Leonard Maltin is one of the world’s most respected film critics and historians. This volume can lay claim to being definitive Others can, and will, continue to write about Buster Keaton and offer their own interpretations…but I can’t imagine anyone else tackling his life. His ability to communicate is matched only by his diligence in conducting research that goes beyond the ordinary. Fields, Spencer Tracy, and William Cameron Menzies, among others. I’m familiar with the act’s bête noir, The Gerry Society, which sought to protect children in show business, but again the author expands our knowledge with useful and amusing details.Ĭurtis is a superior biographer, having tackled W.C.
I’ve read descriptions of the family vaudeville act The Three Keatons before, but never in such rich and vivid detail. This revelatory quality permeates the hefty book, along with a selection of rare photographs. Curtis also proffers original thoughts that help us understand Buster’s unique personality, work ethic and his laissez-faire attitude toward his producer (and brother-in-law) Joseph Schenck. New information about films made one hundred years ago? That’s right. It’s not that I don’t know the basics of Buster’s life and career Curtis has dug deep and found fresh, fascinating details that explain how and why some movies came about, and how the methodical performer and filmmaker executed some of his still-astonishing gags. I was genuinely excited to learn what was coming next. By the time I got to Buster Keaton’s blossoming film career in the 1920s, it was hard to put down. I cleared time on my calendar to read it cover to cover. BUSTER KEATON: A FILMMAKER’S LIFE by James Curtis (Knopf)Īt more than 600 pages, this is not the kind of book one takes up casually.
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