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Joseph Frank Keaton Jr. (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966), known by his professional name as Buster Keaton, Pamplinas ("Nonsense") in Spanish markets, was a popular and influential American silent-film comic actor and filmmaker. more...

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His trademark was physical comedy with a stoic, deadpan expression on his face, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face", Cara de palo ("Wooden face") in Spanish markets. His work as a performer and director is widely regarded to be some of the most innovative and important work in the history of cinema. He was recognized as the 7th greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

A 2002 world-wide poll by Sight and Sound ranked Keaton's The General as the 15th best film of all time. Three other Keaton films received votes in the survey: Our Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator.

Biography

Early life in vaudeville

Keaton was born into the world of vaudeville. His father, Joseph Hallie Keaton, a native of Vigo County, Indiana, known in the show business world as Joe Keaton, and Harry Houdini owned a travelling show called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company, which performed on stage and sold patent medicine on the side. Keaton was born in Piqua (PICK-way), Kansas, the small town where his mother, Myra Edith Cutler, happened to go into labor.

Legend has it that one day before a vaudeville performance, Keaton a very young age was walking down a flight of stairs, but tripped and fell down the entire flight. Miraculously Keaton got right back up, and the famous magician Harry Houdini, who was in the performance, saw Keaton fall and said to his mother that he was quite the little buster. The name Buster Keaton stuck with him ever since.

At the age of three, he began performing with his parents as The Three Keatons; the storyline of the act was how to raise a small child. Myra played the saxophone to one side while Joe and Buster performed on center stage. Buster would goad Joe by disobeying him, and Joe would respond by throwing Buster against the scenery, into the orchestra pit, or even into the audience. The act evolved as Buster learned to take trick falls safely. He was rarely injured or bruised on stage. Nevertheless, this knockabout style of comedy led to accusations of child abuse. Decades later, Keaton said that he was never abused by his father and that the falls and physical comedy were a matter of proper technical execution. In fact, Buster would have so much fun, he would begin laughing as his father threw him across the stage. This drew fewer laughs from the audience, so Buster adopted his famous dead-pan expression whenever he was working.

The act ran up against laws banning child performers in vaudeville. When one official saw Buster in full costume and make-up, he asked a stage-hand how old that performer was. The stage-hand shrugged and pointed to Buster's mother. "I don't know," he said, "ask his wife!" Despite tangles with the law and a disastrous tour of the English Music Halls, Buster was a rising star in the theater, so much so that even when Myra and Joe tried to introduce Buster's siblings into the act, Buster remained the central attraction.

Read more at Wikipedia.org