I confess I read the other review of this book before I wrote mine and I should just say "ditto". This book is absolutely beautiful. If you are looking for a book loaded with photos this is the book. Some of the captions are a bit pretentious and I would love to know what Buster would think. Look past the comparisons to Magritte and take this book at face value. The book is out of print but Amazon found it in about one week and it was well worth looking for. If you are a true Keaton fan you will spend hours looking at this book over and over.

This book is extremely hard to find. A library book edition of it I once found had photos actually cut out of it!
The only other time I've seen it was in the movie "Benny & Joon", in a short scene on a train. Johnny Depp, whose character imitates Buster Keaton, is reading it.

Written by a Frenchman, the text is adulatory and pretty existential, but it does point out in a cogent way that BK was one of the sole comedians of any age, gender or style to possess bona fide sex appeal.

The photos are the bulk of this large book, and the reason why collectors would want it in the first place. Beautifully reproduced, of satisfying size and resolution, the pictures in The Look of Buster Keaton constitute the best collection in one volume of rare studio shots like Hurrell's glamour photo of Buster, stills from various films, and family photos not often seen.

For an in-depth discussion of Buster Keaton's importance as an artist, his massive influence on Europeans, and the stunning array of photographs it contains, this book cannot be beaten.

David Robinson's BUSTER KEATON is a very good book on the silent films of Buster. Mr. Robinson states in the first chapter that "the object...is to deal exclusively with the films". He stays away from Buster's personal life, pointing readers to Rudi Blesh's book (which at the time was out for only a few years). Mr. Robinson's details up through Spite Marriage are fantastic (175 pages). However, if there is a negative, he devotes a mere 2 pages to all of Buster's post-Spite Marriage work.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advanced copy of this stunning pictorial tribute to Buster Keaton written by his widow Eleanor Keaton and film historian Jeffrey Vance. Page after page of photos I've never seen before (one of the highlights being a series of pictures of Chaplin and Keaton rehearsing their routine in LIMELIGHT!). I have nearly all the books published in English on Keaton and I've found at least 50 great photos in this book I've never seen before. Rudi Blesh's KEATON used to be my favorite Buster book, now it's Eleanor Keaton's BUSTER KEATON REMEMBERED. I was expecting more text -- I thought it was going to be a biography -- but it is actually an illustrated survey of his life and films. However, the text that the book has is beautifully written. Some of Jeffrey Vance's introduction is worthy of James Agee or Walter Kerr.

The book has a substantial Afterword by silent film historian Kevin Brownlow but why it was placed in the back of the book and not as a Foreword baffles me.

Although I never got to meet Eleanor Keaton in person I'm very glad she was able to write this book before she passed away. Who better to sum up Buster best in book form than his wife Eleanor Keaton?

Just when you thought you had read everything about the Great Stone Face, along comes this remarkable book. "Buster Keaton Remembered" is a revelation -- featuring a treasure trove of never-before-seen photographs and a thoughtful text by Keaton's widow, Eleanor (who, sadly, died before the book's publication). The closing comments by film historian Kevin Brownlow are a nice touch. In all, an affectionate and fitting tribute to a serio-comic genius.

I, too, have every book written in English about Buster. I've been a fan for 25 years, and worked in Marketing in the 80's for the 16mm distributor of all Buster's films, even chatting a few times with Raymond Rohauer. I've met Buster's grandson and grandaughter, and attended many events in Los Angeles surrounding Buster's 100th birthday. Got all his classic films on tape. And visited his grave at Forest Lawn. So imagine how surprised I was to read so many new personal anecdotes, as well as fresh details about his working methods that shed new light on his creative genius. Not to mention the photos -- dozens I'd never seen before, beautifully reproduced -- including those elusive shots of Buster smiling! Eleanor even demystifies just how Buster made his own porkpie hats. This is truly a love letter from Eleanor to Buster, a tribute by the person who knew him best. Now I've got just as much respect for the woman who brought him lasting happiness as I do for the artist himself.

This is a very satisfying book, and an absolute must-have for any Keaton fan.

