Buster Keaton a reliable narrator?

[John Bengtson]

How reliable a narrator was Buster? I lack the citation, but my notes say in a 1929 interview Buster describes the high dive scene in Hard Luck, with the left base of the “T” shaped pool covered with thin wax, allowing him to safely dive into the pool deck. This conveniently ignores how they actually animated his dive.

I ask because logic and multiple clues suggest the famous scene from Three Ages, where Buster dives from one tall building to another, only to miss and fall, was not an accident, but planned that way all along. The recent Curtis biography quotes Buster at length from a late-in-life interview about filming the jump and missing (pages 223-225), putting Buster in bed for several days to recuperate, following which they came up with the later scenes of falling through the awnings, swinging on drain spouts, and landing in a fire house.

I don’t know the source of Buster’s interview, BUT … Buster also “remembers” filming the scene above the Third Street or Broadway Tunnel, which is flat out wrong. It was staged above the Hill Street Tunnel. Buster’s narrative of creating this wonderful sequence after the “accident” makes for a great story. It’s easy to believe Buster simply tossed out the wrong tunnel name, and difficult to believe he miss-remembered spending time in bed following a Three Ages accident … unless he was an unreliable narrator, and the legend makes for a better story than the truth. Any thoughts or citations you can share about Buster’s inaccurate “recollections”?

[Richard M Roberts]

Well, Buster was a more reliable narrator than say, Hal Roach, but if you read his own authorized autobiography, he still strays from the truth a fair amount of the time. Yet you also have to remember that there are frequently good reasons for show business participants to adapt the stories they tell to the public and press. Stories of injuries on set will always be downplayed or not admitted to when one had to remain insurable for their next movie, which may explain why Buster would not tell the story of his missing the fall in THE THREE AGES at the time he was working, but would have no problem later in life admitting to it when there was no risk of it affecting his career(and the story is most likely true, it’s obvious that he misses the jump in the film, it does not looked planned in any way at all). Good Filmmakers learn pretty quickly how to utilize and adapt to the “happy accidents” that always occur in making films.

And again, the use of special effects in comedies was actually considered by the comedy professionals akin to the way magicians keep quiet about how they do their tricks. Comedy Film Industry contracts frequently had clauses that demanded performers and technicians keep mum about how things were done in comedies. This is why in all the years I have been researching that Industry I have never see one photo of any setups for the use of wires or cranes or any of that rigging in Silent Comedy, and it was abundant. Performer would claim doing stunts that they never did, and special effects experts seldom explained in any thoroughness how they created specific effects, they wanted to keep them from being stolen by other professionals in their line.

And yes, one has to remember that all these people were storytellers, and frequently wouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good one. There were also personal feelings of others to be considered, and indeed, memory is never to be completely relied upon. Buster probably shot scenes on both the Broadway and Hill Street Tunnels, and why should it matter all that much to anyone all those years later doesn’t even cross his mind. No one expected OCD film nerds a hundred years later to be micromanaging and inspecting all of this information and frankly, sometimes we still wonder why and how much it really matters, especially to the majority of the population.

So Buster gets a pass, he’s certainly not the wholesale creator of new cloth like a number of others, and it was also dependent on the quality of the person interviewing him. If it was a novice or a puff-piece interview, Buster would trot out his standard stories and be very careful of what he said, but if it was someone really interested or versed with some knowledge of the era, he would be more forthcoming in his facts and history. If you ever see the TODAY SHOW devoted to Buster when he was plugging MY WONDERFUL WORLD OF SLAPSTICK, you can see him start out with Hugh Downs in his careful mode, then warm up as he realizes Downs actually knows a thing or two about his life and is interested and it becomes a much better interview.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[John Bengtson]

Thank you Richard - everything you say makes sense, and I had not considered producers would downplay accidents at the time in order to remain insurable for future projects.

At this point I concede it seems more likely than not that Buster's fall was indeed an accident.

But, it still flies in the face of logic and certain visual clues. I've been chewing on this for some time, and hope to write it up later this year. Will I convince myself, or anyone else, it was not an accident, but planned? Who knows - but the only seemingly indisputable "fact" in favor of it being an "accident" is Buster's recollection. Thanks again, John