Among the cavalcade of comedic delights in 1928's THE CAMERAMAN, Buster Keaton later revealed that, "The sequence that furnished the longest laugh in the picture was found at Venice, California, which was dressed up -- or down -- to look like New York's Coney Island. Its gags were invented on the spot by [director Edward] Sedgwick, myself, and our two writers, Lew Lipton and Clyde Bruckman." At base, the idea was simple: Keaton takes his girl to a public swimming pool for their first date. But the number of titters, yowls, belly-laughs, and boffos he manages to wring out of that scenario is extraordinary. Each new development flows organically into the next, the laughs so earthbound and genuine that it comes as a surprise to learn how much hard work and inventive genius went into them.
Take the centerpiece of the scene: Keaton attempting to change into a swimsuit before his poolside date gets snapped up by one of the many muscular college jocks prowling the area like sharks. Looking over the dressing rooms at the real-live Venice location, Buster decided that his poor character would find himself forced to share one with a much burlier fellow. To make the predicament even more funny, he had an extra-small mock-up of the real room built, one that would force the two actors to squeeze, contort, and fumble with every attempt to remove their clothes. The seasoned comedian's eagle-eye left no detail unexamined in his quest to build the scene into a comedic gem. "Each bathhouse had six hooks on its walls," Keaton later remembered, so "we removed four hooks, because a couple of men struggling to hang all of their clothes on one hook apiece could be very funny."
Initially, the director suggested that a huge hulk of an actor should be found to serve as Keaton's dressing-room nemesis, but Buster saw that as too unrealistic. "I told him that the audience would expect a man of his size to throw me out of the bathhouse if irritated. . . What I wanted was a fellow about my size who looked like a grouch but not the sort who dares start a fight." With such a character mentally improvised on the spot, and no time to go back to Hollywood to hunt down an appropriate actor, Keaton turned to the balding, scowling unit manager on his crew. "He filled the bill on looks," Keaton decided, "although he had never done any acting. . . As usual, we did not rehearse the scene. . . rehearsed scenes look mechanical on the screen."
By rolling the camera and inventing as they went along, they were able to create something that audiences still remember eighty years later. "The scene ran for four minutes," Keaton later marveled in an interview, "which is a very long time on the screen for a string of gags worked by just two men in a single ridiculous situation. [M-G-M Producer Irving] Thalberg almost had hysterics when he saw that day's rushes in a projection room." The unit manager who had acted in the scene alongside Keaton, Ed Brophy, generated so much laughter among audiences that it propelled him into a long Hollywood career as a crowd-pleasing grouch -- you can see him in THE CHAMP (1931), FREAKS (1932), THE THIN MAN (1934), and the musicals VARSITY SHOW (1937) and GOLD DIGGERS IN PARIS (1938) among many others (you can even hear him as the mouse in Disney's DUMBO).
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FOR CONSERVATIVE MOVIE LOVERS is the name of an ongoing series of written essays on cinema appearing at BIG HOLLYWOOD, a leading conservative website focused on reforming America's poisoned popular culture:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/author/lgrin/
Join conservative cinéaste Leo Grin as he journeys through the history of the greatest art form of our time, highlighting the intellectual, mythological, and cultural importance of the discipline from a right-wing perspective. Read penetrating essays on each film, explore a host of accompanying links to further reading, find information on buying and renting the discussed movies, and add your comments to the ongoing film-club discussion.
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1313: WICKED STEPBROTHER Buy the DVD at amazon.com !by rapidheart200,045 views
Wonderful - thanks for posting.
Joez86 7 months ago
Wow, i really love this movie. It's a classic. How did you get such great quality for this clip? =)
21JumpStreetKid 8 months ago