Buster Keaton Cheats Death in Two Classic Films

 

OUR HOSPITALITY/SHERLOCK HOLMES JR. (1923/1924)

Directed by Buster Keaton & John Blystone; Keaton

Metro Pictures/MGM

74 minutes; 45 minutes; Not Rated

 

A recent NPR Fresh Air interview with author Dana Stevens prompted me to buy Camera Man, Stevens’ new book on silent film icon Buster Keaton. In his day, only Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd matched Keaton’s fame. Each pioneered forms of physical comedy that transformed movies from curiosities to mass entertainment. Keaton also directed many of his films. Our Hospitality and Sherlock Jr. are packaged on the same disc for those who have DVD players, though you can stream them separately. Each spotlights Keaton in front of and behind the camera.

 

 

 

Our Hospitality could have inserted the word “Southern” in the middle of its title. It riffs off the infamous Hatfield/McCoy feuds of the late 19^th century. For Keaton it was a family affair. His son, Buster Keaton Jr. plays one-year-old Willie McKay, Keaton is the adult Willie, his love interest, Natalie Talmadge, was his first wife, and his father Joe appears as locomotive engineer. It opens in a scene in which the infant McKay’s father and a Canfield assassin kill each other. His mother knows that the Canfields will seek to kill all the McKays, so she trundles Willie off to New York, where he grows up in ignorance of the feud.

 

Years later, Willie learns he has inherited the old McKay “mansion” and ventures southward to claim it, with a stern warning not to tell anyone his last name. There are two very funny transportation scenes, one of Keaton riding an early bicycle, but of the push and glide variety rather than one that is pedaled. Funnier still is the journey on an early train–basically rolling stage coaches–in which the rails are placed on the terrain as it is rather than levelled. On the trip he meets a woman named Virginia (Talmadge), who invites him have dinner with her family. He has no idea who they are, but word soon gets out that he is a McKay and the roly-poly Canfield paterfamilias tells his two strapping sons that “honor” demands McKay be killed. Everything that can go wrong does and Willie shows up at the door, still ignorant that he is about to sup with Canfields bent on homicide.

 

Lucky for him that “honor” also demands that a Canfield cannot kill a guest as long as he’s inside the house. Imagine all the ways in which Willie manages to be inside when he learns he is a target and Keaton pulls off several you probably hadn’t conjured. He’s good at avoiding being shot outside as well. A classic scene sees him battle a raging river, avoid going over a waterfall, and rescuing Virginia. Love triumphs. The river scenes are all the more remarkable in that Keaton did his own stunts decades before special effects.

 

 

 

For me, Sherlock Jr. was the funnier of the two films, though it’s more crudely made. Keaton is a distracted movie projectionist and theater cleaner who needs money to impress a young woman (Kathryn McGuire) who is also being pursued by a dandy (Ward Crane). Every windfall ends badly and all he has is $1, which he uses to buy a box of chocolates. On a whim, he changes the 1 to a 4, which trumps the $3 candy purchased by the dandy/villain. But the villain steals the watch of the girl’s father (Joe Keaton), pawns it, and sneaks the pawn ticket into Keaton’s pocket who retires in unjust disgrace.  

 

The title comes from the forlorn Keaton’s dream as he falls asleep in the projection booth. He imagines himself as a suave detective who cracks a theft case involving Crane. That’s not how it goes down when he awakens, but Crane is exposed as a thief and a cad, the girl is again smitten, and Keaton backs her away from the movie being projected so he can take wooing cues from the dashing man on the screen. The scenes that most impress, of course, are the fantasy dream sequences. They are half pre-James Bond–the restored print even uses Bond music on the soundtrack–and they again make you wonder how Keaton didn’t kill himself. One involves a driverless motorcycle with Keaton riding on the handlebars. It must be seen to be appreciated.

 

These are silent films and, by today’s standards, seemingly unsophisticated. Don’t despair if you think I’ve given away the story. In early features–these two are seven and five reels respectively–you really couldn’t easily tell an overly complex story as the only dialogue appeared on intertitle cards. The films are really about sight gags and the acrobatic ways Keaton carries himself. The man was a veritable one-man Cirque du Soliel.

 

Rob Weir