My Wonderful World Of Slapstick

Add to my list

by Buster Keaton and Charles Samuels

Type

Autobiographies

Subject

Director > Buster Keaton

Keywords

Buster Keaton, slapstick, burlesque, autobiography

Publishing date

1982

Publisher

Grand Central Publishing

1st publishing

1967

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 340 pages
5 ½ x 8 ½ inches (14 x 21.5 cm)

ISBN-10
ISBN-13

0-306-80178-7
978-0-306-80178-5

User Ratings

(0 vote)

X

Average rating:

0	rating	= We can do without
0	rating	= Good book
0	rating	= Excellent book
0	rating	= Unique / a reference

Your rating: -

Book Presentation:
Over half century ago the society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children complained to Mayor Van Wyck, of New York, that Joe Keaton, a vaudeville actor, was brutally mistreating his five-year old son. At each afternoon and evening performance the child, billed as "The Human Mop", was slammed on the floor, hurled into the wings, and sometimes banged into bass drums. Unable to find a bruise or scratch on the lad, Mayor Van Wyck refused to ban the act. The "Human Mop" bounced on to worldwide fame as Buster Keaton, one of this century's greatest comedians.
In this intimate autobiography Buster Keaton tells his whole personal and professional story, beginning with his colourful and exciting childhood as the undentable tot in the "Three Keatons" whose proudest boast was having the rowdiest, roughest act in vaudeville. Buster has played with all the great ones, from George M. Cohen and Bojangles Robinson and Al Jolson to Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan and Red Skelton, during his sixty years as a star in vaudeville, silent and talking pictures, night clubs and television.
Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle got him into the movies and taught him how to throw a custard pie. Buster could not even keep slapstick out of his eleven months as a draftee in our World War I army. He came out to help create the Golden Age of Comedy with his friends Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Arbuckle, Mack Sennett and the Keystone Cops. Marital troubles and alcoholism once got Buster down, but could not keep him down.
MY WONDERFUL WORLD OF SLAPSTICK was written with the collaboration of Charles Samuels, co-author of His Eye Is On the Sparrow, Ethel Waters' best-selling autobiography. Buster Keaton's Life Story will enchant and thrill all those who enjoy looking past the glitter and the grease paint into a magnificent performer's mind and heart.

About the authors:
Charles Samuels, a New York newspaperman, wrote biographies of Jody Garland, Lizzie Borden, and Evelyn Nesbit. He worked with Buster Keaton on My Wonderful World of Slapstick (also available from Da Capo Press). Donald Bogle is the author of Brown Sugar: Eighty Years of America's Black Female Superstars (also available from De Capo Press), Blacks in American Film & Television: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, and Toms, Coon, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive Histroy of Blacks in American Films. He has been called "the dean of black film history."

See the publisher website: Grand Central Publishing

See the complete filmography of Buster Keaton on the website: IMDB ...