Misplaced Pages

#457542

150-816: The overall format of the film is that of a stage play, with much dialogue spoken directly to the camera. Buster Keaton is notable in a speaking but minor supporting role as Dalton, a family friend. Mary Wilson lives with her mother in a cottage but cannot pay the mortgage. Mr. Cribbs, a mustachioed villain with cloak and cane, knocks on the door and spells out the Wilsons' financial position, suggesting that Mary should work in New York. Cribbs hides while waiting for Mary to pass, but she also hides. A young man named Edward Middleton stops to pick up an injured bird and Cribbs questions him. Mary intervenes and instantly falls in love with Middleton. Mary marries Middlelton, who extols

300-416: A second banana : either veteran comic Monty Collins or raucous comic dancer Elsie Ames . The insistent White directed Keaton whenever possible – to Keaton's mild annoyance – and only two Keaton shorts did without White's services because they were filmed on location, away from the studio. Those remaining two shorts were directed by Del Lord , a former director for Mack Sennett . Keaton's personal favorite

450-421: A "trilogy", though this is against the author's own explicit wishes—the prose becomes increasingly bare and stripped down. Molloy , for instance, still retains many of the characteristics of a conventional novel (time, place, movement, and plot) and it makes use of the structure of a detective novel . In Malone Dies , movement and plot are largely dispensed with, though there is still some indication of place and

600-402: A TV show wanted to simulate silent-movie comedy, Keaton answered the call and guested in such successful series as The Ken Murray Show , You Asked for It , The Garry Moore Show , and The Ed Sullivan Show . Well into his fifties, Keaton successfully recreated his old routines, including one stunt in which he propped one foot onto a table, then swung the second foot up next to it and held

750-401: A better than usual film. "Apart from its exceptional quality," writes biographer James Curtis, "the big takeaway from Parlor, Bedroom and Bath was its extraordinary commercial success. Performing better at the box office than any of Keaton's other MGM talkies, it pulled in worldwide rentals of $ 985,000 [$ 20,694,850 in 2024]. With a yield [net profit] of $ 299,000 [$ 6,281,990 in 2024], it became

900-476: A business partnership to re-release his films. Actor James Mason had bought the Keatons' house and found numerous cans of films, among which was Keaton's long-lost classic The Boat . Keaton had prints of the features Three Ages , Sherlock Jr. , Steamboat Bill, Jr. , and College (missing one reel), and the shorts "The Boat" and " My Wife's Relations ". Rohauer instructed Keaton to approach Mason for

1050-559: A career in theatre for its author. Beckett went on to write successful full-length plays, including Fin de partie ( Endgame ) (1957), Krapp's Last Tape (1958, written in English), Happy Days (1961, also written in English), and Play (1963). In 1961, Beckett received the International Publishers' Formentor Prize in recognition of his work, which he shared that year with Jorge Luis Borges . The 1960s were

1200-411: A cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment." Keaton said he had so much fun that he sometimes began laughing as his father threw him across the stage. Noticing that this caused the audience to laugh less, he adopted his famous deadpan expression when performing. The act ran up against laws banning child performers in vaudeville. According to one biographer, Keaton

1350-711: A comedic film about the Civil War, even while noting it had a "few laughs." It was an expensive misfire (the climactic scene of a locomotive plummeting through a burning bridge was the most expensive single shot in silent-film history), and Keaton was never entrusted with total control over his films again. His distributor, United Artists , insisted on a production manager who monitored expenses and interfered with certain story elements. Keaton endured this treatment for two more feature films, and then exchanged his independent setup for employment at Hollywood's biggest studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Keaton's loss of independence as

1500-508: A comedy routine about two inept stage musicians in Charlie Chaplin 's Limelight (released in 1952), recalling the vaudeville of The Playhouse . With the exception of Seeing Stars , a minor publicity film produced in 1922, Limelight was the only time in which the two would ever appear together on film. In 1949, comedian Ed Wynn invited Keaton to appear on his CBS Television comedy-variety show, The Ed Wynn Show , which

1650-473: A deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for Keaton's services. Keaton had little to say about the details of the MGM contract; he would no longer have any financial responsibility for his films, and even his salary had been pre-negotiated, without his own input. Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd advised him against making the move, cautioning that he would lose his independence. But, given Schenck's desire to keep things "in

SECTION 10

#1732798356458

1800-544: A deep dive into Germany's galleries and underground collections. This lasting engagement with the visual arts seeped into his creative process, often shaping his literary output and incentivising him to collaborate with artists such as Joan Mitchell and Geneviève Asse . After the German occupation of France in 1940, Beckett joined the French Resistance , in which he worked as a courier. On several occasions over

1950-436: A drunk and a fat lady and a kid. Get 'em for me.' At my studio they would have the characters I wanted in 10 minutes. But not MGM. You had to requisition a toothpick in triplicate. I just stood there, and everybody is hassling." MGM wanted only Keaton the star, Keaton the creator was considered a waste of time and money because "in the time it took him to develop a project, he could have appeared in two or three pictures set up by

2100-468: A few lines at a time and shoot immediately after. This is discussed in the TCM documentary Buster Keaton: So Funny it Hurt , with Keaton complaining about having to shoot lousy films not just once, but three times. Keaton kept trying to persuade his bosses to let him do things his way. Production head Irving Thalberg would not permit Keaton to create a script from scratch because the studio had already purchased

2250-411: A filmmaker coincided with the coming of sound films (although he was interested in making the transition) and mounting personal problems, and his career in the early sound era was hurt as a result. Keaton's last three features had been produced and released independently, under Keaton's control, and fell short of financial expectations at the box office. In 1928 film executive Nicholas Schenck arranged

2400-560: A gag writer, supplying material for the final three Marx Brothers MGM films: At the Circus (1939), Go West (1940), and The Big Store (1941); these were not as artistically successful as the Marxes' previous MGM features. Keaton also directed three one-reel novelty shorts for the studio, but these did not result in further directorial assignments. In 1939, Columbia Pictures hired Keaton to star in two-reel comedies; he filmed two at

2550-403: A gang of rowdy kids. Keaton thought the premise was totally unsuitable, and was uncomfortable with his directors Jules White and Zion Myers, who emphasized blunt slapstick. "I went over (Weingarten's) head and appealed to Irving Thalberg to help get me out of the assignment. Irving was usually on my side, but this time he said, 'Larry likes it. Everybody else in the studio likes the story. You are

2700-509: A left-handed batsman and a left-arm medium-pace bowler . Later, he played for Dublin University and played two first-class games against Northamptonshire . As a result, he became the only Nobel literature laureate to have played first-class cricket. Beckett studied French, Italian, and English at Trinity College Dublin from 1923 to 1927 (one of his tutors – not a teaching role in TCD –

2850-435: A local college-baseball championship, where he was to be the home-team mascot. He sent his regrets to Mayer's office and kept his date at the ball game, only to receive a warning from Mayer the following Tuesday, suspending his pay until he resumed working. Keaton's behavior had become erratic by 1932, despondent over working conditions at the studio, and over his wife's antagonism toward him at home. This affected his films; he

