by Jerry Stahl
Okay, okay, so I'm not supposed to talk so much about Buster. Well, what was I talking about? Daddy? Fine. We were talking about Daddy. The Scotch is starting to affect me. Not like the old days, when a couple gulps flipped the off switch on my worry gland. Those switches don't work anymore. They got switched.
Anyway . . . After we took Daddy to eat at Musso and Frank's, introducing him to Mary Pickford and Valentino—"Never did like greaseballs," was all he had to say about Rudy—we drove him back to the hospital. The whole ride, Daddy acted like he'd finished some much-dreaded and unsavory chore. When I said goodbye at the door to his ward, he even hesitated before shaking my hand. Like either he was afraid he'd catch something, or he just couldn't bear to touch me. I was staggered, which Buster seemed to sense. Walking out the front gate of the hospital, Buster pulled out his flask and stuck it in my hand. "You sure showed your Dad a good time."
"That's not how it felt to me," I confided. "I tried too hard to impress him."
Buster adjusted his cap, ready to resume chauffeur duty like it was the most normal thing in the world. That's what I loved about him. He had to keep that serious look plastered on his face because all he ever did was play. He scooped some ice from the chest behind the passenger seat, dropped it into a tumbler, then grabbed a bottle from the Pierce-Arrow bar and, holding the ice-filled glass behind his back, poured a perfect two fingers of Scotch right into it.
"Well, did you?" he asked, taking a sip of his drink.
"Did I what?" I was still marveling at his over-the-shoulder pouring move, but it would have been unprofessional to make too much of it. "Did I what, Buster?"
"Impress him," he said.
I almost had to pull over. We were driving to Echo Park, where Sunset Boulevard ends, to Buster's apartment. All the New York theater types lived around there. Buster occupied the bottom half of a rooming house on Alvarado. A trio of budding comediennes shared the rooms above him.
"Do you believe what that bastard said," I blurted, "every time a fan came up to ask for an autograph?"
"Didn't notice," Buster replied, and waited for me to explain. He was the greatest waiter in the world. That was the secret to everything he did.
"Well, let me tell you," I continued, my voice cracking a little. "This Mexican fella comes up and says he's a fan, could I sign something for his little boy. That's a nice thing, but before the guy even gets my John Q and turns away, Daddy shakes his head and says, 'Don't his kind have jobs?' 'His kind'! Right in front of the guy!" Buster thought that was funny.
Oh, oh, but wait. Wait. This will really get you! Did I mention taking Daddy to a test screening of Reckless Romeo} People thought I was nuts for showing my movies in public before they came out. But I figured, the freshest eyes you're gonna get are total strangers. So why not corral a few, loiter in the back, and see where everything goes dead? Daddy knew how much this meant to me. But did he so much as chortle, perk up, or at least stop talking when the guffaws rocked the rafters? No sir. No. Not a-tall.
Dad was too busy telling me about the magazine article he read that said I spent half a million dollars on clothes a year. Before I could tell him a lot of that stuff was studio hooey, he stuck his elbow in his homely wife's ribs and chuckled, in his mouthful-of-broken-marbles way. "For all the money those fools make off you, you'd think they could afford to buy you a girdle!"
Buster nearly dropped the flask when he heard that one. He did drop it the day he found out he was drafted. Not only was future Private Keaton shy one trigger finger, his feet were flat enough to heat up and iron shirts. Am I jumping around? Well, you'd be jumpy, too.
I kept Buster in front of the camera till five minutes before he shipped off with the 40th Infantry. He was heading to Camp Kearney, outside San Diego, to make $30 a week and learn how to make his bed. That last film, The Cook, was our 17th. We shot down on Sixth and Alamitos in Long Beach, at the old Balboa Studios. Schenck said we could make more money working like hermit crabs, moving from studio to studio, than we could if we actually built our own place.
Maybe it's because none of us knew what was going to happen next, because Buster didn't know if he was going to live or die, or because the whole world was skidding off the tracks. But that last afternoon, Keaton inspired me to come up with a comic sequence that gave us both goose bumps. I started slicing salami with an electric fan, then stuck a fork in a couple of breakfast rolls and did a bun dance. Eight years later, Chaplin lifted the whole routine for The Gold Rush. But by then petty theft was the last thing I had on my mind.
