‘He Either Has No Fear Or He Is Crazy’: Buster Keaton, How Hollywood’s Most Influential Star Was Forgotten And Rediscovered 

“Buster has been with me and always will be,” admits actor Johnny Knoxville in Peter Bogdanovich’s documentary The Great Buster (2018).

October 4, 2025 was the 130th anniversary of Buster Keaton’s birth. And, at first glance, it doesn’t seem like Knoxville – the soul of the outrageous Jackass franchise – has much in common with the silent film star, who was born in Kansas in 1895 and died in Los Angeles in 1966. But Knoxville points to him as one of his main references… and he confesses that one of the Jackass sequences in which he came closest to dying was the one that emulated the famous collapsing wall in Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928).

Knoxville and Keaton each filmed the scene without any tricks. Keaton – who never used stunt doubles for his extremely dangerous action scenes – used an authentic two-ton facade, with a nail on the ground marking the precise place where he had to stand. If he had moved even a couple of inches, the result could have been dramatic. It’s a classic sequence that Jackie Chan, Shrek and even The Simpsons have paid homage to.

To add to the danger, at the time of filming, Keaton was going through the end of his marriage. He had started drinking. Those who were there say that he didn’t care if he died that day… but, in the end, nobody died.

The legendary actor was, however, injured on other occasions. During the filming of The Electric House (1922), his shoe got caught in an escalator and his foot was crushed. In Our Hospitality (1923), he nearly drowned while shooting a river scene. In The General (1926), he was knocked out from the force of a cannon being fired. He broke his nose in that same film. And he broke his neck while filming a scene for Sherlock Jr. (1924), but he got up and kept going as if nothing had happened.

Yet the incident that had the most serious consequences for Keaton occurred not on a film set, but during World War I, when an ear infection nearly left him deaf. His colleagues praised his high tolerance for pain. Mel Brooks – another actor and director who is fond of physical humor – summed it up in his own way: “He either has no fear or he is crazy.”

Brooks modeled the breaking of the fourth wall – a feature throughout the Young Frankenstein (1974) director’s filmography – on Keaton. And Jon Watts – director of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man films – claims that, in order to achieve expressiveness with the limited facial resources allowed by the Spider-Man mask, he immersed himself in Keaton’s filmography.

It’s impossible to name just how many creators have been influenced by one of the most important auteurs in the history of cinema. Some, however, are especially notable: Woody Allen and Christopher Nolan were inspired by Sherlock Jr. when they made The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and Inception (2010), while George Lucas based aspects of Jar Jar Binks on Keaton’s performance.

Actors such as Oscar Isaac, who based his role in the film Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) on Keaton, have also acknowledged the silent film star’s influence. And he’s a reference for performers as varied as Adam Driver, Awkwafina and Danny Glover.

During his career, some associated his simplicity with a lack of talent. But today, Keaton is considered a point of reference in contemporary acting. “His type of minimalism, stoicism and lyricism transcended the 20th century and can be seen on-screen now perhaps more than ever,” read a 2022 BBC article titled, “Why Buster Keaton is Today’s Most Influential Actor.”

His way of acting – which earned him the nickname “The Great Stone Face” – came from his childhood. As a very young child, he discovered that, if he laughed when he suffered some misfortune, the audience laughed too. But if he remained impassive, the audience would crack up. And he was willing to do anything to get the biggest laugh.

However, Keaton’s life wasn’t all laughter. One of the greatest geniuses in the history of cinema ended up in a psychiatric hospital, turning to alcohol after being destroyed by the studio system and linked to the biggest Hollywood scandal, one that changed the film industry forever.

The most brutal show in the history of theater

Keaton was the son of Joe and Myra Keaton, two vaudeville actors who used their shows to sell patent medicine on the side – a common occurrence at the time. At just a few months old, after nearly suffocating in a costume trunk while his parents were performing on stage, they began keeping him at home. But then, things got worse: the restless Keaton lost a finger and was swept through the air by a cyclone. His parents then decided to take him back on the road with them, incorporating him into their shows so they wouldn’t lose sight of him. “As soon as I could stand on my own two feet, my old man put me in sneakers and baggy pants. And he started playing tricks on me, mostly kicking me all over the stage, or grabbing me by the back of the neck and throwing me around. By the time I was about seven or eight, we were being called ‘the roughest act in the history of theater.’”

One signature act involved throwing the little boy through the air, and sometimes against the floor, other times against a wall, or even into the audience. To achieve this, his father sewed a suitcase handle onto his clothes. The act was billed as “The Little Boy Who Can’t Be Damaged.” But the Gerry Society – an organization that sought to protect children’s rights – wasn’t so sure and went after them. Other actors also questioned Joe Keaton’s methods.

The great Sarah Bernhardt was shocked when she saw it: “How can you do this to this poor boy?” she wondered.

To avoid the Gerry Society, the parents tried to pass their child off as an adult with dwarfism. Sometimes it worked, but other times they ended up at the police station. “We used to get arrested every other week,” Buster confessed. “That is, the old man would get arrested. Once they took me to the mayor of New York City, into his private office, with the city physicians … and they stripped me to examine me for broken bones and bruises. Finding none, the mayor gave me permission to work.”