3000-529: A moment of stillness in the present. They also deal with the theme of the self-confined and observed, with a voice that either comes from outside into the protagonist's head (as in Eh Joe ) or else another character comments on the protagonist silently, by means of gesture (as in Not I ). Beckett's most politically charged play, Catastrophe (1982), which was dedicated to Václav Havel , deals relatively explicitly with

3150-464: A much-quoted article, the critic Vivian Mercier wrote that Beckett "has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice." The play was published in 1952 and premièred in 1953 in Paris; an English translation

SECTION 20

#1732798356458

3300-458: A musical frame (taking excerpts from Beethoven and Schubert , respectively) to structure his text and borrows well-known images from art history to create evocative stills that suggest themes of longing, ambiguity, hope, and suffering. Such experimentation with genre, music, and the visual arts, characterises Beckett's work during the 1970s and '80s. Beckett's prose pieces during the late period were not as prolific as his theatre, as suggested by

3450-526: A nurse. His parents were both 35 when he was born, and had married in 1901. Beckett had one older brother named Frank Edward (1902–1954). At the age of five, he attended a local playschool in Dublin, where he started to learn music, and then moved to Earlsfort House School near Harcourt Street in Dublin. The Becketts were members of the Church of Ireland ; raised as an Anglican , Beckett later became agnostic ,

3600-839: A perspective which informed his writing. Beckett's family home, Cooldrinagh, was a large house and garden complete with a tennis court built in 1903 by Beckett's father. The house and garden, its surrounding countryside where he often went walking with his father, the nearby Leopardstown Racecourse , the Foxrock railway station, and Harcourt Street station would all feature in his prose and plays. Around 1919 or 1920, he went to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen , which Oscar Wilde had also attended. He left in 1923 and entered Trinity College Dublin , where he studied modern literature and Romance languages, and received his bachelor's degree in 1927. A natural athlete, he excelled at cricket as

3750-447: A pivotal moment in his entire career". Beckett fictionalised the experience in his play Krapp's Last Tape (1958). While listening to a tape he made earlier in his life, Krapp hears his younger self say "clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most...", at which point Krapp fast-forwards the tape (before the audience can hear the complete revelation). Beckett later explained to Knowlson that

3900-401: A pledge of sobriety. Cribbs has Middleton forge the signature of Healy on a $ 5,000 check and he sends a boy to the bank to cash it, but Dalton exposes the crime. Cribbs is exposed for various crimes and Middleton receives a certificate of sobriety. This 1940s comedy film-related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to an American film of

4050-435: A poet and close confidant of Beckett who also worked there. This meeting had a profound effect on the young man. Beckett assisted Joyce in various ways, one of which was research towards the book that became Finnegans Wake . In 1929, Beckett published his first work, a critical essay titled "Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce". The essay defends Joyce's work and method, chiefly from allegations of wanton obscurity and dimness, and

4200-524: A preliminary hearing, Beckett asked his attacker for the motive behind the stabbing. Prudent replied: "Je ne sais pas, Monsieur. Je m'excuse" ["I do not know, sir. I apologise"]. Beckett eventually dropped the charges against his attacker – partially to avoid further formalities, partly because he found Prudent likeable and well-mannered. After his own near-fatal stabbing in 2022, author Salman Rushdie referenced Beckett's example when talking about his reasons for not interviewing his attacker. For Beckett,

4350-489: A projection room can make trade press critics howl in their seats, then you can bet your mortgaged theater that it's FUNNY [emphasis theirs]." Moviegoers and exhibitors welcomed Keaton's Columbia comedies; and when Columbia began reissuing older comedies to theaters in 1948, Keaton's Pest from the West was chosen to launch the "Comedy Favorites" series ("A 1939 Buster Keaton film and one of his funniest," noted Boxoffice . "It

4500-696: A relationship that was to last, in parallel with that with Suzanne, for the rest of his life." Bray died in Edinburgh on 25 February 2010. In 1969 the avant-garde filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim shot an experimental short film portrait about Beckett, which he named after the writer. In October 1969 while on holiday in Tunis with Suzanne, Beckett heard that he had won the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature . Anticipating that her intensely private husband would be saddled with fame from that moment on, Suzanne called

4650-617: A series premiere, noting that it was filmed without a studio audience: the "lack of studio laughter weakened the climax of several of its acts." The producers fashioned a theatrical, hourlong feature film from the series, intended for the European market: The Misadventures of Buster Keaton was released on April 29, 1953 by British Lion, and it began playing on American television in September 1953. "Roughly reproduced slapstick museum piece, it's most likely to amuse those too young to remember

The Villain Still Pursued Her - Misplaced Pages Continue

4800-456: A stage property dating from 1917, Parlor, Bedroom and Bath , at the suggestion of Lawrence Weingarten , who was Thalberg's brother-in-law and Keaton's producer. ("We were desperate. We didn't know what to do," recalled Weingarten. ) However, Thalberg did allow Keaton to stage the gags, including long stretches of pantomime, and agreed to send a crew to Keaton's own mansion for exterior shots. Keaton's relative freedom during this project resulted in

4950-531: A stunt double during some of the more dangerous scenes to protect its investment, something he had never done in his heyday: "Stuntmen don't get you laughs," Keaton had said. In the first Keaton pictures with sound, he and his fellow actors would shoot each scene three times: once in English, once in Spanish, and once in either French or German . The actors would phonetically memorize the foreign-language scripts

5100-541: A successful play, The New Henrietta , which had already been filmed once, under the title The Lamb , with Douglas Fairbanks playing the lead. After Keaton's successful work with Arbuckle, Schenck gave him his own production unit, Buster Keaton Productions. He made a series of 19 two-reel comedies, including One Week (1920), The Playhouse (1921), Cops (1922), and The Electric House (1922). Keaton then moved to full-length features. Keaton's writers included Clyde Bruckman , Joseph Mitchell, and Jean Havez , but

5250-627: A television pilot tentatively titled "Medicine Man", shooting scenes for it on January 12, 1962—the day before Kovacs died in a car crash. "Medicine Man" was completed but not aired. Buster Keaton found steady work as an actor in TV commercials for Colgate, Alka-Seltzer, U.S. Steel, 7-Up, RCA Victor, Phillips 66, Milky Way, Ford Motors, Minit-Rub, and Budweiser, among others. In a series of pantomime television commercials for Simon Pure Beer made in 1962 by Jim Mohr in Buffalo, New York , Keaton revisited some of

5400-462: A theme echoing Beckett's earlier work, though possibly amplified by the sickness he experienced late in life. Jack MacGowran was the first actor to perform a one-man show based on the works of Beckett. He debuted End of Day in Dublin in 1962, revising it as Beginning To End (1965). The show went through further revisions before Beckett directed it in Paris in 1970; MacGowran won the 1970–1971 Obie for Best Performance By an Actor when he performed

5550-456: A time of change for Beckett, both on a personal level and as a writer. In 1961, he married Suzanne in a secret civil ceremony in England (its secrecy due to reasons relating to French inheritance law). The success of his plays led to invitations to attend rehearsals and productions around the world, leading eventually to a new career as a theatre director. In 1957, he had his first commission from