I tried to enlist, myself—don't laugh—but not even the Courtesy Corps would take a hunk of suet 100 pounds overweight with a leg that looked like it had already taken shrapnel. I'd done a couple of advertisements, lending my name to the glories of Murad cigarettes, for which I received a bargeful of that very product. So one Saturday I rented a truck and went down with a load of smokes to pass out to the Marines on Mare Island. The last bit of America those boys would see before being shipped out.
While I visited the base, I played tug of war, and single-handedly held off 20 jarheads. They couldn't budge me. I did a couple of cartwheels in the mess hall, which got some choice spit takes. Nothing a private likes more than seeing his sergeant spray beans in his lap. Then I marched everybody into the gymnasium to demonstrate reverse somersaults and the art of falling on my keister. "I've got a lot of keister to fall on, fellas, so I understand if you're jealous." Big laugh for El Fattopotamus.
There were a lot more lads than I'd anticipated, so I ordered a gross of Bull Durhams—more to the fighting man's taste than Murads—and had the brass pass them out before I headed back to Hollywood. All anonymous, of course. Don't want to showboat. So maybe I was trying to impress the unimpressible Daddy in my fat head. The fighting men would get their extra tobacco ration. That's what mattered.
Does that sound right?
Crazy Money
The more you read the papers about what was going on everywhere else, the more you realized Hollywood was like a crazy island, where the natives were off on a spree while the rest of the world crawled through war, inflation, influenza, and food shortages. By now I had to have a brand-new garage built to hold my cars. All five of them. There was a pearl-white Caddy, the Renault (a Frog ride I got as a gift), the Rolls (so lush I used to sleep in it), a Stevens-Duryea I kept for the gardener to drive, and on the way from the manufacturer a 25-grand custom-made Pierce-Arrow.
But just indulge me here. One more Daddy thing and I'll shut up, okay? When Daddy walked up the flagstone path to my house, I said, "Guess how much this front door cost?" He said, "I don't know . . . 50 bucks?" To him 50 was extravagant. When I told him 15,000,1 thought he was going to be sick. The Japanese bridge in my garden probably cost more than Daddy made in his life. But I couldn't stop myself.
I dragged the old man, sick as he was, out to Venice, where I'd snapped up another little mansion, 1621 East Ocean. We did so much shooting in Long Beach, it made sense to be closer, save on drive time . . . All right, that's not the only reason. Venice was also a "wet" town. Which, for all you lucky lappers who weren't around for Prohibition, means a city where a man could still get his lips around a whiskey bottle without a fuss. Round white man buy 'em firewater easy. You could drink, and get drunk, and the cops were okay with it if you patted their palms a little. And the Sunset Inn was a hop-step-and-tumble down the road. Buster and I spent so much time there we were on the menu. I'll have the Mammoth Olives a la Roscoe Arbuckle and the Shrimp Cocktail a la Buster Keaton. Thank you. And bring me some breath mints, honey.
The Sunset Inn was the scene of many an epic bender. Something about that beach air. Whenever we wandered the sand with drinks in our hands, and I started feeling tipsy enough to need a lie-down—generally flat on my face—I'd look at Buster, stroke my chin, and declare, "That darn ocean breeze. It does something to me." That was everybody's signal to catch me when my knees buckled. There was no better place to pass out than on the beach. As
long as the tide was out.
But what I really loved about my Venice place, aside from the fresh air and fresh hooch, was the tunnel. My private tunnel. Who else had one of those? The President? Underneath our property, somebody'd built a tunnel all the way down through the cliff right out to the surf. Rumor had it this was a bootlegger's drop. Or maybe a smuggler's. The last occupant of the house died under mysterious circumstances. Who knew?
Goodbye, Daddy, Goodbye
My father's last night before going back into the hospital I threw a party for him out at the Venice house. When I led him through the tunnel Daddy kept eyeballing the ceiling, like it was gonna collapse any second. I plopped him on a horse on the beach, between Mary Pickford and Bebe Daniels. I think the old child abandoner got flirty with 'em, because his wife stalked back to the house more stone-faced than usual.
I guess Daddy's visit made me think about things. Before he left, 10-grand check from Yours Truly in his hand, he made that jiggered-up face he always made when he wanted to let me know what he thought of me. "Funny," he said, in his cracked-glass cancer voice, "you used to hate when anybody called you fat. Looks like you're making a pretty decent livin' at it."
