Keaton's Silent Shorts: Beyond the Laughter

Notes

Notes Chapter 1. Introduction 1. James Agee, "Comedy's Greatest Era," Life, September 3, 1949, reprinted in Agee on Film, vol. 1 (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1969), p. 16. 2. Unless otherwise referenced, the biographical sketch in this book is drawn mainly from Tom Dardis's biography Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn't Lie Down (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1979). 3. Dardis, p. 42. 4. Dardis, p. 138. 5. Dardis, p. 144. 6. Dardis, p. 144. 7. Dardis, p. 144. 8. Buster Keaton, "Why I Never Smile," Ladies' Home Journal, June 26, 1926, reprinted in Hollywood Directors 1914-1940, ed. Richard Koszarski (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 144. 9. A 1930 review that first appeared in TheJudge, reprinted in American Film Criticism, ed. Stanley Kauffmann (New York: Liveright, 1972), p. 234. 10. Ashton Reid, "Strictly for Laughs," Colliers, June 10, 1944. 11. Dardis, p. 200. 12. Agee, p. 4. 13. Agee, p. 15. 14. Agee, p. 16.15 . Agee, p. 17. 16. Raymond Rohauer, "Buster Keaton," The Marble, vol. 4, no. 1 (January -February 1976), p. 3. 17. Murray Schumach, "Keaton Receives Special Film Prize," New York Times, April 6, 1960, p. 46. 18. Rohauer, p. 3. 19. John Gillett and James Blue, "Keaton at Venice," Sight and Sound, vol. 35, no. 1 (Winter 1965), p. 28. 20. Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By . . . (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), p. 474. 305 Notes to Pages 8-38 21. Andrew Sarris, "Buster Keaton Film Festival," Village Voice, September 24, 1970. 22. Film Forum, "Buster Keaton 100," Film Program, February 10March 16, 1995, New York. 23. Stanley Kauffmann, "Buster Keaton Festival," reprinted in Living Images, ed. Stanley Kauffmann (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 22. 24. Buster Keaton, "When Comedy Is Serious," unidentified source, p. 18. 25. The discussion of the structures of comedy is derived from the following books: repetition and the use of dreams, Maurice Charney, Comedy High and Low (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); transformations and equations, Gerald Mast, The Comic Mind (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973); symmetry, Daniel Moews, Keaton: The Silent Features Close Up (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); the comedy-tragedy dichotomy , Raymond Durgnat, The Crazy Mirror (New York: Delta Books, 1969). Chapter 2. One Week (September 1920) 1. Rudi Blesh, Keaton (New York: Collier Books, 1966), p. 84. 2. Elizabeth Peltret, "Poor Child!" Motion Picture Classic, vol. 12, no. 1 (March 1921), pp. 64, 96-97. 3. Blesh, p. 150. 4. David Robinson, Buster Keaton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969), p. 37. 5. Blesh, p. 290. 6. Walter Kerr considers the camera as harrier in The Silent Clowns (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), p. 129. 7. Agee, p. 10. 8. Buster Keaton, with Charles Samuels, My Wondeiful World ifSlapstick (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1960;, reprint, with new introduction by Dwight MacDonald, New York: DaCapo Paperback, 1982). 9. Dardis, pp. 3-4. 10. Robinson, p. 189. Chapter 3. Convict 13 (October 1920) 1. Gillett and Blue, p. 28. 2. Andrew Sarris called this film "grotesque gallows humor" ("Conversations and Concerns, Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett," Columbia 3M Notes to Pages 38-53 Forum, vol. 12, no. 4 [Winter 1969], p. 42). David Robinson states, "Nothing in any of [Keaton's] films is quite so bleak ... [it] has a disturbing quality of violence never appearing again except in the brutal finish ofBattling Butler" (p. 45). Robinson also comments that when viewed in its original amber tint, "the hard contrasts of the black and white convict stripes have a physically disturbing effect of dazzlement" (Buster Keaton, p. 45). 3. Robinson speculates that for Keaton, dreams liberate "fantasy images " (Buster Keaton, p. 185) and that he "justifies his visions by forming them in dreams" (p. 186), such as the elastic rope. 4. Keaton already is forming a definite persona that he would describe as a "little fellow [who] was a working-man and honest" (Keaton, My Wondetful World ifSlapstick, p. 126). Chapter 4. The Scarecrow (December 1920) 1. Blesh, p. 144. 2. The discussion of melodrama is based on Frank Rahill's book, The World if Melodrama (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, Blesh, p. 54. 1967). 3. 4. Rahill (pp. 300-301) writes of the "unimpeachable melodramatic provenance" of these early genres in "a medium which had not learned to speak" (p. 297). 5. Dardis, p. 298. 6. Rahill, pp. 242-43. 7. In his...