Buster Keaton

The silent films of Buster Keaton (b. 1895–d. 1966) are among the most critically admired American motion pictures of the pre-sound era. Born to traveling medicine show performers during a stopover in a small town in Kansas, Joseph Frank “Buster” Keaton spent his early years on the road, and as a young child he gained star status as the linchpin of the family’s vaudeville act. He made his debut in motion pictures in 1917 as a member of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s company, Comique Films, where he first gained training as comedy filmmaker. From 1920 to 1928 Keaton worked independently and prolifically, supervising and starring in nineteen comedy shorts and ten features, a body of work that remains at the heart of his screen reputation today. Although he never enjoyed the box-office clout of rivals Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, Keaton’s resilient, sober-faced persona was familiar to movie audiences around the world, and he was second only to Chaplin as the object of critical efforts to define the distinct contributions of slapstick comedy to the nascent art of the screen. Keaton’s career entered a tailspin in the early 1930s—the result of a troubled marriage, struggles with alcoholism, and the loss of control over his films—but he recovered his footing by the end of the decade and worked steadily as a performer and comic consultant in movies, television, and theater until his death. An aging Keaton was occasionally the recipient of nostalgic tributes to the “golden years” of slapstick comedy during these years. A great tide of critical reappraisals of Keaton’s work, however, followed the restoration and revival of his silent films, many of which Keaton himself thought lost, in an effort spearheaded by Raymond Rohauer, who mounted Keaton retrospectives in the 1960s, first in Europe then the United States. Showcasing Keaton’s silent film work as a whole, these screenings were accompanied by a growing critical consensus that an artist of the first rank had been rediscovered. In recent years, video and digital technologies have made Keaton’s films available to an expanding audience of fans, critics, historians, and independent researchers. The annotated bibliography that follows provides a roadmap to Keaton scholarship, including reference guides, biographies, and overviews, and the books and articles through which a critical understanding of Keaton’s cinema has taken shape.