamed “Buster,” who were billed as “The Three Keatons.” Pascoe's Place, a local tavern, became the unofficial club headquarters. By 1918, film began replacing vaudeville and the Actors' Colony declined.
The weekend of the convention was a dreary one, cold rain beating down intermittently. As of the 2021 census, Muskegon is home to approximately 38,000 people, but the inclement weather made the city seem even smaller, less populated. The downtown area is neatly designed, with a street of local shops and restaurants that add charm to such places. It’s hard to say what the locals themselves are like, because I wasn’t sure who lived there and who was attending from out of town—though my cab driver from the small regional airport was aware of the convention, and even wondered if someone he knew whose last name was Keaton was potentially related to the comedian. Still, there was a quiescence I wasn’t used to, having lived in a big city for so long. I imagine that accounted for some of the area’s appeal to the vaudeville veterans, combined with the intimately amiable camaraderie of fellow performers.
In a sense, Keaton is still present in Muskegon. On the occasion of the convention, a life-size (short king, indeed) statue of him is positioned prominently at the top of the Depot’s meeting area. The likeness is uncanny, so much so that at first I assumed it was a real person. An appropriate misunderstanding, as Keaton is a ghostly, almost god-like presence at the convention. Attendees also spoke of Buster as if he were a friend or family member. We had all gathered for a party whose guest of honor would never attend, a specter amid the spectators.
Life-size statue of Buster Keaton. Photograph courtesy of the author.
The theme of this year’s convention—organized as it is every year by the society’s robust board and an even more robust cadre of volunteers—was “The Three Ages of Buster Keaton,” referencing both his 1923 film Three Ages, the first feature he wrote, directed (with Edward F. Cline), produced, and starred in, as well as the three stages of his career: vaudeville, the silent era for which he’s best known, and all that came after he had to give up Buster Keaton Productions, where his independence had allowed him full control, to go to MGM, which he later said was “the worst mistake of my career.” After 1933, when he was fired by Louis B. Mayer, he went on to star in some European and two-reel domestic productions, worked as a gag writer, later had cameos in Hollywood hits such as Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Limelight (1952), and rounded out his long and storied career in television.
Talks during the first two sessions centered on Keaton’s vaudeville influences, one of which was presented by University of Arkansas professor Frank Scheide, whom I recognized from the small plane from Chicago, and the memories of Keaton's granddaughter, Melissa Talmadge Cox, whose mother, Barbara Talmadge, died last year. It’s no surprise that those invested in Keaton are themselves pretty funny people; the ubiquity of porkpie hats at the convention epitomizes both the whimsy and the level of commitment the comedian inspires in his devotees. After hours, participants enthusiastically gathered in the hotel bar and lobby until the early morning hours, and at the talks, people were lively, even as some discussions bordered on academic. There were a fair amount of technical errors during the presentations, which were held in the Muskegon Art Museum’s small auditorium, but they were handled with the kind of improvisation that would have made Buster proud. The audience took these setbacks in stride, accustomed to frequent tonal shifts in the program, ranging from didactic to puckish. Talmadge Cox herself, undoubtedly a guest of honor, jumped in to emcee while convention organizers raced to fix a problem, sharing pictures and memories of mom and Grandpa Buster.
Many of these sessions include screenings of lesser-seen Keaton media. One favorite was Character Studies, a 1927 short thought to have been a present for Charlie Chaplin. In it, stage star Carter DeHaven “turns into” various stars of the time, including Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle (Keaton’s friend, mentor, and collaborator), Harold Lloyd, Jackie Coogan, Douglas Fairbanks, and Rudolph Valentino. I was mystified at first, thinking DeHaven was just that good at imitations, until I caught on to the cinematic sleight-of-hand; at whatever level of erudition I rise to in my cinephilia, the magic of the movies still has a hold over me, a pleasant illusion to which Keaton contributes.
Also part of the program was a featurette about Keaton’s Pamela Drive mansion in Beverly Hills—a dump, he said, that was paid for by a lot of pratfalls. The short illuminated how James Mason, who lived in the estate starting in 1948, helped salvage the comedian’s legacy. After Keaton's career began to flounder, the studios had decided to reclaim the silver from their prints of his films rather than preserve them. But when Mason knocked down a wall in his house's screening room, he discovered Keaton's personal collection of pristine prints of his films—an archive that might otherwise have been lost.
In the sessions devoted to Keaton’s “second age,” historian and filmmaker Paul E. Gierucki's “Cavalcade of Stuff” stole the show. Gierucki assembles a mélange of clips featuring Keaton, rarities that the average fan would be unlikely to come across themselves. A standout was Keaton’s appearance on The Faye Emerson Show in 1950. Known as the First Lady of Television for her robust career on the boob tube following turns on stage and screen, Emerson had Keaton on her Pepsi-sponsored late-night talk show. The appearance epitomizes Buster’s rise and fall, and is prescient of the gradual redemption of his legacy, as Emerson speaks of her young son not knowing who he is: “I was outraged that he didn't know. So that's why I want you on television. I want people to see what you used to do.” And he does it, proving there was little “used to” where Buster was involved.