5700-429: A time over two years. These 10 films comprise his last series as a starring comedian. Columbia's short-subject comedians were generally paid a flat fee of $ 500 per film. Keaton, considered exceptional, was hired at double the usual rate. The director was usually Jules White , whose emphasis on slapstick and farce made most of these films resemble White's famous Three Stooges shorts. White sometimes paired Keaton with

5850-399: A will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more." Beckett's outstanding achievements in prose during the period were the three novels Molloy (1951), Malone meurt (1951; Malone Dies ) and L'innommable (1953: The Unnamable ). In these novels—sometimes referred to as

6000-477: A writer can be roughly divided into three periods: his early works, up until the end of World War II in 1945; his middle period, stretching from 1945 until the early 1960s, during which he wrote what are probably his best-known works; and his late period, from the early 1960s until Beckett's death in 1989, during which his works tended to become shorter and his style more minimalist . Beckett's earliest works are generally considered to have been strongly influenced by

6150-427: Is a favourite: it is not only performed frequently but has globally inspired playwrights to emulate it. This is the sole play the manuscript of which Beckett never sold, donated or gave away. He refused to allow the play to be translated into film but did allow it to be played on television. During this time in the 1950s, Beckett became one of several adults who sometimes drove local children to school; one such child

The Villain Still Pursued Her - Misplaced Pages Continue

6300-750: Is considered one of the last modernist writers, and a key figure in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd . A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, Beckett wrote in both French and English. During the Second World War , Beckett was a member of the French Resistance group Gloria SMH ( Réseau Gloria ) and was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1949. He received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for

6450-458: Is good to see Buster back.") Keaton's Columbia shorts came back to theaters from 1948 to 1952, and again from 1962 to 1964. Author John McElwee reports the boxoffice figures: " Pest from the West , the first series entry in 1939, brought back domestic rentals of $ 23,000, and subsequent ones tended to hover around that approximate figure ( Nothing But Pleasure did $ 24,000, General Nuisance got $ 26,000). Columbia also realized profits from reissues of

6600-424: Is often falsely labelled as an existentialist (this is based on the assumption that Camus was an existentialist, though he in fact broke off from the existentialist movement and founded his own philosophy ). Though many of the themes are similar, Beckett had little affinity for existentialism as a whole. Broadly speaking, the plays deal with the subject of despair and the will to survive in spite of that despair, in

6750-423: Is perhaps his most acclaimed work; Orson Welles considered it "the greatest comedy ever made...and perhaps the greatest film ever made". Keaton's career declined after 1928, when he signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and lost his artistic independence. His first wife divorced him, and he descended into alcoholism. He was fired from MGM in 1933, ending his career as a leading man in feature films. He recovered in

6900-518: The American Civil War , combined physical comedy with Keaton's love of trains, including an epic locomotive chase. Employing picturesque locations, the film's storyline reenacted an actual wartime incident . Though it would come to be regarded as Keaton's greatest achievement, the film received mixed reviews at the time. It was too dramatic for some filmgoers expecting a lightweight comedy, and reviewers questioned Keaton's judgment in making

7050-619: The American Expeditionary Forces in France with the United States Army 's 40th Infantry Division during World War I . His unit remained intact and was not broken up to provide replacements, as happened to some other late-arriving divisions. During his time in uniform, he developed an ear infection that permanently impaired his hearing. Keaton spent the summers of 1908–1916 "at the 'Actor's Colony' in

7200-545: The BBC Third Programme for a radio play, All That Fall . He continued writing sporadically for radio and extended his scope to include cinema and television. He began to write in English again, although he also wrote in French until the end of his life. He bought some land in 1953 near a hamlet about 60 kilometres (40 mi) northeast of Paris and built a cottage for himself with the help of some locals. From

7350-918: The Greta Garbo role, Polly Moran in the Joan Crawford role, Henry Armetta in the Jean Hersholt role, Edward Everett Horton in the Lewis Stone role, and Laurel and Hardy sharing the Wallace Beery role. Edward Sedgwick would be directing. Keaton called his version Grand Mills Hotel (after the Mills Hotel, a Bowery flophouse). Thalberg was hesitant about burlesquing the dignified studio's own work but, seeing Keaton's obvious disappointment, said he'd think about it. After Louis B. Mayer had fired Keaton, Thalberg returned to

7500-493: The Mississippi River setting of Twain's book. In 1962 he signed on for a Canadian musical comedy feature, Ten Girls Ago , starring teen idol Dion and featuring Keaton, Bert Lahr , and Eddie Foy, Jr. Keaton filmed his scenes as arranged, but the film endured a host of production problems and was never released. Keaton had a cameo in the all-star comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), appearing near

7650-483: The Nazi savagery that was overtaking the country. Returning to Ireland briefly in 1937, he oversaw the publication of Murphy (1938), which he translated into French the following year. He fell out with his mother, which contributed to his decision to settle permanently in Paris. Beckett remained in Paris following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, preferring, in his own words, "France at war to Ireland at peace". His

SECTION 50

#1732798356458

7800-510: The Toulouse poet Jean du Chas, founder of a movement called le Concentrisme . It was a literary parody, for Beckett had in fact invented the poet and his movement that claimed to be "at odds with all that is clear and distinct in Descartes ". Beckett later insisted that he had not intended to fool his audience. When Beckett resigned from Trinity at the end of 1931, his brief academic career

7950-413: The poioumenon "trilogy" of novels: Molloy (1951); Malone meurt (1951), Malone Dies (1958); L'innommable (1953), The Unnamable (1960). Despite being a native English speaker, Beckett wrote in French because, as he himself claimed, it was easier for him thus to write "without style". Waiting for Godot , like most of his works after 1947, was first written in French. Beckett worked on

8100-628: The "revelation" experienced in his mother's room in Dublin—in which he realised that his art must be subjective and drawn wholly from his own inner world—that would result in the works for which Beckett is best remembered today. During the 15 years following the war, Beckett produced four major full-length stage plays: En attendant Godot (written 1948–1949; Waiting for Godot ), Fin de partie (1955–1957; Endgame ), Krapp's Last Tape (1958), and Happy Days (1961). These plays—which are often considered, rightly or wrongly, to have been instrumental in

8250-592: The 1930s was a decade of artistic exploration. He started to take a serious interest in art history, frequenting Ireland's National Gallery , studying a range of painters and movements (specifically the Dutch Golden Age ), and even visiting private collections. In 1933 Beckett applied for the position of assistant curator at London's National Gallery . Later, in the winter of 1936–37, having sailed from Cobh in East Cork to Hamburg on 26 September 1936, he took

8400-438: The 1940s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Buster Keaton Joseph Frank " Buster " Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent films during the 1920s, in which he performed physical comedy and inventive stunts . He frequently maintained a stoic, deadpan facial expression that became his trademark and earned him