No "Thank you." No "I'm proud o' you, son." Nothing. Which may be what inspired me to do Out West. See, when I was clowning around for the soldiers, I could tell how impressed they were. Not just impressed, but surprised. Like, they pretty much had the same view of me that Daddy did. I was some glorified carny act. The male equivalent of the Fat Lady. Nobody seemed to understand how strong you had to be to do what I do. How physically sound and coordinated. Twenty marines I held off in a tug of war. Could you do that? I rest my crankcase.
Seriously, in my secret heart, I knew I could be Douglas Fairbanks. And after getting that last, disgusted goodbye look from Daddy, I decided to demonstrate that fact on celluloid—to put my strength and agility front and center. If not for Fairbanks's—or my father's—benefit, then for mine.
Understand, Doug-Doug was a friend of mine. We'd shared more than a few "Is it eight in the morning or eight at night?"s together. He was the Action Hero—the man women wanted and other men wanted to be. But look at what he did in every movie: the roof jumping, the balcony hopping, the swan dives into choppy waters. It was the same stuff I did. Except he looked better in tights. So, since Buster was gone, and I figured I'd have to carry things on my own, I got the bright idea of doing a parody of a Fairbanks film.
The gag in Hollywood was that D.F. wouldn't even read a script if the plot did not involve a couple of balconies to bounce off of. So, in Out West. I squeezed in as many leap scenes as I could think up. I didn't play them for yuks, either. I just performed 'em, almost like a demonstration. Did I scramble up church steeples? Did I make bad guys cower? Did I shimmy onto the porches of beauties who got all goose-pimply at the sight of me? Yes. Why? Same reason a dog laps his genitals. Because I could. (Not lap my genitals, though later on Mr. Hearst would accuse me of worse. I meant, I shimmied onto porches.) Sure, the audience was laughing, but they also realized something: just cause he's called Fatty doesn't mean he's not an athlete. I was doing this for fat men everywhere!
Out West wasn't the first movie where I was required to show off my physique. (Now be quiet, ladies!) After Jack Dempsey creamed Jess Willard, I asked the new champ if he wanted to do a movie together. What gave me the idea was an item I read in the paper. The Dempsey fight was the first one Willard's wife ever attended. She didn't even show up when Jess beat Jack Johnson to become heavyweight champion in the first place.
Imagine! At the one fight Mrs. Willard sees fit to attend, her hubby gets his hind end handed to him in three rounds. My idea was to play Willard, trying to explain to his wife that this wasn't how things usually went. "Honestly, hon, this never happened before!" Show me the man who denies ever serving up that bit of palaver, and I'll show you a liar. But Dempsey's manager thought movies would lower his boy's real estate and took a Pasadena.
Of course, when it came to spire climbing, I got the laughs, but Fairbanks got the sighs. Still, once people in Front Porchville saw me doing all the stunts Douglas did, I earned a new kind of respect. Minta, who'd become somewhat of a Freud nut since we split up, told me Herr Shrinker would say I was trying to get kudos from my father by getting it from the audience. I might have bought this, but she also said Freud thought throwing a cream pie was a "symbol for ejaculation." Don't think I didn't mull on that the next time I caught Mabel in the face with a custard. Duck!
What with the war and all, it was incumbent—that's a Joe Schenck word, "incumbent" (he was a college man)—it was incumbent on all of us to do what we could for our country. (The only thing my country ever did for me was dun me till my eyes bled for back income tax, but I don't want to sound like some kind of Red.) Uncle Sam may not have wanted want me in uniform, but, by gum, he wanted me on celluloid. Naturally, I was happy to donate my humble talent.
Alongside Mabel, George M. Cohan, Mary Pickford, Elsie Ferguson, my liquid-lunch buddy Fairbanks, plus Pauline Frederick, William S. Hart, and a smack-happy Wally Reid, I showed up in a morale booster and money raiser with the catchy title The United States Fourth Liberty Loan Drive. Not much story, but plenty of stars.
The stars, of course, worked for free. We made a million dollars for the US of A. It was a Famous Players-Lasky setup, and I couldn't help but wonder how much old Jesse was skimming off the ammo money. Then the Armistice was signed, and 10 minutes after Buster got off the train I picked him up and brought him back to Alessandro Street to play a theater rat in Backstage. That was the first time we tried for color-tinting the film. Buster said we both looked like we'd been force-fed peaches. We didn't bother with the color gimmick after that.