About 25 years ago, the now-demolished Playboy Theater in Chicago ran a landmark Buster Keaton revival featuring newly struck prints, correct projection speed, and musical accompaniment to Buster Keaton's features and shorts. It was a revelation and the first time that I truly understood what was lost when silent comedy faded into, as Norma Desmond might say, Talk! Talk! and More Talk! Moreover, it was the first time it became clear to me the degree of modernity and surrealism in Keaton's work--particularly in contrast to Chaplin's Victorian emotionalism. In short, I fell in love with Buster and his work. Now, "Silent Echoes" comes along to lovingly excavate the faded world of Buster Keaton's Los Angeles. The book is infused with John Bengston's love of Keaton, encyclopedic knowledge of his work and relentless ingenuity as a urban archeologist. Even better, it inspired me to rent the Keaton ouvre on laserdisc and video in order to revisit the locations of his shots and the depth of his humor and humanity. "Silent Echoes" is a labor of love that's a treat for film lovers.

Buster Keaton was a notorious stickler for detail in all of his film work. Buster's ghost was probably nodding his approval over the shoulder of John Bengtson as he painstakingly researched SILENT ECHOES, a tribute to the Keaton ouevre and a forever-lost Los Angeles. Bengtson juxtaposes stills from Keaton films with photos from modern-day L.A., showing in detail where Keaton filmed, virtually following his trail, from the shorts to the features. This book is a must for both film fans and historians.

John Bengtson has created a whole new genre of books. This book does not just explore the silent comedies of Buster Keaton. It also will allow the silent film fan to explore early Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other early movie locations in California, Arizona, and Oregon. It is amazing how Bengtson has located the buildings that were in the background scenery of Keaton's films. This book is a look at Los Angeles history, as buildings like the College of Dentistry and hotels that were houses of prostitution no longer exist. Now anyone can walk in the steps of the great comedian, Buster Keaton.

The Kline book is one of the most useful books on Keaton. It serves as an elaborate, illustrated "checklist", as do all the books in the Citadel "Films of" series. It helps make sense of the myriad Keaton films that go beyond his classic series of silents in the twenties. Only four stars, however, because of a single fault that, nevertheless, is very annoying in that it persists throughout the book: The author's tendency to list Keaton as "top-billed" in literally EVERY SINGLE FILM in which he appeared! In the case of Keaton's career, this is very irksome because Keaton travelled the roller-coaster through the years: star, supporting player, bit player, cameo player, co-star, etc., and it's of vital importance to the understanding of the trajectory of Buster's career highs & lows that we are shown, from one film to the next, where Keaton's placement was in the actual cast-lists of the time. KLine's decision to make every film a "starring" credit for Buster speaks a volume about his love for Keaton and his personal sense of Keaton's importance, but it robs us of an important perspective on Keaton's place in the movie business during the years 1934-1966.

This book is the most comprehensive book ever written about the films of Buster Keaton. Beginning with the very first film Buster Keaton appeared in and continuing through the last, this book provides the title, production year, credits and and synopsis for each Keaton film. In addition, many of the entries also contain little known facts and stories about the film. This book is both a valuable reference and a wonderful read for any Keaton fan. HIGHLY recommended.

Because Rudi Blesh's "Keaton" was published over 30 years ago and out of print, it's best to check the public library first, because trying to find it in a used bookstore may take till the 5th of never.

The book focuses on, in particular, his vaudeville days (1895-1917) and the silent film period that followed (1917-28). Little is written about the years after 1928. This may be because the book was written in cooperation with Buster, and it is likely that the years up to 1928 were the happiest of his career. Because it was written in cooperation with Buster, we get interviews, verbatim, straight out of his mouth. These unedited "tape recorder" parts are the best pages of the book because we get to hear his down-to-earth speaking style such as referring to his father as "the old man", his own face as "the puss", and the garbage as "the ash can" (several times), and also his abrupt incomplete-sentence style of talking.

However, there's much to be annoyed by here. The 60's began a nauseating self-awareness period that even spilled over into the subject of Buster Keaton. This era began the absurd psychoanalysis of his films and Blesh seems to endorse it ("the pale mask projected our own feelings"). These innocent films, which were only meant to make people laugh (and make a profit), are analyzed as being a study of Man's Competition with the Machine Age or blubbery about Man Against Modern Mechanisms ("the Keaton mythos is one more of being mastered than of being master"). The best way to really appreciate Buster is to ignore this hooey, and instead watch the unbelievable bravery that's proven in the deadly stunts he performed in the films made up to 1928.

Blesh also gives us descriptions of the plots to Buster's films. Almost all of them are described with errors, in fact on one of them, "The Electric House", Blesh incredibly rewrote both the characters and the plot! There's also included a photo of Buster and some others standing with their backs to the camera in front of the Keaton Studio on its opening day, which would have been in early 1920. The caption reads that it's Buster, his family members, and Fatty Arbuckle. It's actually the cast of "Neighbors", a film he made at the end of 1920.

