I Read a Book: Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema and the Invention of the 20th Century by Dana Stevens
A short review of a fascinating book on a panoply of subjects
Did you know that Buster Keaton made a series of financially successful but critically negligible movies after the Silent Era ended? I sure didn’t, because those films, cranked out without much creative input from the brilliant comedian/director/improvisor, don’t turn up often, if at all, on the sources I go to for old movies. I actually had no idea what Keaton did in between 1929, when his last silent film, Spite Marriage came out, and 1952, when he appeared in Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight in what seemed to be a valedictory performance.
I also had no idea about Keaton’s more than fifteen years on vaudeville stages, mostly as the child star of his family act, the Three Keatons, in which he was tossed around like a rag doll and sometimes billed as the Boy Who Could Not Be Damaged. In fact, aside from viewing of such classic films as Sherlock Jr., The General, and Steamboat Bill, Jr., I had very little knowledge about Keaton at all.
There are probably books that go into greater detail about Keaton’s life, but none that put that life into more context within the American culture in which he lived. I mean, look at that subtitle – there was no way I was going to pass on a book about not only Buster Keaton but also the dawn of cinema and nothing less than the invention of the Twentieth Century. Well, maybe that last item is a tad bit hyperbolic, but Dana Stevens does at least make a case that Keaton’s role within cinema was a key part of cinema’s role as an important part of modernity up to 1930, at least.
I love a book that takes detours, and Stevens covers all sorts of topics tangentially related to her ostensible subject. Given the fact that Keaton started getting busted on stage by his rough-hewn (and eventual alcoholic) father at the age of five, it becomes perfectly logical to take a whole chapter to cover the child labor laws which were relatively new at the time. Elbridge Gerry formed the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children back in 1875, one of a slew of 19th Century reform movements more or less aligned with progressive interests. Over the course of the next 25 years, the “Gerrys,” as that Society’s members were called, helped to change the ways children were treated all over the United States, leading to laws stopping the use of youngsters as laborers. Labor included the stage, and Keaton’s father would lie about his son’s age to allow him to appear in New York vaudeville houses.
Stevens’ research leads her down innumerable paths besides that of child labor laws. She describes the vaudeville world itself; the early history of film technology and industry; details of the Childs restaurant chain in which Keaton had the epiphany which led him to film; the careers of Norma and Constance Talmadge, whose sister Natalie would be Keaton’s first wife; the career of Roscoe Arbuckle who was Keaton’s first onscreen partner; the role of women in film-making, especially that of Mabel Normand; the history of the star system in film; the early history of film criticism with an emphasis on the work of Robert Sherwood; the changing role of finance in the movie industry and the consolidation of studios with an emphasis on the role of MGM; the impact of minstrelsy in the early 20th Century with an emphasis on the career of Bert Williams; and that’s just the first half of the book. Eventually, the early history of Alcoholics Anonymous gets covered, the career of Charlie Chaplin, the parallel paths of Keaton with F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the circus in France earn serious verbiage.
Yes, the work of Buster Keaton gets described and analyzed along the way, as does his penchant for bad marriages before he found a good one, his slide into alcoholism until he kinda sorta stopped all by himself barring an occasional nasty binge, his brilliant understanding of the camera and framing and his own body movements, as well as his ability to keep his face from reacting to even the largest of events. Stevens clearly loves the best films Keaton made, and finds the good parts among the dross in the talkies. Keaton was not a deep thinker, but he was an enormously filmmaker and performer who can still, more than 90 years later, make us laugh. That’s no small achievement, and I’m glad to have learned more about the world in which he lived.
I think I first saw him in Beach Blanket Bingo and How To Stuff A Wild Bikini.😁
Any book that lionizes Mabel Normand and trashes Constance Talmadge is OK by me!
I enjoyed reading “Buster Keaton-Cut to the Chase” many years ago. I was not aware of this new one, I’ll have to check it out.