by Jerry Stahl
Over the next three days I relocated my clothes to the Friars. Lou Anger and Joe Schenck encouraged the move. Both offered cagey advice on how to separate without getting in the papers. Can't ruin that wholesome image! Minta kept trying to tell me I was being manipulated, that Joe and Lou just wanted to get rid of her to have more control over me. (Don't say it, folks, I know.)
Joe suggested giving Minta $500 a week. I felt so guilty, I settled on three G's a month instead. Anger insisted on the proviso that Minta and I continue to live separately "as man and wife" (as opposed to cow and cow catcher, I guess) and that Minta not get involved in any way with the running of Comique. Butcher Boy, my first film at my own company, was days away from shooting, and I felt like I needed every ounce of oomph to put into that. The constant squabbling had a way of de-oomph-ing me.
Later, Minta would always blame Anger and Schenck for the divorce.
Enter the Human Mop
The first day of shooting on Butcher Boy, a young vaudevillian named Keaton ambled into the studio with Nice Guy Anger. Buster Keaton—alias "the Human Mop"—had no intention whatsoever of working in movies. He'd been performing onstage since he was three months old and had the same attitude I did before stumbling in front of a camera. Theater GOOD; film BAD. Plus which, Buster was pulling $250 a week onstage. But when I saw him, I waved him over anyway. I just had a feeling.
In the scene we were doing, I was an incompetent butcher boy, minding the shop, when a customer comes in to buy some molasses. By way of cheating me, the customer drops a quarter into the bucket, then asks me to fill it up. To outsmart him, I pour the stuff in his hat. Naturally the hat sticks to his noggin, and—well, you get the gist. Highbrow all the way.
From the second we slapped Buster in that porkpie chapeau and let him loose, I knew he had something magic. Strange, but magic. In a few minutes molasses was everywhere, pies were flying, and the whole crew lined up to watch Buster and me go at it. I got this crazy idea in the middle to hit him in the face with a sack of flour. Buster didn't even flinch. Later he told me that when he was a boy, his father used to throw him into the audience when he got mad. So Buster either had to learn how to take a fall or end up a gimp. A sack of flour in the face was nothing compared to being tossed headfirst off the stage.
I told Buster, the only difference between my dad and his was that mine didn't get paid for throwing me around. And he didn't need an audience. He did it for free. For his own amusement.
The Man of My Dreams
Buster and I did the whole destroy-the-store scene in one take, molasses to flour sack. By the time I yelled cut, the two of us were laughing so hard we had to be helped out to keep from drowning in the muck.
In the second reel I'm back in pretty dress and spitcurls—always a crowd pleaser. But for me it was meeting Keaton that made the whole thing spectacular. See, what I really wanted was to find a way to make comedies that weren't just glorified Keystoners. I wanted laughs without car chases. Without bonehead violence. I liked to think of what we did as more of a ballet, though I wouldn't have spread it around. I wanted to make my plots as funny as my physical hijinks, and to play all kinds of characters. If Chaplin wanted to be a tramp in every movie, God bless him. I needed to stretch my hams a little. With Buster on board, I felt like I had an hombre who wanted all the same things I did. And had his own peculiar way of getting them.
Butcher Boy made a few hollow legs full of cash and the reviews made me blush. Here's the New York Dramatic Mirror: "The spectacle of Fatty as a kittenish young thing in his ruffled pinafore and short socks and his efforts to behave as a young lady boarder will undoubtedly delight the Arbuckle fan. As for Arbuckle himself, he is the best known proof that everybody loves a fat comedian."
Ouch, and thank you!
Life Gets Good, Then I Listen to Lou
Theater owners hounded us for more Butcher Boy prints right out of the gate. Schenck's cut was 25 percent of the net, so he was "Bubbying" all over the place. Me and Lou Anger had a slightly smaller chunk. But by the end of the first year, between one dream-come-true and another, I was rubbing noses with a million smackers. That's when Lou had the bright idea I should only declare $250,000, by way of saving on taxes. When the IRS popped out of the bushes with masks and duffel bags five years later—"Give us all your money, hambone!"—they didn't really care that my manager had prompted the maneuver. By then I was already tainted meat, and it didn't help to see my mug on the front page under TAX CHEAT.