8550-583: The 1940s, marrying Eleanor Norris and working as an honored comic performer until the end of his life. During this period, he made cameos in Billy Wilder 's Sunset Boulevard (1950), Charlie Chaplin 's Limelight (1952), Samuel Beckett 's Film (1965) and a variety of television programs. He earned an Academy Honorary Award in 1959. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929" when he "worked without interruption" as having made him "the greatest actor-director in

8700-432: The 1960s and into the 1970s, Beckett's works exhibited an increasing tendency—already evident in much of his work of the 1950s—towards compactness. This has led to his work sometimes being described as minimalist . The extreme example of this, among his dramatic works, is the 1969 piece Breath , which lasts for only 35 seconds and has no characters (though it was likely intended to offer ironic comment on Oh! Calcutta! ,

8850-594: The Bluffton neighborhood of Muskegon , along with other famous vaudevillians." In February 1917, he met Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle at the Talmadge Studios in New York City, where Arbuckle was under contract to Joseph M. Schenck . Joe Keaton disapproved of films, and Keaton also had reservations about the medium. During his first meeting with Arbuckle, he was asked to jump in and start acting. Keaton

9000-682: The Dublin literary periodical Envoy . After the war, he returned to France in 1946 where he worked as a stores manager at the Irish Red Cross Hospital based in Saint-Lô . Beckett described his experiences in an untransmitted radio script, " The Capital of the Ruins ". In 1945, Beckett returned to Dublin for a brief visit. During his stay, he had a revelation in his mother's room: his entire future direction in literature appeared to him. Beckett had felt that he would remain forever in

9150-585: The Good Old Summertime (1949), Sunset Boulevard (1950), and Around the World in 80 Days (1956). In In the Good Old Summertime , Keaton personally directed the stars Judy Garland and Van Johnson in their first scene together, where they bump into each other on the street. Keaton invented comedy bits where Johnson keeps trying to apologize to a seething Garland, but winds up messing up her hairdo and tearing her dress. Keaton also appeared in

SECTION 60

#1732798356458

9300-604: The History of the Stage". Decades later, Keaton said that he was never hurt by his father and that the falls and physical comedy were a matter of proper technical execution. 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

9450-710: The Keatons after the war. The Spook Speaks was back for the 1949-50 season, and picked up $ 24,200, this in addition to the $ 28,500 it had realized on its initial run." Keaton's personal life had stabilized with his 1940 marriage to MGM dancer Eleanor Norris , and now he was taking life a little easier, abandoning Columbia for the less strenuous field of feature films. Resuming his daily job as an MGM gag writer, he provided material for Red Skelton and gave help and advice to Lucille Ball . Keaton accepted various character roles in both "A" and "B" features. He made his last starring feature, El Moderno Barba Azul (1946), in Mexico;

9600-463: The actor Jack MacGowran , is animated by a camera that steadily closes into a tight focus upon the face of the title character. The play Not I (1972) consists almost solely of, in Beckett's words, "a moving mouth with the rest of the stage in darkness". Following from Krapp's Last Tape , many of these later plays explore memory, often in the form of a forced recollection of haunting past events in

9750-750: The autumn of 1964 Keaton was in Canada, starring in the color featurette The Railrodder for the National Film Board of Canada . He traveled from one end of Canada to the other on a motorized handcar , wearing his traditional pork pie hat and performing gags similar to those in films that he made 50 years before. A black-and-white companion film, Buster Keaton Rides Again (1965), documented Keaton at work during The Railrodder , staging, improving, and rejecting gags on location. Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett ( / ˈ b ɛ k ɪ t / ; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989)

9900-639: The award a "catastrophe". While Beckett did not devote much time to interviews, he sometimes met the artists, scholars, and admirers who sought him out in the anonymous lobby of the Hotel PLM Saint-Jacques in Paris – where he arranged his appointments and often had lunch – near his Montparnasse home. Although Beckett was an intensely private man, a review of the second volume of his letters by Roy Foster on 15 December 2011 issue of The New Republic reveals Beckett to be not only unexpectedly amiable but frequently prepared to talk about his work and

10050-399: The awkward position in midair for a moment before crashing to the stage floor. Garry Moore recalled, "I asked (Keaton) how he did all those falls, and he said, 'I'll show you.' He opened his jacket and he was all bruised. So that's how he did it—it hurt —but you had to care enough not to care." In 1954, Buster and Eleanor met movie-theater manager Raymond Rohauer , with whom they developed

10200-452: The confined and observed self, as well as with the positioning of bodies in space, as the opening phrases of Company make clear: "A voice comes to one in the dark. Imagine." "To one on his back in the dark. This he can tell by the pressure on his hind parts and by how the dark changes when he shuts his eyes and again when he opens them again. Only a small part of what is said can be verified. As for example when he hears, You are on your back in

10350-442: The constant tossing. The act evolved as Keaton learned to take trick falls safely; he was rarely injured or bruised on stage. This knockabout style of comedy led to accusations of child abuse and, occasionally, arrest. However, Keaton was always able to show the authorities that he had no bruises or broken bones. He was eventually billed as "The Little Boy Who Can't Be Damaged", and the overall act as "The Roughest Act That Was Ever in

10500-529: The consumptive Kringelein taken by Lionel Barrymore . As What! No Beer? was nearing completion, Keaton—"sober, shaved, and calm" as Keaton told his biographer Rudi Blesh —pitched an idea to Irving Thalberg. He wanted to make a feature-length parody of Grand Hotel with an all-comedy cast: himself in the Lionel Barrymore role, Jimmy Durante in the John Barrymore role, Marie Dressler in

10650-421: The dark" Following this work, it was almost another decade before Beckett produced a work of non-dramatic prose. How It Is is generally considered to mark the end of his middle period as a writer. time she stopped sitting at her window quiet at her window only window facing other windows other only windows all eyes all sides high and low time she stopped From Rockaby (1980) Throughout

10800-497: The dark. Then he must acknowledge the truth of what is said." Themes of aloneness and the doomed desire to successfully connect with other human beings are expressed in several late pieces, including Company and Rockaby . In the hospital and nursing home where he spent his final days, Beckett wrote his last work, the 1988 poem "What is the Word" ("Comment dire"). The poem grapples with an inability to find words to express oneself,

10950-424: The end of the film as Jimmy. He assists Spencer Tracy 's character, Captain C. G. Culpepper, by readying Culpepper's ultimately unused boat for his abortive escape. (The restored version of that film, released in 2013, contains a scene where Jimmy and Culpepper talk on the telephone. Lost after the comedy epic's " roadshow " exhibition, the audio of that scene was discovered and combined with still pictures to recreate

11100-464: The face of an uncomprehending and incomprehensible world. The words of Nell—one of the two characters in Endgame who are trapped in ashbins, from which they occasionally peek their heads to speak—can best summarise the themes of the plays of Beckett's middle period: "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. ... Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with

11250-447: The family" and Keaton's having to admit that his independent pictures hadn't done well, Keaton agreed to sign with MGM. He would later cite this as the worst business decision of his life in his autobiography. Welcomed to the studio by Irving Thalberg , with whom he initially had a relationship of mutual admiration, Keaton realized too late that the studio system MGM represented would severely limit his creative input. The giant studio

