By N.S.
I don't know that the job of "stunt man" even existed during the silent era. Everyone was expected to do his own stunts.
By Norman Lebrecht
“Buster Keaton, who died almost 60 years ago, was an American actor, comedian and filmmaker best known for his silent films in the 20s where he pioneered a unique form of physical comedy. he maintained a stoic, deadpan facial expression that became his trademark and earned him the nickname, “The Great Stone Face.”
“The distinguished film critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton’s 'extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929' when he 'worked without interruption' as “the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies.
“Possibly, but he was certainly the greatest stuntman of all time. Here are a few of his death-defying stunts. How he survived them I can’t imagine but he lived to be 70 and in 1966 he died not of falling off a building but of lung cancer.”
https://slippedisc.com/2025/02/ruth-leon-recommends-204/
When he died, a matron who knew him called a friend, and announced, "We just lost our Buster."
Buster Keaton's greatest stunts 🤸
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2 comments:
Tremendous era of imagination,movie making skill and guts from the 1920s to the early 1940s or so. Many great comics who didn't have the luxury of computers to
make their adventures look real to audiences.
--GRA
Buster was the greatest, and a tremendous athlete, but supposedly he did have a double for some scenes (in the extreme long shots, it's pretty hard to tell). Even then, big stars were worth too much money to risk their lives. Lon Chaney, Harold Lloyd, and Doug Fairbanks (already in his 40s when he made his most famous movies!) all had doubles, even though they did some stuntwork themselves. One clip I didn't see in the montage was an incredible gag from SEVEN CHANCES, where Buster supposedly gets hit by a huge rolling boulder and flips into the air- don't know if it was him or not, but it sure looked real!
-RM
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