Lou was always full of helpful advice. One time, I wanted to buy a gravel pit in Los Angeles. I'd seen horses pulling wagonloads of the stuff all day long. I figured we could resell the gravel to construction companies, who always needed it, and make a tidy profit. Lucky for me, my fiscal wizard vetoed the idea. A month later they struck oil in the pit I'd wanted to buy. It would have made me a billionaire. God knows what that would have done to my career!
But what am I doing here? Huh? Here I am trying to recount the happiest period of my life—back in Hollywood with Buster—and I'm cutting away to the taxecutioner. (That's tax-e-cutioner—no Q, honeybunch.)
When Schenck dragged us all back to the West Coast, I dragged Keaton with me. By then Buster was a full-fledged member of Comique. From hating the idea, he'd become a movie nut. That first day, after we cleaned up the flour and sorghum, he wanted me to show him everything. How scenes got spliced together in editing, how story gets laid out, how what goes in the camera comes out onscreen at the other end. I didn't even know how much I knew until I started filling Buster in. He took a pretty big pay cut to jump from the stage. Schenck offered $40 a week and Keaton took it. A few months later, his Dad, Joe, who'd stayed away from movies as a point of pride, came hat in hand to the set. He wanted his boy to find a part for him and Buster's Mom.
As a favor, I stuck Pops Keaton in a couple of scenes. But after listening to him bloviate about "stagecraft" and "the lure of the boards," I devoutly wished he'd pack his bags and head back to the Herkimer Circuit.
I'm almost ashamed to say how footloose and fancy-free I felt, back in Hollywood, with no Minta to feel bad about. I'd gotten kind of smoochy with Alice Lake, one of the girls who appeared in a couple of our movies. But that wasn't why I was feeling good. Buster was what made being back in California so much fun. Because some funny things had happened to Los Angeles while I was away. The place was twice as full of people as it was when I left. And actors were treated like royalty. I still remember when rooming houses put signs out front: NO DOGS, NO COLORED, NO ACTORS. Not anymore, brother! We were like puddly-faced gods. (Things were still pretty rough for Negroes and mutts.)
During Out West, my second movie since coming back to Los Angeles, I was doing deep knee bends in my dressing room when I groaned out of a squat and found myself face to face with a tall blond girl. She was an extra in a barroom brawl. But for our little scene she sported a different wardrobe. Beneath her smile, she wore nothing but a holster, a pair of six-shooters, and sparkly boots. "Kiss me and I won't shoot, Roscoe!"
I can't say if it was her ambition or my puckish charms that inspired the stunt. I didn't ask. Instead I excused myself—and asked Anger to replace her. This kind of thing had become a real problem. Douglas Fairbanks took to carrying around a flyswatter, to keep the sweethearts away. But poor Wally Reid couldn't take it. Handsome Wallace, "America's Number One Screen Heart-throb," as the magazines called him. So many girls used to camp out in his garage, the poor cuss had to fight his way to his car every morning. One budding starlet, daughter of a certain titan of industry, bribed Reid's valet to let her hide in a trunk in his boss's dressing room. The valet was fired, but it would have taken him a while to save up the 10 grand Miss Starlet slipped him. The girl jumped out of the steamer in time to see Wallace injecting his wake-up—the morning bang of morphine he needed to get up and shave—so of course she needed to be paid all over again to keep her mouth shut. Which she didn't. Until rumors got so thick the studio had to cook up a story about his "bas
eball-related" rheumatism. Too late. Handsome Wally's image was ruined, and so was he.
I thought about Wally a lot whenever the pain came back, when I got tempted to go back on God's Own Medicine myself. Of course, Wally's pain was in his brain. Or maybe his heart, and points south. Once, when we were both pretty splashed at the Vernon Country Club, he grabbed my lapels, stuck that pretty puss of his right up to mine, and admitted, eyes tearing up, "I can't take it, Roscoe. I never know when one of 'em's gonna jump out of a closet. Or from under the bed. It's givin' me plumbing problems, y'know what I mean?" I told him I knew what he meant.