11400-613: The film was a low-budget production, and it may not have been seen in the United States until its release on VHS videotape in 1986, under the title Boom in the Moon . The film has a largely negative reputation, with renowned film historian Kevin Brownlow calling it the worst film ever made. Critics rediscovered Keaton in 1949 and producers occasionally hired him for bigger "prestige" pictures. He had cameos in such films as In

11550-601: The films, but Mason decided to donate them to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . Rohauer then formed a new legal entity, Buster Keaton Productions, which gave Rohauer legal access to the old films at the Academy. On April 3, 1957, Keaton was surprised by Ralph Edwards for the weekly NBC program This Is Your Life . The program also promoted the release of the fictionalized film biography The Buster Keaton Story with Donald O'Connor . In December 1958, Keaton

11700-466: The gags from his silent-film days. In 1961, Keaton appeared in promotional films for Maryvale , a housing development in the western part of Phoenix . In 1960, Keaton returned to MGM for the final time, playing a lion tamer in a 1960 adaptation of Mark Twain 's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . Much of the film was shot on location on the Sacramento River , which doubled for

11850-567: The gags supplied by Keaton himself, often recycling ideas from his family vaudeville act and his earlier films. Keaton had a free hand in staging the films, within the studio's budgetary limits and using its staff writers. The Educational two-reelers have far more pantomime than his earlier talkies, and Keaton is in good form throughout. The high point in the Educational series is Grand Slam Opera (1936), featuring Keaton in his own screenplay as an amateur-hour contestant. The Educational series

12000-564: The history of the movies". In 1996, Entertainment Weekly recognized Keaton as the seventh-greatest film director, stating that "his films offer belly laughs of mind-boggling physical invention and a spacey determination that nears philosophical grandeur." In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him as the 21st-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema. Keaton was born into a vaudeville family in Piqua, Kansas ,

12150-426: The idea of dictatorship. After a long period of inactivity, Beckett's poetry experienced a revival during this period in the ultra-terse French poems of mirlitonnades , with some as short as six words. These defied Beckett's usual scrupulous concern to translate his work from its original into the other of his two languages; several writers, including Derek Mahon , have attempted translations, but no complete version of

12300-447: The late 1950s until his death, Beckett had a relationship with Barbara Bray , a widow who worked as a script editor for the BBC . Knowlson wrote of them: "She was small and attractive, but, above all, keenly intelligent and well-read. Beckett seems to have been immediately attracted by her and she to him. Their encounter was highly significant for them both, for it represented the beginning of

12450-475: The late 1950s, however, he created one of his most radical prose works, Comment c'est (1961; How It Is ). An early variant version of Comment c'est , L'Image , was published in the British arts review, X: A Quarterly Review (1959), and is the first appearance of the novel in any form. This work relates the adventures of an unnamed narrator crawling through the mud while dragging a sack of canned food. It

12600-469: The medium of another language, was in process of simplifying his style, a change also evidenced in Watt . who may tell the tale of the old man? weigh absence in a scale? mete want with a span? the sum assess of the world's woes? nothingness in words enclose? From Watt (1953) After World War II, Beckett turned definitively to the French language as a vehicle. It was this, together with

12750-440: The missing words on the tape are "precious ally". In 1946, Jean-Paul Sartre 's magazine Les Temps modernes published the first part of Beckett's short story " Suite " (later to be called " La Fin ", or "The End"), not realising that Beckett had only submitted the first half of the story; co-editor Simone de Beauvoir refused to publish the second part. Beckett also began to write his fourth novel, Mercier et Camier , which

12900-428: The most ingenious gags were generally conceived by Keaton himself. Comedy director Leo McCarey , recalling the freewheeling days of making slapstick comedies, said, "All of us tried to steal each other's gagmen. But we had no luck with Keaton because he thought up his best gags himself and we couldn't steal him! " The more adventurous ideas called for dangerous stunts, performed by Keaton at great physical risk. During

13050-407: The most profitable of all of Buster Keaton's features, silent or sound." Curtis notes that it was also the only one of his MGM features that came in under budget and ahead of schedule. The next project confirmed Keaton's fears about studio interference. He was handed a script titled Sidewalks of New York (1931), in which he played a millionaire becoming involved with a slum-neighborhood girl and

13200-805: The next two years he was nearly caught by the Gestapo . In August 1942, his unit was betrayed and he and Suzanne fled south on foot to the safety of the small village of Roussillon , in the Vaucluse département in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur . During the two years that Beckett stayed in Roussillon he indirectly helped the Maquis sabotage the German army in the Vaucluse mountains, though he rarely spoke about his wartime work in later life. He

13350-640: The nickname "The Great Stone Face". Keaton was a child vaudeville star, performing as part of his family's traveling act. As an adult, he began working with independent producer Joseph M. Schenck and filmmaker Edward F. Cline , with whom he made a series of successful two-reel comedies in the early 1920s, including One Week (1920), The Playhouse (1921), Cops (1922), and The Electric House (1922). He then moved to feature-length films; several of them, such as Sherlock Jr. (1924), The General (1926), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), and The Cameraman (1928), remain highly regarded. The General

13500-476: The novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". In 1961 he shared the inaugural Prix International with Jorge Luis Borges . He was the first person to be elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984. Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock on 13 April 1906, the son of William Frank Beckett (1871–1933), a quantity surveyor of Huguenot descent, and Maria Jones Roe,

13650-399: The novels of this period, is essentially pessimistic, the will to live seems to win out in the end; witness, for instance, the famous final phrase of The Unnamable : "you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on". After these three novels, Beckett struggled for many years to produce a sustained work of prose, a struggle evidenced by the brief "stories" later collected as Texts for Nothing . In

13800-694: The only one who doesn't.' In the end, I gave up like a fool and said 'what the hell?' Who was I to say I was right and everyone was wrong?" The film's emphasis on obvious slapstick made it unsuitable for the usual, prestigious Broadway premiere -- it opened simultaneously in two New York side-street theaters -- but the less discriminating audiences in small towns across America flocked to the film, resulting in an ultimate success. MGM had been featuring comical musician Cliff Edwards in Keaton's films. The studio replaced Edwards, who had substance-abuse problems, with nightclub comedian Jimmy Durante . The laconic Keaton and

13950-457: The outcome: "Buster ordered him out of the trailer, and Mayer ordered him out of the studio." Mayer couldn't oust him immediately, because Keaton's latest picture wasn't yet finished. Immediately after Keaton completed retakes on What! No Beer? , he was fired "for good and sufficient cause" in a letter signed by Mayer on February 2, 1933. Keaton had been considered to appear in the studio's all-star success Grand Hotel , only to have his role of

14100-486: The passage of time; the "action" of the book takes the form of an interior monologue . Finally, in The Unnamable , almost all sense of place and time are abolished, and the essential theme seems to be the conflict between the voice's drive to continue speaking so as to continue existing, and its almost equally strong urge towards silence and oblivion. Despite the widely held view that Beckett's work, as exemplified by

