Name: My Wonderful World Of Slapstick
ISBN: 9780306801785

Buster Keaton

Charles Samuels

Buster Keaton's autobiography is a view into the quirky mind behind the stoic face of the legendary film comedian.

My Wonderful World Of Slapstick

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I think I have had the happiest and luckiest of lives. Maybe this is because I never expected as much as I got. What I expected was hard knocks. I always expected to have to work hard. Maybe harder than other people because of my lack of education. And when the knocks came I felt it was no surprise. I had always known life was like that, full of uppercuts for the deserving and undeserving alike. But it would be ridiculous of me to complain. I find it impossible to feel sorry for myself. I count the years of defeat and grief and disappointment, and their percentage is so minute that it continually surprises and delights me.

And if there is sweeter music this side of heaven I haven't heard it. Dr. Avedon said I could live to be a hundred years old. I intend to do it. For who would not wish to live a hundred years in a world where there are so many people who remember with gratitude and affection a little man with a frozen face who made them laugh a bit long years ago when they and I were both young?

If there is a better place in the world to be— when I’m not in front of an audience or a camera— someone else will have to name it.

Over half century ago the society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children complained to Mayor Van Wyck, of New York, that Joe Keaton, a vaudeville actor, was brutally mistreating his five-year old son. At each afternoon and evening performance the child, billed as “The Human Mop”, was slammed on the floor, hurled into the wings, and sometimes banged into bass drums. Unable to find a bruise or scratch on the lad, Mayor Van Wyck refused to ban the act. The “Human Mop” bounced on to worldwide fame as Buster Keaton, one of this century’s greatest comedians. In this intimate autobiography Buster Keaton tells his whole personal and professional story, beginning with his colourful and exciting childhood as the undentable tot in the “Three Keatons” whose proudest boast was having the rowdiest, roughest act in vaudeville. Buster has played with all the great ones, from George M. Cohen and Bojangles Robinson and Al Jolson to Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan and Red Skelton, during his sixty years as a star in vaudeville, silent and talking pictures, night clubs and television. Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle got him into the movies and taught him how to throw a custard pie. Buster could not even keep slapstick out of his eleven months as a draftee in our World War I army. He came out to help create the Golden Age of Comedy with his friends Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Arbuckle, Mack Sennett and the Keystone Cops. Marital troubles and alcoholism once got Buster down, but could not keep him down. MY WONDERFUL WORLD OF SLAPSTICK was written with the collaboration of Charles Samuels, co-author of His Eye Is On the Sparrow, Ethel Waters’ best-selling autobiography. Buster Keaton’s Life Story will enchant and thrill all those who enjoy looking past the glitter and the grease paint into a magnificent performer’s mind and heart.

buster keaton has had an undeniable impact on cinema. his films, decades after their release, are still referenced in modern media. he was a visionary. a comedic genius with impeccable timing and an impressive ability for physical comedy. his legacy is eternal. getting to be in his mind (even for two-hundred pages) was such a treat. there will never be anoter buster keaton. he was one-in-a-million!