Marion Meade is the author of several biographies, including Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? She lives in New York City.
Silent film star Buster Keaton (1895-1966) developed his trademark deadpan expression and acrobatic artistry, according to the author, as a result of the abuse he received from his father, Joe. As part of a vaudeville act, Joe began brutally throwing five-year-old Buster around the stage and beat him at the first sign of fear. When he was 21, Keaton left his uncaring parents and began acting in silents made by comedy star Fatty Arbuckle. His career blossomed from 1920 to '28, when he established his own company and wrote, starred in and directed films like The Navigator (1924). After the company was dissolved, Keaton's career declined until the 1950s, when he made a comeback and appeared in Charlie Chaplin's Limelight. Alcoholism hastened the end of his marriages to Natalie Talmadge (the couple had two sons) and Mae Scriven. He achieved control over his drinking, and his third marriage, to Eleanor Norris, was a success. This is an engrossing portrait of a tormented comedic genius, with an extensive filmography (67pp). Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)
Released to coincide with the centenary of Keaton's birth, this comprehensive biography fills gaps in the silent-film comedian's life history while dispelling a few rumors. Meade (Dorothy Parker, Villard: Random, 1987) rehashes familiar territory with a fresh eye: Keaton's brutal upbringing in a vaudeville family, his liaison with Fatty Arbuckle (whom he eventually upstaged), the unlimited artistic freedom he enjoyed under Joseph M. Schenck, and the subsequent quashing of that creative control when his company was absorbed by MGM in 1928. The lost years of gag writing and bit parts, the wives and women, the chronic drinking are not glossed over but, rather, make his later rediscovery by historians and critics all the more poignant. With journalistic aplomb, Meade reaffirms Keaton's legend as the master of the sight gag and proves that, despite his technical virtuosity as a filmmaker, Keaton's effects are special because they are human. Meade shows that the man himself was just that. Recommended for most collections. [For another recent biography of Keaton, see Larry Edwards's Buster, LJ 4/15/95.‘Ed.]‘Jayne Plymale-Jackson, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Athens
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