“Belongs in any film fan’s library for providing a close look at the silent era and all of Keaton’s efforts, whether big or small, triumph or failure.” - Associated Press Every detail of his life and work is here.” -Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker “An immense year-by-year, sometimes week-by-week, account of Keaton as an artist and a man. “A landmark biography … Keaton’s career in the limelight (he started performing at age 3) and his innovations in motion pictures should keep readers riveted.” -Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times Fields, and Spencer Tracy, does a delightful job of capturing the old, weird America in which the Keatons plied their trade … Keaton was as much a technical innovator as he was a comic, and Curtis’s book goes into painstaking detail about how these effects were achieved … As definitive an account of the sad-faced comedian as one could hope for.” -David Kamp, The New York Times Book Review “Comprehensive … Curtis, who has also written mighty biographies of Preston Sturges, James Whale, W.C. This volume can lay claim to being definitive.” -Leonard Maltin “Others can, and will, continue to write about Buster Keaton and offer their own interpretations… but I can’t imagine anyone else tackling his life. Or are likely to have”-Richard Schickel, front page of The New York Times Book Review), and Spencer Tracy (“monumental definitive”- Kirkus Reviews), gives us the richest, most comprehensive life to date of the legendary actor, stunt artist, screenwriter, director- master. Fields (“by far the fullest, fairest and most touching account we have yet had. Now James Curtis, admired biographer of Preston Sturges (“definitive”- Variety), W. Through nineteen short comedies and twelve magnificent features, he distinguished himself with such seminal works as Sherlock Jr., The Navigator, Steamboat Bill, Jr., The Cameraman, and his masterpiece, The General. His iconic look and acrobatic brilliance obscured the fact that behind the camera Keaton was one of our most gifted filmmakers. Fields, the four were each considered a comedy king–but Keaton was, and still is, considered to be the greatest of them all. Keaton’s deadpan stare in a porkpie hat was as recognizable as Charlie Chaplin’s tramp and Harold Lloyd’s straw boater and spectacles, and, with W. Martin Scorsese, influenced by Keaton’s pictures in the making of Raging Bull: “The only person who had the right attitude about boxing in the movies for me,” Scorsese said, “was Buster Keaton.” Mel Brooks: “A lot of my daring came from Keaton.” he brought pure physical comedy to its greatest heights.” Keaton was the only major comedian who kept sentiment almost entirely out of his work and. It was James Agee who christened Buster Keaton “The Great Stone Face.” Keaton’s face, Agee wrote, “ranked almost with Lincoln’s as an early American archetype it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful, yet it was also irreducibly funny. “It is brilliant-I was totally absorbed, couldn’t stop reading it and was very sorry when it ended.”-Kevin Brownlow From acclaimed cultural and film historian James Curtis-a major biography, the first in more than two decades, of the legendary comedian and filmmaker who elevated physical comedy to the highest of arts and whose ingenious films remain as startling, innovative, modern-and irresistible-today as they were when they beguiled audiences almost a century ago.
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