Everywhere else folks were scraping by, lucky to have 10 bucks a week. Out here . . . Well, let's just say I wasn't the only raised-poor young timebomb with a million in his pocket and an itch to empty it. One minute little Rodolfo Alfonzo Rafaelo di Valentina d'Antonguolla was a gardener. The next he's Rudolph Valentino, the Sheik of Araby. Magazines couldn't get enough of our shenanigans. And studios wanted to give 'em plenty to write about.
The bigwigs would never come out and say it, but they wanted you to spend the dough as much as they hated giving it to you to spend. The studio hacks needed to keep the public panting over your every purchase. A sure crowd pleaser was the Hollywood Home. To show you were a "big" star, as opposed to a little twinkler, you had to snag a giant house. But after a while it wasn't enough to just own an outsized domicile. You had to have the right lawn, too. You had to have sod.
Buster thought this lawn stuff was as D-U-M-B ridiculous as I did. So when we weren't cheating at pinochle, banging a baseball around, or trying to reel in something off the Santa Monica pier besides truck bumpers, we both loved to take the piss out of the town's fake-grass fixation. Our first victim was Pauline Frederick, an actress who did everything but rent a billboard to brag about her fresh-laid blades.
Like Mary Pickford, Miss Pauline had her green imported from Olde England. So Buster and I swiped a couple of uniforms from Wardrobe, rented a water-company truck, and knocked on the door to say we were "investigating a leak." After the butler gave us the okay, we rolled the front yard up like an old carpet and hauled it off. When the lovely Pauline awoke to see a dirt patch outside her window, you could hear the scream all the way down to Al Levy's Café.
One guy who took advantage of the whole Jumbo House Craze was Al Helmen. All us rich rubes got our hair cut down at Helmen's Barber Shop. Me, Charlie, Rudy, Wally Reid—when he still knew he had hair—and Douglas Fairbanks. Helmen could make a porcupine suave. But knowing the stars were ripe to be plucked, he quit snipping their follicles and started shaving their bank accounts, selling real estate. While the rest of the country was chewing its legs off, us rich boys were busy doing the Black Bottom and the Turkey Trot at the Sunset Inn. Making sharpies like Helmen rich.
But I digress. By the end of Out West, Buster was starting to get a little hinky from having Daddy Joe around. He wouldn't come out and say it, but I could see the way he dug his nails in his palms every time the old man started spouting off. I told Keaton Senior we needed to reshuffle the deck, and he should sit out a few films. Daddy Joe's reaction was classic Daddy Joe. "I'm stealing the scenes, is that it? I knew it! You movie actors are all alike. Scared of a little competition. Not like your trained professionals of the stage. Why, in my day . . ."
Buster and I both had our earplugs in before he got out another trained professional syllable.
Daddy Sticks His Hand Out
I have always been an easy touch. A few years before this, when the war first started, it was almost like folks figured, "I might be dead in a week, may as well tap Fatty for a C-note!" The tappage pretty much cooled off after the Armistice. That is, until my father showed up, with a homely wife and one shaky hand sticking out, palm up. Daddy said in a tinny voice that he was proud of me. I wanted to say, "Thanks, that makes up for leaving me stranded in San Jose. For making me work in your lousy hash joint..." But he looked so down-at-the-mouth and threadbare, stooped in my doorway, I couldn't even lay into him. For years I'd put myself to sleep planning what I'd say to the heartless so-and-so if I ever laid eyes on him. But that's not really my nature. I just make nice, then go out and eat a poundcake.
What I did, when Daddy showed up, was invite Daddy to visit the set. There I introduced him to Lou. That was that. Anger took one look at the ragged old mendicant and dragged me into the editing room. "Pay 'im, Roscoe. Whatever the old bastard wants, pay 'im."
Turns out, Lou had heard from his contact at the Times that Daddy was trying to peddle his "Selfish Rich Boy Shuns Poor Old Pop" line to the papers.
"'Shuns'? Ask him how he ditched me when I was 10!" I could feel the old hot tears welling up. But Anger got a hard look and pinched me on the belly.
"He's going to squeeze you, Roscoe."
"Squeeze me?"
"Paint you like a monster in the press, guilt you into payin' up big."