14250-405: The physical inactivity of the character Belacqua; the character's immersion in his own head and thoughts; the somewhat irreverent comedy of the final sentence. Similar elements are present in Beckett's first published novel, Murphy (1938), which also explores the themes of insanity and chess (both of which would be recurrent elements in Beckett's later works). The novel's opening sentence hints at

14400-423: The play between October 1948 and January 1949. His partner, Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil , was integral to its success. Dechevaux-Dumesnil became his agent and sent the manuscript to multiple producers until they met Roger Blin , the soon-to-be director of the play. Blin's knowledge of French theatre and vision, alongside Beckett's knowing what he wanted the play to represent, contributed greatly to its success. In

14550-405: The process behind it. Suzanne died on 17 July 1989. Confined to a nursing home and suffering from emphysema and possibly Parkinson's disease , Beckett died on 22 December 1989. The two were interred together in the cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris and share a simple granite gravestone that follows Beckett's directive that it should be "any colour, so long as it's grey". Beckett's career as

14700-483: The prop house weighed two tons, and the window only offered a few inches of clearance around Keaton's body. The sequence furnished one of the most memorable images of his career. Aside from Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), Keaton's most enduring feature-length films include Three Ages (1923), Our Hospitality (1923), The Navigator (1924), Sherlock Jr. (1924), Seven Chances (1925), The Cameraman (1928), and The General (1926). The General , set during

14850-506: The railroad water-tank scene in Sherlock Jr. , Keaton broke his neck when a torrent of water fell on him from a water tower, but he did not realize it until years afterwards. A scene from Steamboat Bill, Jr. required Keaton to stand still on a particular spot. Then, the facade of a two-story building toppled forward on top of Keaton. Keaton's character emerged unscathed, due to a single open window. The stunt required precision, because

15000-458: The rambunctious Durante offered enough contrast to function as a team, resulting in three very successful films: Speak Easily (1932), The Passionate Plumber (1932), and What! No Beer? (1933). Behind the scenes there was trouble. In March 1932 studio chief Louis B. Mayer 's office requested Keaton to report for work on a Saturday afternoon, to go through the motions of filming a scene for studio visitors. Keaton already had plans to attend

15150-506: The real thing," reported Josh Billings in London's Kinematograph Weekly . American television syndicators agreed, and marketed Life with Buster Keaton as a children's show. It continued to play for years afterward on small, low-budget stations. Keaton's periodic television appearances during the 1950s and 1960s helped to revive interest in his silent films. He appeared in the early television series Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town . Whenever

15300-826: The scene.) In 1964, Keaton was featured in his first theatrical film series since 1941. American International Pictures hired him to furnish comedy scenes for its successful Beach Party pictures. Keaton appeared in four: Pajama Party (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo , How to Stuff a Wild Bikini , and Sergeant Deadhead (all 1965). Director William Asher recalled: I always loved Buster Keaton.... He would bring me bits and routines. He'd say, "How about this?" and it would just be this wonderful, inventive stuff. Keaton's new popularity in movies prompted Columbia Pictures to re-release some of his vintage-1940 two-reel comedies to theaters. Columbia's home-movie division also sold two shorts, Pardon My Berth Marks and So You Won't Squawk , in abridged form on silent 8mm film. During

15450-462: The sequence has been published in English. Beckett's late style saw him experiment with technology to create increasingly transdisciplinary works. This sampling of a range of artistic mediums and styles – classical music, painting, sculpture, television, and literature – to create a new and original form, or genre, is evident in his television plays. In works like Ghost Trio (broadcast in 1977) and Nacht und Träume (broadcast in 1983) Beckett uses

15600-425: The shadow of Joyce, certain to never beat him at his own game. His revelation prompted him to change direction and acknowledge both his own stupidity and his interest in ignorance and impotence: "I realised that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, [being] in control of one's material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realised that my own way

15750-403: The side. According to a frequently repeated story, which may be apocryphal, Keaton acquired the nickname Buster at the age of 18 months. After the child fell down a long flight of stairs without injury, an actor friend named George Pardey remarked, "Gee whiz, he's a regular buster!" After this, Keaton's father began to use the nickname to refer to the youngster. Keaton retold the anecdote over

15900-538: The small town that his mother, Myra Keaton (née Cutler), was visiting at the time. He was named Joseph to continue a tradition on his father's side (he was sixth in a line bearing the name Joseph Keaton) and Frank for his maternal grandfather, who disapproved of his parents' union. His father was Joseph Hallie "Joe" Keaton who had a traveling show called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company, which performed on stage and sold patent medicine on

16050-414: The so-called " Theatre of the Absurd "—deal in a darkly humorous way with themes similar to those of the roughly contemporary existentialist thinkers . The term "Theatre of the Absurd" was coined by Martin Esslin in a book of the same name; Beckett and Godot were centrepieces of the book. Esslin argued these plays were the fulfilment of Albert Camus 's concept of "the absurd"; this is one reason Beckett

16200-504: The somewhat pessimistic undertones and black humour that animate many of Beckett's works: "The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new". Watt , written while Beckett was in hiding in Roussillon during World War II, is similar in terms of themes but less exuberant in its style. It explores human movement as if it were a mathematical permutation , presaging Beckett's later preoccupation—in both his novels and dramatic works—with precise movement. Beckett's 1930 essay Proust

16350-402: The street, and Cribbs tries to trick him into deeper crime. Meanwhile, Mary lives alone in poverty with her daughter, her mother having died. Cribbs tries to press himself on Mary and she is saved by William Dalton. Back in New York, Middleton is about to be arrested for drunkenness but is saved by a comic pie fight. Middleton then encounters the philanthropist Frederick Healy, who makes him sign

16500-536: The studio and persuaded Mayer that Keaton was still valuable to the company. Thalberg tried to resurrect Keaton's MGM career by offering to go ahead with the Grand Hotel satire, now retitled Gland Hotel . Keaton, still furious at Mayer, refused to return to the studio and Mayer was not about to apologize. So ended Buster Keaton's starring career in feature films. In 1934, Keaton accepted an offer to make an independent film in Paris, Le Roi des Champs-Élysées ; it

16650-462: The studio's production staff." When the studio began making talking films, Keaton was enthused about the new technology and wanted to make his next film, Spite Marriage , with sound. MGM refused, because the film was more valuable in silent form; it could be shown around the world in theaters that had not converted to sound. Also, soundstages were then at a premium, and MGM usually reserved them for dramatic productions. MGM also forced Keaton to use

16800-406: The theatrical revue for which it served as an introductory piece). In his theatre of the late period, Beckett's characters—already few in number in the earlier plays—are whittled down to essential elements. The ironically titled Play (1962), for instance, consists of three characters immersed up to their necks in large funeral urns. The television drama Eh Joe (1963), which was written for

16950-536: The title of the 1976 collection of short prose texts Fizzles (which the American artist Jasper Johns illustrated). Beckett experienced something of a renaissance with the novella Company (1980), which continued with Ill Seen Ill Said (1982) and Worstward Ho (1983), later collected in Nohow On . In these three " 'closed space' stories," Beckett continued his pre-occupation with memory and its effect on

