Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr. is released to theaters - May 12th, 1928

On this day in 1928, Buster Keaton’s silent-era masterpiece Steamboat Bill, Jr. premiered at the Rialto Theatre in New York City.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio Pillo and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that charts the river of history one day
at a time. I'm Gay Bluesier, and today we're celebrating

(00:20):
one of the last great works of one of Hollywood's
first great comedian's, the inimitable Buster Keaton. The day was
May twelve, ninety eight. Buster Keaton's silent era masterpiece, Steamboat

(00:41):
Bill Jr. Premiered at the Realto Theater in New York City.
The film received mixed reviews at the time of its release,
but has since been reevaluated as one of Keaton's finest films.
It also contains one of the most famous and dangerous
stunts in movie history, but we'll get to that a
little later. Buster Keaton was born as Joseph Frank Keaton

(01:07):
on October fourth, eighteen ninety five. He was born in Pequaw, Kansas,
but only because his performer parents happened to be in
town for a show when his mother went into labor.
Myra Keaton was a singer and dancer, and her husband,
also named Joseph, was an actor. They both worked together
with the legendary Harry Houdini in a traveling medicine show,

(01:31):
and once Joe Junior was old enough to crawl, he
got in on the act too. In fact, it was
Houdini himself who gave Buster Keaton his nickname. As the
filmmaker explained in a nineteen sixty three interview quote, I
fell down a flight of stairs when I was around
six months old. They picked me up, no bruises, didn't

(01:53):
seem to hurt myself, and Houdini said that was a Buster,
And the old man says, that's a good name. Aime,
we'll call him that. Not long after, the Keaton family
struck out on their own as the Three Keaton's and
quickly became a hit on the vaudeville circuit. They proved
so popular that the family continued touring both the United

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States and England for the better part of twenty years.
Their act changed a little as time went on, but
in the early days it included a pretty reckless slapstick
routine in which young Buster was hurled around the stage
and sometimes off of it for comedic effect. It was
such a big part of the act that Buster actually

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had a suitcase handle sewn into his stage clothes so
that his father would have better leverage when he sent
him flying. This led to allegations of child abuse on
more than one occasion, but those were generally dismissed once
Buster showed authorities that he hadn't sustained any injuries. There
was certainly an element of danger to the act. He

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really was being tossed around by his father, but because
Buster had mastered the art of the trick fall at
a young age, he was able to stick the landings
without being injured. In fact, far from being in pain,
Buster routinely laughed with glee as he flew through the air.
That is until he realized that he got an even

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bigger laugh from the audience when he didn't show emotion himself.
From that point on, Buster didn't smile or laugh while
on stage. Instead, he developed the frozen, deadpan expression that
eventually became his trademark, the one that earned him his
other famous nickname, the Great Stone Face. The three Keaton's

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finally went their separate ways in nineteen seventeen, and twenty
one year old Buster made the jump to silent films
not long after. He made his film debut that same year.
After being hired as a gag writer and actor in
a Fatty Arbuckle comedy short called the book Your Boy Buster.
Keaton went on to write and appear in thirteen more

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shorts with our Buckle over the next three years, learning
the ins and outs of the film business and medium
along the way. He was especially keen to learn the
mechanics of filmmaking, since that was the only part of
the process he didn't know anything about. As Keaton later recalled, quote,
the first thing I did in the studio was to

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tear that camera to pieces. I had to know how
that film got into the cutting room, what you did
to it in there, how you projected it, how you
finally got the picture together, how you made things match.
The technical part of pictures is what interested me. Material
was the last thing in the world I thought about.
You only had to turn me loose on the set

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and I'd have material in two minutes, because I'd been
doing it all my life. Following his successful partnership with
our Buckle, Keaton was given charge of his own production
unit at United Artists Studio. He soon began churning out
his own popular series of two reel shorts and eventually
feature films. Many of these now classic comedies not only

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starred Keaton, but were written and or directed by him
as well. This includes highlights like One Week the Playhouse,
Sherlock Junior, Go West, and The General. Endlessly clever and
surprisingly modern, Keaton's films were more ambitious than most slapstick
comedies of the silent era. His characters weren't over the top,

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if anything, just the opposite. They were calm and accepting
in the face of the many adversities and humiliations that
came their way. Keaton's characters were underdogs who won over
audiences with unassuming charm and ingenuity, rather than brash heroics.
In addition, his physical comedy, sometimes subtle sometimes broad, was

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integrated into stories that were unexpectedly poignant, rather than just
being vehicles for gags. This was all the more impressive
when you consider that Keaton's films used far fewer title
cards compared to other silent comedies. His stories were told
primarily through facial expressions, gesture and movement, planned and executed

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with graceful precision. Plus, he did all his own stunts
and had the bruises to prove it. He could have
hired a stuntman, but, according to him, quote stuntmen don't
get laughs, and only a good comedian knows how to
do things funny. Fans of Keaton's work have long debated

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which film is the actor's best, but for many, myself included,
the conversation always circles back to nine Steamboat Bill Jr.
It was the tenth and ultimately last feature film to
be made under his unit Buster Keaton Productions. Before shooting
was over, Keaton would learn that his production studio was

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being shut down. His recent films, The General in particular,
had gone way over budget and then didn't earn enough
at the box office to cover that high cost. Steamboat
Bill Jr. Was the end of an era, then, the
last time Keaton would ever have complete creative and financial
control of a movie. If he had to go out, though,

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at least he went out with a bang. If you've
never seen the film before, and obviously I recommend that
you do, it follows Keaton as a young college graduate
trying to earn the respect of his estranged father, a
gruff Mississippi riverboat captain named William Canfield Sr. A k A.
Steamboat Bill. The film opens just before Junior's arrival in