Despite all of this, Keaton forgave his father. “He wasn’t a bad guy. He always warned me to ‘clench [my] ass’ before jumping.” In 1914, he told the Detroit News: “The secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It’s a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I’d have been killed if I hadn’t been able to land like a cat.” Even today, it’s hard to believe there weren’t tricks or special effects behind some of his impossible stunts, such as grabbing a moving streetcar.

That itinerant lifestyle kept him from attending school. He went for one day, but he distracted the rest of the students so much that he was told not to return. Instead, he began to study at home.

The family grew: the circus act known as “The Keaton Three” became “The Keaton Five.” Money flowed easily and they bought a house. By the age of 12, Keaton had a car (which he couldn’t drive). But his father’s drinking problems and increasingly violent behavior led to the end of the family troupe. That’s when Buster went to Broadway.

His success was instant. And he caught the attention of the biggest star of the time: Fatty Arbuckle. The king of comedy shorts, Arbuckle was the first actor to earn a million dollars per project. Keaton subsequently fell in love with the possibilities of film and gave up his lucrative theater contract to appear in Fatty’s shorts.

Fatty may have seen him as a rival, but he was still his greatest promoter. When he switched to feature films, he sent a letter to 25,000 of his fans that read: “I am sending you a photograph of ‘Buster’ Keaton, the little sad-faced fellow who used to work in my pictures and whom I have selected to follow in my footsteps and make two-reel comedies. As you know, I am now making five-reel comedy features but I did not desert the two-reelers until I felt perfectly sure I had found a worthy successor – one who could make you laugh even more than I did.”

Keaton became the biggest comedy star of the 1920s. His production system consisted of having an idea and coming up with an ending, which he often changed. There was no script because, in his words, “the middle took care of itself.” He would record, show the material to the audience and – depending on the reaction – re-record and re-record until he couldn’t squeeze any more laughs out of it.

Success was coming to him, but not in his domestic life. His marriage to his first wife, Natalie Dalmage, was coming to an end. Keaton lived a modest life, while she aspired to excessive luxury. After the birth of their children, they slept in separate bedrooms and he began seeing other women. Dalmage filed for divorce and changed the children’s last names to her own, something that devastated him.

Adding to the domestic drama was artistic drama. The transition to sound from silent films and his association with MGM – brought on by his blind trust in his producer (Joe Schenk, his brother-in-law) – led him to turn to alcohol. Charles Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, the other geniuses of silent film comedy, warned him not to go to MGM because it would restrict his freedom. He ignored them, making what he would later consider to be “the biggest mistake of my life.”

At Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, there was no room for improvisation. He went from writing his scripts on the fly to having 17 screenwriters limiting everything he did. He went from filming masterpieces like Steamboat Bill, Jr., The General and Sherlock Jr., to working on productions devoid of personality and grace. He lost his zest for his craft, while his alcohol abuse caused financial losses for MGM. Keaton’s absences cost the company $3,000 a day.

After a mental breakdown, he was institutionalized. But according to the documentary So Funny It Hurt (2004), he escaped from a straitjacket. He did this thanks to tricks he had learned from magician Harry Houdini when they shared the stage in their vaudeville days. He began to work more behind the camera, writing scripts for, among others, the Marx Brothers.

As he was gradually forgotten in the United States, Keaton took refuge in Europe, where he made films that weren’t seen in North America and whose quality was questionable. Sometimes, the projects were as fascinating as they were inexplicable, like his collaboration with playwright Samuel Beckett on Film (1965), a short movie.

Like so many silent film stars, Keaton was rescued by television, an emerging phenomenon that reached every home. Thanks to his appearances in competitions and specials – and thanks to his commercials – the United States rediscovered him. He returned to the movie business and had brief roles in Sunset Boulevard (1950), It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), his last film. However, the most notable project of his later period was Limelight (1952), where he met Charles Chaplin for the first time.

Eleanor Norris – Keaton’s last wife, a dancer 23 years his junior – noted that “Chaplin treated him like a king.” She met her husband at the worst moment of his life, when he had declared bankruptcy and was living with his mother. Eleanor was his true love. She took care of him, learned all the lines to perform with him in Europe and protected his legacy. She was with him until his last day. Keaton had worked until the very end and was already so ill with cancer that, for his last production – a commercial for the Construction Safety Association of Ontario, Canada – they had a stunt double on standby, in case he died during filming.

In 1965, a year before his death, Keaton attended the Venice Film Festival, where he received a standing ovation. According to reports, it was the longest at the festival. And he cried. He didn’t know that he was so beloved. The attendees applauded him for films he had made 50 years earlier: their mastery was still valid. He was one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema… but, above all, he was a survivor. “I can’t feel sorry for myself,” he declared in Venice. “It all goes to show that if you stay on the merry-go-round long enough, you’ll get another chance at the brass ring. Luckily, I stayed on.”

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