That was Lou. Always thinkin' the best of people. I would have paid Daddy anyway. He sounded like he had a mouthful of broken marbles when he talked. The morning I brought him down to the set of A Country Hero, poor Buster had to watch his Daddy doing high kicks. It was actually funny, seeing an old man do the can-can. I asked Buster why he looked so miserable, and he told me Daddy Joe's high-kick routine cost him his front teeth when he was 12.
That's when my stepmother—I couldn't call her "Mom" with a rake to my throat—inched up to me on tiptoe and whispered in my ear. "Son, your daddy has the cancer in his tongue. He's got to have some medical."
Big surprise. Lou went into his I-told-you-so. I told him to can it and write the check like he'd suggested in the first place. Why not pay for the hospital? Keep the old man comfy.
The first time I visited Daddy at County Hospital he was crying in pain. I walked in as the night nurse was giving him his morphine. Daddy looked a little too happy. It was startling. Is that what I looked like? He wore this drooly little smile. When he saw me, he flapped his hand. I thought he was imitating a chicken for a second—sometimes, on one of his l-out-of-53 happy drunks, Daddy did a drunken-chicken imitation. Kind of a flappy dance where he waved his arms and clucked.
I opened my mouth. But nothing came out. That's when I realized I was staring at the needle. Probably lickin' my chops.
Any left for me, Daddy-mine? Or did you take everything for yourself, as usual?
I scooped up the old man and hauled him downstairs. Dumped him in the backseat of my Pierce-Arrow. I had to move.
"Look, Dad, I use imported civet oil to keep the leather soft."
For a while he acted happy; then the drugs wore off. I could see his happy turn to ragged. After that he acted like every good thing I had was a sign of my treachery. Like I enjoyed myself to spite him. Got successful to rub his nose in it. When he saw the shrub sculptures at my house—I had one done like Luke the Dog, and one like Zukor—all Daddy said was, "Nice, I guess, if you go for that kind of thing."
I could not have impressed my father if I hired President Wilson to pee in the swimming pool. Still, I tried. I took him out to Vernon, to see the ball club I owned, the Vernon Tigers. Dad used to mock me for not being athletic when I was a child. Now I had the deed on a team that won the Pacific Coast League three seasons running. So how did Daddy react to that? He had a hot dog and said it tasted gamy. I did not tell him that half the reason I bought the Big Cats was because the Vernon stadium was next to Doyle's Saloon, which stocked the best under-the-counter cripple-juice green money could buy. Does that make me a bad son?
I left the car at the stadium so we could ride home on the Red Line. I thought he'd get a kick out of the trolley. But he didn't care much for trolleys, either. His only reaction was to ask why all the paddy wagons were lined up at Sixth and Main. "Lot of folks get a little excited when my fellas win," I told him.
Buster was grateful for how I'd helped him deal with his own father, so he offered to come along for part of my outing with mine. Of course Buster had to do it his own way. He showed up at
the Red Line stop behind the wheel of my car, dressed like a 17th-century footman. "I, sir, am your son's chauffeur," he announced. "I worship him!" With this he kneeled and kissed my brogans, which alarmed my father to no end. Then, after helping him into the car, Buster offered to shine Daddy's shoes with his forehead. "Secret buffing technique," he said, with that straight face of his. Daddy would not let himself react, which drove Buster to further heights.
But that reminds me. I have to say something here. (Should I stick my hand out when I make a left?) See, Buster could have been a leading man. He was that kind of handsome—whenever he smiled. In Fatty at Coney Island, we had a gag where Buster was supposed to swing the mallet at a strong-man gong. He was trying to show what a brute he was and smack the rubber ball up to the ringer. Originally, the gag was that the ball barely moves when he whacks it. But, during the first take, he reared back and accidentally beaned me with the hammer. Buster was so startled he turned around and laughed. Dead into the camera. He made me shoot another take. I stuck with the first one in the movie. Just to show him what kind of face he had on celluloid. But Buster insisted he didn't want to admit what a looker he was. The handsome bastard.
"I can make love to a leading lady anytime," he explained when I nagged him about it. "But if I take her clothes and hit her with a pie, she's going to report me." From that day forward, you never saw Buster Keaton onscreen when he didn't look like his dog ate the baby and died.