Buster Keaton
American motion picture director, motion picture producer, motion picture producers and director, comedian, actor
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, in which he performed physical comedy and inventive stunts. He maintained a stoic, deadpan facial expression that became his trademark and earned him 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 successful two-reel comedies in the early 1920s, including One Week (1920), The Playhouse (1921) and The Electric House (1922). He moved to feature-length films, including Our Hospitality (1923), Sherlock Jr. (1924), The General (1926) and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928). Orson Welles called The General "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.
“Buster Keaton” enters the record as american motion picture director, motion picture producer, motion picture producers and director, comedian, actor. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Buster, Keaton and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q103949. VIAF identifies the subject as 66477478. The Library of Congress control number is n79027006. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1895, 1966, 1920 and 1921.
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This entry incorporates text from “Buster Keaton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.