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| Images courtesy of Liberation Hall |
Renowned and legendary silent screen comedian Buster Keaton,
known for his innovative physical comedy and stoic facial expressions, began
like many other great silent comedians in vaudeville performing as part of his
family’s traveling act before starting a successful run of short two-reel
comedies such as Cops and The Goat and eventually full-length
features including Steamboat Bill, Jr. and most notably The General. But like his contemporaries including Charlie
Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, they were part of a dying
breed whose respective careers started showing decline amid their foray from
silence into the sound era of filmmaking.
Keaton was no exception, with his career drying up around the late 1920s
before being fired from MGM in 1933 and descending into alcoholism with meager
part time jobs here and there passing through his wake. But then in 1949, comedian Ed Wynn invited
Keaton onto a variety show using the kinescope filming and broadcasting format
giving the actor a platform to more or less revive his brand of vaudevillian sketch
comedy resulting in the aptly named The Buster Keaton Show.
With a total of two seasons filmed, the first of which were
produced on kinescope (only two episodes survived) while the second series was
shot on film, the series lasted until 1951 a year after the series wrapped and
though it was not successful at the time Buster Keaton fans clamoring to garner
any and all of the comedian’s offerings will nevertheless want to give the
series a spin. Thanks to the efforts of
Liberation Hall video in conjunction with renowned preservationist and
archivist Jeff Joseph’s painstaking attention to restoring the films, the
second season of The Buster Keaton Show comprised of seven episodes have
been compiled together for the first time.
Being released simultaneously on DVD and Blu-ray disc where the episodes
have been upscaled to accommodate high-definition televisions and spread across
two discs including a total of five bonus shorts such as the aforementioned Cops
and The Goat, audiences familiar and uninitiated now have a chance
to catch the late great comedian’s foray from the big screen into the small
one.
Structured very much like one of his live vaudevillian acts
only with television cameras rolling, The Buster Keaton Show episodes (with
exception to the two surviving episodes of the first kinescope season) run
about twenty-five minutes each and consist of the actor using his own name
running a shop and failing spectacularly and hilariously to perform the simple
tasks of servicing his customers at every turn.
Featuring cameos from other notable comics including Margaret Dumont, Harold
Goodwin, Hamn Mann and Harvey Parry as well as Keaton’s wife Eleanor, the
sketch comedy skits include everything from trying to run a bakery, painting a
billboard, enlisting in the army and dreaming of playing ping pong and having
tea with a talking gorilla on a safari.
There’s also some room for flashbacks and tall tales such as when
grandpa Keaton tells a grandson stories of the old West and we flash back into
an old saloon with Keaton naturally causing mayhem. Overall the show is funny but much like his
comrade Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight featuring Keaton in a sneaky cameo
or looking at something like Laurel & Hardy’s Atoll K, you can see
the age is wearing on the actors still doing what they’ve always done from day
one and it becomes a little bit poignant not seeing them performing at their
prime.
With the bonus shorts ranging from 1921 to 22 in
less-than-stellar but otherwise watchable quality and the three televised
shorts including one with vintage commercial breaks included, The Buster
Keaton Show is a mostly intact (save for a couple of picture dropouts)
collection of old 1950s television presenting Buster Keaton perhaps with his
best days behind him but nevertheless happy to still be working at what made
him such an iconic screen talent in the first place. Not a grand revelation of televised 1950s
comedy, but Keaton aficionados will be pleased and there’s well over four hours
worth of material to wade through here.
Liberation Hall is still a relatively new boutique label, with their
previous release being Paul Bartel’s previously unreleased Shelf Life
and The Buster Keaton Show unfortunately as with its initial broadcast will
likely have limited appeal outside of Keaton die-hards. But it was a well put together collection
nevertheless showing Keaton still beating to the tune of his own drum even if
the rest of the comedy audience world had moved on without him.
--Andrew Kotwicki