17100-407: The virtues of an alcohol-free life, but Cribbs tricks him into drinking rum, and Mary smells it on his breath. Eight years later, Middlelton is a drunkard. He has hidden bottles of whiskey and is able to down an entire bottle in ten seconds. He returns home to Mary and their daughter and chops down the cherry tree that his father had planted. In New York in 1850, Middleton is living as a drunkard on

17250-557: The work of MacGreevy, Brian Coffey , Denis Devlin and Blanaid Salkeld , despite their slender achievements at the time, comparing them favourably with their Celtic Revival contemporaries and invoking Ezra Pound , T. S. Eliot , and the French symbolists as their precursors. In describing these poets as forming "the nucleus of a living poetic in Ireland", Beckett was tracing the outlines of an Irish poetic modernist canon. In 1935 –

17400-453: The work of his friend James Joyce . They are erudite and seem to display the author's learning merely for its own sake, resulting in several obscure passages. The opening phrases of the short-story collection More Pricks than Kicks (1934) afford a representative sample of this style: It was morning and Belacqua was stuck in the first of the canti in the moon. He was so bogged that he could move neither backward nor forward. Blissful Beatrice

17550-534: The year that he successfully published a book of his poetry, Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates – Beckett worked on his novel Murphy . In May, he wrote to MacGreevy that he had been reading about film and wished to go to Moscow to study with Sergei Eisenstein at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography . In mid-1936 he wrote to Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin to offer himself as their apprentice. Nothing came of this, however, as Beckett's letter

17700-577: The years, including in a 1964 interview with the CBC 's Telescope . In Keaton's retelling, he was six months old when the incident occurred, and Harry Houdini gave him the nickname (though the family did not get to know Houdini until later). At the age of 3, Keaton began performing with his parents in The Three Keatons. He first appeared on stage in 1899 in Wilmington, Delaware . The act

17850-510: Was André Roussimoff, who would later become a famous professional wrestler under the name André the Giant . They had a surprising amount of common ground and bonded over their love of cricket, with Roussimoff later recalling that the two rarely talked about anything else. Beckett translated all of his works into English himself, with the exception of Molloy , for which he collaborated with Patrick Bowles. The success of Waiting for Godot opened up

18000-471: Was Beckett's contribution to Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (a book of essays on Joyce which also included contributions by Eugene Jolas , Robert McAlmon , and William Carlos Williams ). Beckett's close relationship with Joyce and his family cooled, however, when he rejected the advances of Joyce's daughter Lucia . Beckett's first short story, "Assumption",

18150-658: Was a guest star in the episode "A Very Merry Christmas" of The Donna Reed Show on ABC. He returned to the program in 1965 in the episode "Now You See It, Now You Don't". In August 1960, Keaton played mute King Sextimus the Silent in the national touring company of the Broadway musical Once Upon A Mattress . In 1961, he starred in The Twilight Zone episode " Once Upon a Time ", which included both silent and sound sequences. He worked with comedian Ernie Kovacs on

18300-573: Was acquired by film importer J. H. Hoffberg in October 1935, and he retitled it An Old Spanish Custom . Hoffberg released the film in America on the "states-rights" market, where independent exchanges bought regional rights to the film and offered it to local theaters in their territories. In 1934, Buster Keaton made a screen comeback in two-reel comedies for Educational Pictures . Most of these 20-minute shorts are simple visual comedies, with many of

18450-439: Was an Irish-born existentialist writer of novels, plays, short stories and poems. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense . His work became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of stream of consciousness repetition and self-reference . He

18600-402: Was an attempt to recreate the first series on film, allowing the program to be broadcast nationwide. The series benefited from a company of veteran actors, including Marcia Mae Jones as the ingenue, Iris Adrian , Dick Wessel , Fuzzy Knight , Dub Taylor , Philip Van Zandt , and his silent-era contemporaries Harold Goodwin , Hank Mann , and stuntman Harvey Parry . Keaton's wife Eleanor also

18750-972: Was at an end. He commemorated it with the poem "Gnome", which was inspired by his reading of Johann Wolfgang Goethe 's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and eventually published in The Dublin Magazine in 1934: Spend the years of learning squandering Courage for the years of wandering Through a world politely turning From the loutishness of learning Beckett travelled throughout Europe. He spent some time in London, where in 1931 he published Proust , his critical study of French author Marcel Proust . Two years later, following his father's death, he began two years' treatment with Tavistock Clinic psychoanalyst Dr. Wilfred Bion . Aspects of it became evident in Beckett's later works, such as Watt and Waiting for Godot . In 1932, he wrote his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women , but after many rejections from publishers decided to abandon it (it

18900-593: Was awarded the Croix de guerre and the Resistance Medal by the French government for his efforts in fighting the German occupation; to the end of his life, however, Beckett would refer to his work with the French Resistance as "boy scout stuff". While in hiding in Roussillon, Beckett continued work on the novel Watt . He started the novel in 1941 and completed it in 1945, but it was not published until 1953; however, an extract had appeared in

19050-563: Was eventually published in 1992). Despite his inability to get it published, however, the novel served as a source for many of Beckett's early poems, as well as for his first full-length book, the 1933 short-story collection More Pricks Than Kicks . Beckett published essays and reviews, including "Recent Irish Poetry" (in The Bookman , August 1934) and "Humanistic Quietism", a review of his friend Thomas MacGreevy's Poems (in The Dublin Magazine , July–September 1934). They focused on

19200-495: Was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than in adding." Knowlson argues that "Beckett was rejecting the Joycean principle that knowing more was a way of creatively understanding the world and controlling it ... In future, his work would focus on poverty, failure, exile and loss – as he put it, on man as a 'non-knower' and as a 'non-can-er. ' " The revelation "has rightly been regarded as

19350-631: Was lost owing to Eisenstein's quarantine during the smallpox outbreak, as well as his focus on a script re-write of his postponed film production. In 1936, a friend had suggested he look up the works of Arnold Geulincx , which Beckett did and he took many notes. The philosopher's name is mentioned in Murphy and the reading apparently left a strong impression. Murphy was finished in 1936 and Beckett departed for extensive travel around Germany, during which time he filled several notebooks with lists of noteworthy artwork that he had seen and noted his distaste for

19500-495: Was made to go to school while performing in New York, but only attended for part of one day. Despite tangles with the law, Keaton was a rising and relatively well-paid star in the theater. He stated that he learned to read and write late, and was taught by his mother. By the time he was 21, his father's alcoholism threatened the reputation of the family act, so Keaton and his mother, Myra, left for New York, where Keaton's career quickly moved from vaudeville to film. Keaton served in

19650-407: Was mainly a comedy sketch. Myra played the saxophone to one side, while Joe and Keaton performed center stage, both wearing slapsoles, bald-headed wigs and "Irish" beards. The young Keaton goaded his father by disobeying him, and the elder Keaton responded by throwing him against the scenery, into the orchestra pit, or even into the audience. A suitcase handle was sewn into Keaton's clothing to aid with

