![]() Trilby is not the sweet ingenue of The Cameraman but an egotistical diva who is intensely offended that the play’s male lead, Lionel Benmore (Edward Earle), is attracted to a woman who isn’t her. Buster (called Elmer in the script, but I prefer to ignore this rubelike moniker) is the first to arrive at every performance, in top hat and tails, perfectly seated in the first row. She’s appearing in town in a Civil War melodrama called Carolina. But although MGM had made a few part-talkies, they were still not convinced that sound movies were more than what Thalberg called “a good gimmick,” and so Spite Marriage would remain silent.īuster is a tailor who harbors a passionate crush on a stage actress with the very theatrical name Trilby Drew (Dorothy Sebastian). It’s easy to imagine Keaton developing the kind of silent-with-sound comedy that, years later, would be associated with Jacques Tati and Pierre Etaix in France and Jerry Lewis in America. The older Buster would talk about how he would have created comedy that minimized dialogue to just the essentials and supported it with the right sound effects. Keaton had wanted to make this film with sound. Under the most trying circumstances, Keaton created one more genuinely funny movie. It could have been a disaster, but Spite Marriage is a small miracle. But MGM would disperse Keaton’s creative team and provide a script and a humorless producer named Larry Weingarten. The story idea for Spite Marriage was Buster’s. The result, The Cameraman, made largely Keaton’s way, was a critical and commercial hit, and so for his next film, MGM, in its infinite wisdom, decided to give him less control. Buster liked their first idea, for him to play a newsreel cameraman, but beseeched executive Irving Thalberg to throw out their script and let him reinvent it. The actors would perform them, word for word, and collect their paychecks. And he certainly couldn’t foresee that in five short years with the company he would find his career in ruins. Perhaps he was naive, but it just didn’t occur to him that this wouldn’t continue at MGM. Keaton formed his own company in 1920 and, making films his way, quickly became one of the most important comic artists of his time. His apprenticeship saw him teamed with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle at Arbuckle’s studio, and Arbuckle always functioned more as friend and collaborator than as boss. From his first day in front of a camera in 1917 until that moment, he had had the luxury, rare even then, of never working without artistic control. Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd warned Buster against it, telling him he would be unhappy inside the machinery of a major studio, but Buster couldn’t see the problem. Working there would, in theory, remove the burdens that came with being an independent and allow him to concentrate on the films themselves. MGM was a huge and successful company, as powerful as the lion that was its mascot. The last few films he had made for his own production company had been expensive and less profitable than he had hoped. as quickly as possible.In later years, Buster Keaton referred to his signing of a contract with MGM as “the worst mistake of my career.” In 1928 it was purely a business decision. It was Beckett's only visit to the U.S., and he never got outside of New York, and left the U.S. ![]() Keaton (age 69, and not in great health: he died less than two years later) never complained as he had to keep running along that brick wall in the heavy overcoat. ![]() ![]() The film was shot in mid-summer in a very hot New York, each day over 90 degrees. In New York, he wanted to use one of his flat hats rather than the bowler Beckett had written in, and Beckett immediately agreed. He suggested several comedic bits be added, because he thought the whole thing would be less than five minutes. Keaton was mystified by this script, too, as by "Godot", but wanted the money. When Schneider visited Keaton to see whether he'd do the movie, Schneider found Keaton in a poker game w/ three empty chairs, which represented three of Keaton's companions-all dead, but Keaton continued to play. Considering the other comments, there's little to add about the movie, but I know these few facts surrounding it. ![]()
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