The Stunt That Ended Buster Keaton’s Brilliant Career

Buster Keaton’s pen­chant and skill for comedic stunts made him one of the biggest stars of the silent-film era.  Nobody at the time imag­ined that he would still be engag­ing in dan­ger­ous-look­ing prat­falls 40 years lat­er in his sev­en­ties, espe­cial­ly since his career seemed to have come to an end in 1926. That was the year of his Civ­il War-set film The Gen­er­al, which, though now crit­i­cal­ly respect­ed, left con­tem­po­rary audi­ences cold. Flops are, per­haps, inevitable, but this one hap­pened to incor­po­rate into the pic­ture the most expen­sive shot in cin­e­ma his­to­ry to date. As a result, says the Ming video above, “Keaton was nev­er giv­en con­trol over his films again.”

Iron­i­cal­ly, unlike the cin­e­mat­ic images that had made him famous, the $42,000 shot in The Gen­er­al did not put its direc­tor-star in appar­ent mor­tal per­il, depict­ing only a rail­road bridge col­laps­ing while a train cross­es it. Though undoubt­ed­ly impres­sive, it would­n’t have been what peo­ple went to a Buster Keaton movie to see.

Here was a man will­ing, after all, to fly from the back of a mov­ing street­car, dan­gle off the edge of a water­fall, risk being crushed by an entire wall of a house, and even break his neck — though he did­n’t dis­cov­er that he’d done so until eleven years lat­er. Mak­ing these and all of Keaton’s oth­er famous stunts involved con­sid­er­able amounts of both cal­cu­lat­ed dan­ger and movie mag­ic.

Some of that movie mag­ic was con­ceived by Keaton him­self, the first film­mak­er, in Quentin Taran­ti­no’s words, to “use cin­e­ma itself to be the joke.” Few per­form­ers could have adapt­ed so well to the medi­um of silent film, with its realms of silent com­e­dy just wait­ing to be opened. And after sound had been around for a few decades, long­time movie­go­ers start­ed to feel like cin­e­ma had lost some of the visu­al exu­ber­ance that it once pos­sessed. By that time, luck­i­ly, Keaton had emerged from his long post-Gen­er­al peri­od of hard-drink­ing malaise, ready to appear not just in the movies again, but also on tele­vi­sion, delight­ing the gen­er­a­tions who remem­bered his ear­li­er work and fas­ci­nat­ing those too young to rec­og­nize him. Even today, when we find our­selves laugh­ing at a scene of elab­o­rate­ly orches­trat­ed phys­i­cal dan­ger, we are, in some sense, wit­ness­ing Keaton’s lega­cy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

30 Buster Keaton Films: “The Great­est of All Com­ic Actors,” “One of the Great­est Film­mak­ers of All Time”

Watch the Only Time Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Per­formed Togeth­er On-Screen (1952)

Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Go Toe to Toe (Almost) in a Hilar­i­ous Box­ing Scene Mash Up from Their Clas­sic Silent Films

A Super­cut of Buster Keaton’s Most Amaz­ing Stunts

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics

The Gen­er­al, “Per­haps the Great­est Film Ever Made,” and 20 Oth­er Buster Keaton Clas­sics Free Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.