Then Blesh continuously calls Buster's first 2-reel short "The High Sign" (1920) a "turkey", most likely because Buster kept referring to it as that in the interviews he did with Blesh. As an artist, Buster is naturally going to be more critical of his work than anyone else is. For this reason, it's out of place for the author to agree that "The High Sign" is a "turkey", especially since it's not that bad.

A relatively short section at the end is devoted to his MGM years (1928-33). Both these guys thrive on criticizing how bad the MGM pictures were, none of which were bad at all. There are so many errors in the book that I'm skeptical about how true the following is (because it's compiled by Blesh and not verbatim out of Buster's mouth), but one of the most interesting pages in the book is Buster's harrowing experience with his alcoholism and the D.T.'s he suffered (attacked by squirrels and ants) in his attempt to dry out, following his discharge from MGM, and the trip to the Arizona desert afterwards, ending with an experience with a bunch of hobos alongside some train tracks.

Since Buster was by the author's side during its composition, the book is worth reading because we get personal information that his future biographers weren't capable of gathering. One morning, I was so engrossed in something Mr. Keaton was saying that I missed a bus stop and had to walk a half mile to work because of it.

I highly recommend reading Mr Blesh's book basically because he gives us a better view of Buster's personal life. He particularly focuses on his childhood and the years prior to 1920. This I found very interesting. He does seem to completely avoid the period betweens Buster's first marriage to Natalie Talmadge and his third marriage to Eleanor. This was a bit frustrating since I am very curious about these years. Blesh skims over what I am sure would be fascinating if not depressing reading. Keep in mind that Mr. Blesh was a freind of Busters so he is more respectful of Buster than some authors have been. All in all the book is very good and comes highly recommended.

KEATON by Rudi Blesh is an outstanding book. But with flaws. Blesh provides great insight up through Buster's MGM years. He worked closely with Buster and the results are much better than "My Wonderful World of Slapstick". Blesh provides details of Buster's sad decline as MGM destroyed him.

There is not much about Buster's later years. Blesh finished the book prior to Buster's revival. Eleanor Keaton & Jeffery Vance cover Buster's final years much better in "Buster Keaton Remembered".

There are two key flaws, however. One is minor. At times Blesh's psychoanalysis of Buster's films seems foolish.

The other flaw is significant. Blesh misrepresents scenes from many films. My guess is he was relying on memory. In any event many descriptions of what transpired never happened.

Those two flaws can be forgivin- the rest of the book is great. The definitive book on Buster has yet to have been written. Read KEATON by Blesh as a companion to "Buster Keaton Remembered" (for the later years) and "Buster Keaton" by David Robinson (which accurately describes Buster's films).

If there were such thing as the perfect biography, instructions for its creation would probably include finding the proper balance of reverence and intellectual criticism. In this aspect of _Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn't Lie Down_, the author succeeds admirably. Of course, this still doesn't make for the perfect biography. The author seems relatively unconcerned with the intricacies of Keaton's art.

I read this book about 10 years ago and I thought it was very well written. It went into a lot of detail about his life which I thought was very interesting and well researched. I'd recommend this to anyone who'd like to read a good biography about Keaton.

I was dissapointed. Buster does not get into the kind of detail I was expecting. Some of the dates don't make sense. For example Buster states that in 1940 he returned to MGM as a gag writer. At The Circus (The Marx Brothers) was released in 1939. So how could that be? That's just one example. The question really is- how much was ghost written? Get this book if you are a Buster fan, but don't expect to be thrilled.

Written in 1959 and it shows. If the book were written 20 years later, the publisher would have demanded a more in-depth study of his life, and if Keaton refused, they probably would not have released it. There's something about autobiographies written before the '70s that kept the reader from learning the squalid parts of the biographer's life and his surroundings. Keaton gives us a feeling about what it was like for him to be obsessed with liquor at the downfall of his career in the early 1930s, and there's much to be said about it but he didn't elaborate on it as much as he could have, and I would have liked to have learned more. We hear nothing about the probable horror of his serving in France during World War 1, only the silly situations he got himself into. Was this what the publisher wanted? He said a lot about the huge mansion he lived in at the height of his career but I wanted to know more about the bit part times in the 1940s when he was reduced to living in a modest bungalow. He scims over the more personal items in his life that we would like to hear, namely, his troubled marriages - numbers 1 and 2. In number 1 to Natalie Talmadge, he told us about her excessive spending habits and why he let her get away with it, but I would have liked to have known more about her than what he gave us. On marriage to number 2 he didn't give us the woman's name and why the marriage didn't work out.