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the town of River junction where he's due to visit
his father. Bill hasn't seen his son since infancy, but
he's so excited to show him off that he brings
his first and only mate to the train station to
meet his no doubts strapping sun business had been tough
for steamboat Bill is broken down boat, the Stonewall Jackson

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could no longer keep up with a fancy paddle steamer
owned by his rival John James King. For Bill, a
visit from his son is a chance to change his fortunes.
With his brawny son as a partner, he'd be able
to fix up the boat and carry on the family business.
Imagine Bill's disappointment then when off the train steps a

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scrawny dandy with a pencil mustache, a ukulele and a
checkered beret. Neither canfield is quite what the other expected,
and it isn't long before Bill Sr. Tries to toughen
up his son by teaching him the basics of running
a steamboat. Junior is eager to please, but not well

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suited for a life at sea. He's forever bumping into
equipment and tripping over the rigging. In one scene, he
accidentally knocks a life preserver into the water, and it
immediately sinks. The gag is a perfect visual metaphor for
both the rickety nature of his father's ship and for
Junior's own incompetence as a sailor. He can't even get

(09:12):
a life preserver to float. The relationship between the two
Bills is the heart of the movie, the story of
a rugged, judgmental father gradually and begrudgingly learning to accept
and even respect his quirky, sensitive son. But there's a
little romance in there too. As Bill Junior endeavors to

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win his father's approval, he also tries to win the
love of Kitty King, the daughter of his father's business rival.
These storylines intersect during the film's stunning climax, in which
Bill Junior must rescue his father, Kitty, and Kitty's father
from a raging cyclone. Since the movie was set on

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the banks of the Mississippi River, although filmed on the
banks of the Sacramento River in California, the original plan
was to end the film with a flood sequence, not
a cyclone. However, when a real life flood devastated Mississippi
during production, Keaton was pressured to change the sequence so
it wouldn't hit so close to home. Annoyed but undeterred,

(10:16):
he got to work on the new scenes. He brought
in airplane engines to simulate the cyclone and ordered the
construction of breakaway building facades that could fly apart or
collapse on q. The retoold sequence ultimately led to one
of the most memorable stunts in showbiz history. As a
cyclone sweeps through river Junction, the front wall of a

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two story house falls forward to where Keaton is standing,
but instead of being crushed, he passes perfectly through the
frame of an open window, completely unharmed. It's a striking
visual gag that still elicits gasps from the audience nearly
a hundred years later. A big reason the stunt play

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so well is that there was nothing fake about it.
The house was just a facade built on a hinge,
but it was made with the same materials as a
regular house and weighed about two tons. As a result,
there was no camera trickery involved either. Buster Keaton simply
calculated exactly where he needed to stand and then drove

(11:20):
two nails into the ground to mark where his heels
should be. If all went well and the window fell
where it should, he would have about two inches of
clearance on either side. Of course, if his calculations were
off by any more than that, he'd be hammered into
the dirt like the nails beneath his feet. Everyone present
that day was well aware of the danger. In fact,

(11:44):
half the crew reportedly walked off the set, refusing to
participate in a stunt that could have very easily gotten
the star killed. Those who remained were still incredibly nervous.
Keaton later recalled seeing several crew members saying prayers prior
to shooting the scene. He also claimed that the cameraman
turned away as the scene was being filmed, too afraid

(12:07):
to watch the outcome. Luckily, the stunt went just as planned,
though the frame of the window did graze the actor
on its way down a close call. The question remains
why was Keaton so determined to perform such a dangerous
stunt despite all the anxiety had caused his collaborators. One

(12:28):
sad and likely answer is that Keaton simply didn't care
if he lived or died that day. The changes to
the film's climax, the ones he didn't want to make,
had put the movie behind schedule. And over budget. That
was the last straw for United Artists, and on the
day before the big stunt was filmed, Keaton was informed

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that his production studio was being shuttered. Around the same
time his first wife, Natalie Talmidge, filed for divorce. Keaton
was being cut loose personally and professionally, and the grief
may have caused him to take risks he would have
otherwise avoided. Many years later, the actor said as much himself.

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He called the stunt one of his greatest thrills, before
admitting quote, I was mad at the time, or I
would never have done the thing. Ill advised though it was,
Keaton did do the thing, and it made for a
thrilling climax to Steamboat Bill Jr. The ending of which
I won't spoil here. Buster Keaton made many more films

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before his death in nineteen sixty six after Steamboat Bill Jr.
Though he was rarely given the chance to make sharp,
elaborate comedy like he did in the nineteen twenties. Still,
even when he could no longer make films the way
he wanted to, he continued doing what he knew, what
he loved. He didn't like to dwell on disappointment either,

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something he made crystal clear in his nineteen sixty memoir There,
Keaton reflected on his life and film, writing quote, as
long back as I can remember, I have considered myself
a fabulously lucky man. From the beginning, I was surrounded
by interesting people who loved fun and knew how to
create it. I've had few dull moments and not too

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many sad and defeated ones. Not long ago, a friend
asked me what was the greatest pleasure I got from
spending my whole life as an actor. There have been
so many that I had to think about that for
a moment. Then I said, like everyone else, I like
to be with a happy crowd. If you feel the
same way, gather a few friends around any screen larger

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than a phone and put on Steamboat Bill Jr. You
will be with a happy crowd in no time at all.
I'm Gay, Bluesier, and hopefully you now know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. You can
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and Instagram at T d I HC Show, and if
you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to send
them my way at this day at I heart media
dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another day in history class