Pulpetti: short reviews and articles on pulps and paperbacks, adventure, sleaze, hardboiled, noir, you name it. You can write to Juri Nummelin at juri.nummelin@gmail.com.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Buster Keaton commercials
Here's Buster Keaton doing Alka-Seltzer commercials in the late fifties. I like the man's voice and outlook. He could've done - and should've done - better in his late careet. The last film he ever made (hope I'm remembering this correctly) was a 30-minute film with him travelling through Canada in a motorized hand car. (Resiina in Finnish, if you don't get that. I'm not really sure what the actual word for the vehicle should be.) The film is not funny and it's too long - a sad ending to a career of one of the most important comedians in the history of cinema.
It is said that financially Keaton made it ok in the 50's and 60's: he made even more money than in the 20's, when he was a big star.
ReplyDeleteThat could very well be true, and I should take my words back, but I was thinking mainly in terms of quality and influence: what's left of Keaton's legacy is some dozen of his silent movies.
ReplyDeleteKeaton did some other film and television work into the '60s, such as a rather half-assed (except for him) episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Robert Bloch was blown away not only to meet him in the early '60s, but to play softball or baseball (I forget which) with him and some others under informal circumstances.
ReplyDeleteAnd we shouldn't forget the bit parts in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950) or in Chaplin's Limelight (1952).
ReplyDeleteActually the film I would like to see now is Pajama Party (1964) – mainly to see, how they managed to fit Keaton into that film.