By now I was pulling down $7,000 a week, and not a day went by without some company or other sniffing round, waving cash in my face, to see if they could "extract" me from my current contract. Loew's, through Joe Schenck's brother Nicky, wagged one-and-a-quarter-million per, plus a cut. Even that hotbed of melodrama, Universal, came at me. Didn't matter to them if I did comedy, they just wanted the name. Oddly enough, one of Universal's biggest stars was Earl Schenck, baby brother of Joe and Nick. I tell you, those people bred like minks.
The money I made at Comique never ceased to amaze me. And getting creative control! The whole deal was positively unprecedented. But between you, me and that six-foot sidewinder I've been hallucinating on and off since my padded-cell vacation, I was just happy not to be robbed outright . . . When I was five years old, Daddy gave me a teddy bear for Christmas. I remember, 'cause it was the first and last one I ever got. Right away, I loved that bear. Then I hugged it to my chest, and I noticed a little tear in its tummy. Some stuffing was coming out. So I stuck in my finger and SNAP—just like that, something bit it. I screamed so loud Mama woke up from her morphine nap. Then I pulled out my hand and—I could faint thinking about it—there was this baby snake swinging from my forefinger. It had its fangs stuck right under the nail, and what I recall even now is how calm it looked. If snakes had eyebrows it would have probably waggled them. With its shiny little eyes, the snake seemed to be saying, "Well what did you expect from your Daddy?"
That's how I felt about all these companies coming up with their fantastic offers. And that's how I felt about the deal I had. Sooner or later, the teddy bear would turn out to have a snake in it. Until you got bit, all you could do was keep an eye on your fingers.
Zukor and I had formed Comique on a handshake in New York. But now Adolph wanted something solid. So he offered the one thing none of the other studios even thought of. I'm not talking about money. He promised more than three million in three years, but I was already making a mil a year. So what does Zukor offer, that conniving son-of-a-gunstein? Features. That's what. The one dish nobody else slapped on the table.
Feature Me
The idea, if I signed, was that my two-reeler days would be over. Zukor wanted seven features a year—with no one but me saying what we
do and how we do it. I had to let that sink in. Starting in October 1920, I'd be making 22 features in three years. Chaplin didn't crank out a feature until The Kid, in 1922.1 might have felt the snake wriggling in the teddy bear when Adolph said Famous Players-Lasky would be producing all of them. But I've always been a simp at negotiations. I started out in vaudeville because I was hungry. I hate this business stuff. Mack always used to say, "You can't trust anybody in Hollywood, so relax."
Balanced on a couple of bar stools on Zukor's boat, nursing a fistful of martini, I tried to let the proposition sink in. We'd spent the weekend at Catalina, and he'd insisted on bringing me back to Los Angeles himself, so we could talk. I didn't know if I should I be jumping up and down screaming "whoopee!" or covering my tender orifice and diving for shore. I should have known something was up when he insisted on feeding me a tureen of drink before taking advantage of me. What was I, a starlet?
Adolph, plainly, thought I was playing "confused" to grind him, biting my lip and scratching my head full of cornsilk hair like a rube in a melodrama. I was confused, but if you're an actor, producers just assume you're acting. From where Zukor stood, I had all the power, I just didn't know it. So when it looked like I was having second thoughts—or worse, trying to make him cough up more money—he swung into double-hand action.
But allow me to interrupt myself. Until Buster pointed it out to me later, I did not even realize what Zukor was really going for. Namely, getting me to do more work for the same amount of money. The feature bait was a way of getting my eyes off salary details. Misdirection. Keaton's godfather was Harry Houdini, so he knew these things. Buster was a great man in a poker game, unless you liked your money.
Zukor, smart as he was, was a terrible poker player. He had an expressive face, and he was fidgety. When you got to know him, you got to know which twitches meant what. As Buster said, Adolph had more ways of telegraphing his next move than Western Union. But his hands were the biggest tell. Whenever he was trying to sell you on something, Adolph would hold your hand. He didn't squeeze it or anything. Just held it. Looked you dead in the eye. The message was: Adolph Zukor was so tough he could hold your hand like a prom date. Who else could do that?