19800-429: Was not published until 1970. The novel preceded his most famous work, the play En attendant Godot ( Waiting for Godot ) , which was written not long afterwards. More importantly, Mercier and Camier was Beckett's first long work written in French, the language of most of his subsequent works which were strongly supported by Jérôme Lindon, director of his Parisian publishing house Les Éditions de Minuit , including

19950-434: Was not released in the United States. During this period, he made another film in England, The Invader . MGM, which needed a certain number of British-made films to comply with a legal quota (see quota quickies ), distributed the Keaton film in England but declined to release it in the United States, because the studio had already terminated Keaton's employment and was no longer promoting him as one of its stars. The Invader

20100-399: Was one of few people, along with Charlie Chaplin , to defend Arbuckle's character during accusations that he was responsible for the death of actress Virginia Rappe . (Arbuckle was eventually acquitted, with an apology from the jury for the ordeal he underwent. ) In 1920, The Saphead was released, in which Keaton had his first starring role in a full-length feature film. It was based on

20250-568: Was performed two years later. The play was a critical, popular, and controversial success in Paris. It opened in London in 1955 to mainly negative reviews, but the tide turned with positive reactions from Harold Hobson in The Sunday Times and, later, Kenneth Tynan . After the showing in Miami, the play became extremely popular, with highly successful performances in the US and Germany. The play

20400-542: Was published in Jolas's periodical transition . The next year he won a small literary prize for his hastily composed poem "Whoroscope", which draws on a biography of René Descartes that Beckett happened to be reading when he was encouraged to submit. In 1930, Beckett returned to Trinity College as a lecturer. In November 1930, he presented a paper in French to the Modern Languages Society of Trinity on

20550-449: Was run along strict factory lines, with everything planned and budgeted in advance. The first of MGM's Keaton films was The Cameraman (1928), and Keaton sensed trouble immediately when he saw the script. "It was as long as War and Peace ," Keaton recalled. "I took out 40 useless characters and a couple of subplots. These guys didn't realize—they still don't realize—that the best comedies are simple. I said, 'I'd like to do something with

20700-401: Was seen in the series (notably as Juliet to Keaton's Romeo in a little-theater vignette). Despite the hardworking cast and crew, the series was unsuccessful and only 13 half-hour episodes were filmed. Producer Hittleman audaciously reissued these same episodes in 1952 as though they were entirely new, with the series now titled Life with Buster Keaton . Variety reporter Fred Hift reviewed it as

20850-440: Was sometimes visibly intoxicated on- and off-camera. "I got to the stage where I didn't give a darn whether school kept or not, and then I started drinking too much," Keaton told interviewer Tony Thomas. "When I found out that they could write stories and material better than I could anyway, what was the use of my fighting with them?" The demoralized Keaton couldn't turn to production chief Irving Thalberg for support, because Thalberg

21000-481: Was soon a known face in and around Left Bank cafés, where he strengthened his allegiance with Joyce and forged new ones with artists Alberto Giacometti and Marcel Duchamp , with whom he regularly played chess . Sometime around December 1937, Beckett had a brief affair with Peggy Guggenheim , who nicknamed him "Oblomov" (after the character in Ivan Goncharov 's novel ). In January 1938 in Paris, Beckett

21150-413: Was stabbed in the chest and nearly killed when he refused the solicitations of a notorious pimp (who went by the name of Prudent). Joyce arranged a private room for Beckett at the hospital. The publicity surrounding the stabbing attracted the attention of Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil , who knew Beckett slightly from his first stay in Paris. This time, however, the two would begin a lifelong companionship. At

21300-493: Was strongly influenced by Schopenhauer 's pessimism and laudatory descriptions of saintly asceticism. At this time Beckett began to write creatively in the French language. In the late 1930s, he wrote a number of short poems in that language and their sparseness—in contrast to the density of his English poems of roughly the same period, collected in Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates (1935)—seems to show that Beckett, albeit through

21450-616: Was such a natural in his first film, The Butcher Boy , he was hired on the spot. At the end of the day, he asked to borrow one of the cameras to get a feel for how it worked. He took the camera back to his hotel room where he dismantled and reassembled it by morning. Keaton later said that he was soon Arbuckle's second director and his entire gag department. He appeared in a total of 14 Arbuckle shorts , running into 1920. They were popular, and contrary to Keaton's later reputation as "The Great Stone Face", he often smiled and even laughed in them. Keaton and Arbuckle became close friends, and Keaton

21600-514: Was televised live on the West Coast. Kinescope film prints were made for distribution of the programs to other parts of the country, since there was no transcontinental coaxial cable until September 1951. Reaction was strong enough for a local Los Angeles station to offer Keaton his own show, also broadcast live ( The Buster Keaton Show , 1950). Producer Carl Hittleman mounted a new series, again titled The Buster Keaton Show , in 1951. This

21750-624: Was the Berkeley scholar A. A. Luce , who introduced him to the work of Henri Bergson ). He was elected a Scholar in Modern Languages in 1926. Beckett graduated with a BA and, after teaching briefly at Campbell College in Belfast , took up the post of lecteur d'anglais at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris from November 1928 to 1930. While there, he was introduced to renowned Irish author James Joyce by Thomas MacGreevy ,

21900-401: Was the series' debut, Pest from the West , directed by Lord; it was a shorter, tighter remake of Keaton's little-viewed 1935 feature The Invader . Trade critics loved it. Film Daily raved: "One of the funniest shorts of the season. In fact, of any season. It just goes to prove that this Buster Keaton feller is a natural boxoffice gold mine that is not being mined. When a comedy shown cold in

22050-416: Was then on a medical leave that lasted eight months. This left Louis B. Mayer temporarily in sole charge of the studio, which made Keaton's standing at MGM even more fragile. Keaton's absences were costing the company $ 3,000 a day ($ 63,030 in 2024). The last straw came when Mayer "raided" Keaton's dressing room during a wild party with Keaton's "cronies and their girlfriends". MGM staffer Sam Marx remembered

22200-426: Was there, Dante also, and she explained the spots on the moon to him. She shewed him in the first place where he was at fault, then she put up her own explanation. She had it from God, therefore he could rely on its being accurate in every particular. The passage makes reference to Dante 's Commedia , which can serve to confuse readers not familiar with that work. It also anticipates aspects of Beckett's later work:

22350-584: Was very well received by theater owners and movie audiences, and Keaton was the studio's most important comedian. He was also its most expensive comedian (earning $ 2,500 per film, equal to $ 54,776 in 2024), and when Educational was forced to economize in 1937, the company could no longer afford to maintain two studios. Educational closed its Hollywood studio, thus forfeiting Keaton's services, and kept its cheaper New York studio going. The company replaced Keaton with New York-based stage star Willie Howard . After Keaton's Educational series lapsed, he returned to MGM as

22500-409: Was written as a sequence of unpunctuated paragraphs in a style approaching telegraphese : "You are there somewhere alive somewhere vast stretch of time then it's over you are there no more alive no more than again you are there again alive again it wasn't over an error you begin again all over more or less in the same place or in another as when another image above in the light you come to in hospital in

#457542