Keaton talks a lot about the construction of gags and why some work and some don't, but after reading the book, I didn't feel I knew much about the making of those classic movies from the 1920s, and he didn't say anything about his stock company of actors that repeatedly showed up in the movies and shorts. I wish he had introduced them to us. However, he was very good about describing the difference between the teamwork required of his staff in the making of his independent films and the lack thereof after he became an employee of a movie studio.

I found errors that may have been his writing collaborator's fault or could very well have been due to a lack of memory. He called his first film "The Butcher Shop". The film was called "The Butcher Boy" and was set in a general store. In "The Butcher Boy" he mentioned that Roscoe Arbuckle and Al St. John help him deal with a scene involving molasses. Al St. John got nowhere near the sticky goo. He said that the song "Singin' in the Rain" from one of his early MGM films is such an MGM classic that Gene Kelly used it in his film "Les Girls". Gene Kelly used it in his film "Singin' in the Rain". Called his last silent film "Spite Wife", although its actual name is "Spite Marriage". He worked on Esther Williams' film "Bathing Beauty" but called it "Swimming Beauty". Especially on the case of "The Butcher Boy", how could Keaton forget the title of his first film and what he did in it (the molasses being the purpose of his first screen appearance) when the general store was so much a part of the plot. Why would molasses be sold in a butcher shop? The man was not an idiot! I've heard him talk about his first screen appearance, and there's no indication that he remembered it as being a butcher shop. That's why I think something was screwy in the writing of this book with his collaborator.

However, I recommend this book if you are a Keaton fan and would like to know more about him. You won't get everything you want to hear but that's because of the censored publishing rules at the time. Still, you are getting it from his own mouth, and that's something to value over a biography written by someone who didn't live his life.

Reading the words of Buster Keaton gives great insight into how he was able to create his unique form of comedy.

His first hand telling of his fascinating life story may be a bit romanticized and a bit simplified, but then so were his films.

I came away with a clearer picture of what the world of silent film making was like, and how even a genius like Keaton could be dragged down by things beyond his grasp, including his own insecurities.

Keaton reveals himself to be a rather humble man. He makes clear that he never saw his work as anything more than the job of making people laugh. But he was a skilled acrobat and a great mime.

What is really missing from this book can only be found in the films themselves.

A long, over-written unfunny book about some very funny films. See Keaton's movies instead.

Between 1920 and 1923 Buster Keaton wrote, directed, and starred in nineteen independent short films which are some of the funniest ever made.
In this scholarly yet readable analysis, Oldham, an unabashed fan of the "great stone face", devotes a chapter to each of these classic shorts, closely describing each scene with attention to visual composition, symmetry, repetition, and other cinematic techniques, as well as the critical element of the extraordinary funnyman himself.
We can be thankful that Oldham not only avoids killing the subject in the process of dissection, an all-too- common fault in film criticism, but actually adds a richness of understanding to the Keaton legacy. In her words, "Beyond the comedy is film, lovingly and dexterously crafted in its comic visions. Within these visions are starkly familiar themes and paradoxes. We begin to realize that Buster - exaggerated or simple, funny or serious - resembles each one of us..."

(The "score" rating is an unfortunately ineradicable feature of this page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)

Though Meade seems to enjoy Keaton's screen work, most of what she writes about him personally is written with either scorn or the most obnoxious form of pity. She really doesn't write like she cares much for her subject. Meade also makes a claim that Keaton was illiterate but the proof isn't substantial. It's a miracle I even finished the book. Meade's comments just become too annoying. One thing though, the filmography is very good.

If you do read this and it is the first book that you've read about Buster, you should follow it up with another biography. Try digging up a copy of Rudi Blesh's "Keaton."

Meade paints Keaton as a pitiful man and never seems to get at the heart of his passion for the cinema. The only emotion I felt towards Keaton, one of my personal heroes, after reading this book was pity. I don't recommend it for anyone who has never previously read anything about the Great Stoneface.

This would be a much better book, except questionable statements (i.e. Buster was illiterate) and some vulgar speculations (i.e. Rappe & Arbuckle) make me doubt the validity of other information. She does not paint a pleasant picture of Buster especially after his decline after joining MGM. However, the fact remains that except for a few brief moments, post-Spite Marriage, Buster rarely rose to great heights again. The Filmography is very good.