Buster Keaton (Emmanuel Snitkovsky, 1998). Photograph courtesy of the author.
The convention’s second and final day kicked off with the recorded discussion with Curtis, whose book, Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life, has been optioned for a limited series starring Rami Malek as the funnyman. Curtis, who’s also written biographies on Spencer Tracy, W. C. Fields, James Whale, and William Cameron Menzies, emphasized his investment in the research process. His comprehensive book seems to account for nearly every day of Keaton’s life.
In contrast, Dana Stevens’s recent Keaton study, Camera Man, focuses on the times of the man, putting Keaton in the context of his era. (The author wasn’t in attendance this year but has presented at three past conventions in the process of writing Camera Man.) Stevens writes of Keaton as a "human projectile hurled into the twentieth century," his 1885 birth even coinciding with the emergence of the moving image, and examines various facets of his work and life—including some less savory aspects, such as his sporadic use of blackface and struggles with alcoholism—and how they’re woven into the fabric of the American lexicon.
Stevens also addresses the gender disparity among Hollywood filmmakers; I thought of this during Annette Bochenek’s presentation on Keaton and Lucille Ball. Ball wasn’t a filmmaker, per se, but is undoubtedly an auteur in her own right, and she found in Keaton a comedic mentor. He even coached Ball on a vaudeville-style act that she used in a test pilot for what would later become I Love Lucy.
The women of Keaton’s life were an integral part of it, from his mother Myra to his third wife, Eleanor, to whom he was married until his death in 1966 and who is largely credited with saving both Buster’s life, following decades of alcoholism, and his faltering career. Others, like the Talmadges, have helped keep his legacy alive; his great-granddaughter Keaton Talmadge also appeared onscreen at the convention, in a segment from a 2023 episode of Karie Bible’s Hollywood Kitchen; while interviewing Talmadge, Bible makes a Frozen Face Frappe, which had been used in 1923 to promote Three Ages. (It’s essentially an Orange Julius. Is there nothing for which we can’t credit Keaton?)
The Frauenthal Center, Muskegon, MI. Photograph courtesy of the author.
Three Ages, along with a few short works, was the centerpiece film exhibited at the Frauenthal Center following the group’s annual Thanksgiving banquet. A spoof of D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), Keaton’s film staged the same comedic scenario, about a man competing with a brute for his lady love’s affection, across three eras: the Stone Age, ancient Rome, and then-modern times. It’s long been believed that Keaton, in making a film with three separate parts, had thought he might be able to release them individually as two-reelers if the feature was a bust. But David Macleod, in his talk at the convention, postulated that this may have been a self-effacing white lie Keaton told once the film was already a success.
Would I have ever known this if I hadn’t been to the convention? I wondered, reflecting on how susceptible I, like many movie lovers, am to the legends of cinema. What do we gain from learning more and more about that which we love? The ghostly images of such stars become clearer as we do so, ultimately revealing the truth of the facade. With regard to Keaton, the lack of sentiment conferred through his stony image is balanced by the truth of who he was as a person. He was a genius; he understood comedy, especially physical comedy, like no one before or since. But he was also a person, felled at his prime and left broken-hearted by an industry that chews up even the most brilliant talent and spits them out.
“Everyone at the convention loves to discuss classic comedy in a way that’s learned and honest without ever being pretentious,” film historian Nicolas Ciccone, who was kind enough to give me a ride on a rainy evening during the convention, told me. “Some convention-goers are incredible film scholars, some have worked as performers themselves, and some just come for the fun.”
Ron Pesch, a local historian who specializes both in the history of the Actors’ Colony and Michigan high school athletics history, knows that all it takes to convert someone into a Damfino is the films themselves. “If I get you in there, I gotcha,” he says of the annual screenings at the Frauenthal. “I guarantee you that you’ll laugh, you’ll cheer, you’ll probably stand up at the end and applaud.” Pesch has long provided the local connection for Buster fans all over the world (including one visitor to this year’s convention from Sweden).
The Damfinos certainly do know; they know that Buster Keaton was both man and myth, the walking embodiment of legend, still prone as we all are to pratfalls. They refer to themselves as the “DamFamily”—as in “Welcome to the DamFamily!” like Dennis Scott said to me when I told him I’d become a member—which reveals them as Keaton’s biggest fans and demonstrates the lasting friendship that bonds them together. For all that cinema gives us on the screen, this community is a reminder of what it gives us offscreen as well. To quote the man himself: “Not long ago, a friend asked me what was the greatest pleasure I got from spending my whole life as an actor. There have been so many that I had to think about that for a moment. Then I said, ‘Like everyone else, I like to be with a happy crowd.’”