My Wonderful World Of Slapstick, by Buster Keaton
Editorial review of My Wonderful World Of Slapstick courtesy of Amazon.com
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.
Table of Contents
- Dedication
- The Three Keatons
- I Become a Social Issue
- The Keatons Invade England
- Back Home Again in God’s Country
- One Way to Get into the Movies
- When the World was Ours
- Boffos by Man and Beast
- The Day the Laughter Stopped
- Marriage and Prosperity Sneak Up on Me
- My $300,000 Home and Some Other Semi-Triumphs
- The Worst Mistake of My Life
- The Talkie Revolution
- The Chapter I Hate to Write
- A Pratfall Can Be a Beautiful Thing
- All’s Well that Ends Well
- Request from the Publisher