Fred Gabourie Movies

In Buster Keaton's second two-reel comedy to be released, he is golfing (though not very well) with a group of socialites. He knocks himself out and while unconscious, an escapee from a nearby prison exchanges his uniform with Buster's clothes. When Buster comes to, he finds himself on the lam from dozens of prison guards. Buster evades them -- until he dashes right into the prison. There he runs into one of his golfing friends (Sybil Seely), who is the warden's daughter. The girl finds his prison garb a hilarious joke until her father mentions that Buster (according to the number on his sleeve) is to be hanged that day. With the help of an elastic band, the girl saves him from this fate, but then Buster has to overcome a prison riot and a huge, brutish fellow convict (Joe Roberts). He is successful, and for his trouble, is awarded the job of assistant warden. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

One Week was the first Buster Keaton-directed film to be released to the public (The High Sign was made earlier but shelved for several months). Based on a now-obscure educational short called Home Made, it involves a build-it-yourself house given to Keaton and his new bride (Sybil Seely). Unbeknownst to the couple, the wife's disgruntled former suitor has changed the numbers on the boxes containing the building materials. Keaton does make the house in one week, as the instructions have promised, but what a house! Right off the bat, this early Keaton film shows his penchant for big props (the cockeyed house, a passing train). Even though it's only a two-reeler, it still managed to become one of the top-grossing movies of 1920. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

This two-reeler features the famous theater sequence in which Buster Keaton plays every role, from the stage actors to the orchestra and audience, appearing in the same frame two, three -- and in one scene, nine -- times. This was amazing technical wizardry in a day when special effects really were special. But there's more to The Playhouse than this one segment. The film bounces from dream to reality, from optical illusion to confusion, all with a playhouse as backdrop, and the various theater skits are a prime example of Keaton's infinite comic variety. In one scene he disguises himself as a monkey so effectively that it's easy to forget he's really human. "This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show," an audience member remarks in the all-Keaton sequence. In spite of the co-direction credit by the highly capable Eddie Cline, that statement's pretty much correct. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

The first film that Buster Keaton made independently, High Sign portrays the filmmaker as a drifter in search of a job. Passing himself off as a skilled marksman, he finds employment at a shooting gallery in an amusement park. But he gets more than he bargained for -- a girl (Bartine Burkett) talks him into being a bodyguard for her father, who has run afoul of a gang. Meanwhile, the gang, called the Blinking Buzzards, forcibly recruits him to snuff out...yes, the girl's father. Keaton hated this two-reeler when it was done and shelved it. It was released only because he was laid up with a broken leg seven months later and production had halted. While not as good as the next film Keaton made (the top notch One Week), it still has many classic sequences, including a chase through a series of trapdoors at the gang's hideout and Keaton pouring through the want ads in an endlessly unfolding newspaper. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

This two-reeler is one big chase film -- or, rather, it's two chases in one film. A drifter (Buster Keaton) is already on the run from the cops when he's mistaken for murderer Dead Shot Dan (portrayed, incidentally, by Keaton's co-director Mal St. Clair). Keaton has eluded the previous group of policeman, but he's no match for the ill-tempered, heavyweight detective Joe Roberts who's hot on his trail...or is he? The battle of wits and punishing physical stunts is a pleasure to behold -- Keaton wrings every bit of mirth from props such as an old-fashioned dump truck, an elevator, windows and, of course, the passing train. A delightful, fast-moving film. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

Buster Keaton collides head first with unholy matrimony in this hilarious two-reel comedy. A burly Irishwoman (Kate Price) thinks Buster has broken a window and has him brought before a judge -- who is Polish and can't speak English! The judge thinks the two are engaged and immediately marries them. The delighted woman drags Buster to her home and introduces him to her four huge brothers and their spindly father. The whole family abuses Buster until they come to believe -- quite mistakenly -- that he is due a huge inheritance; they then treat him with warmth and consideration. They all relocate to a ritzy penthouse only to learn that Buster has no income coming in. The resulting chaos leads to a wild chase and ends with Buster on a train headed for America's divorce capital, Reno, NV. ~ Nicole Gagne, Rovi

Buster Keaton stars in this two-reel comedy as the captive of hostile Indians. His captors tie him to a stake and prepare him for death by fire. Keaton moves with the stake as the Indians try frantically to place the firewood around him. When he survives the flames due to his fire-resistant clothes, Keaton is made a member of the tribe and named Little Chief Paleface. He then foils the scheme of unsavory oil speculators to steal the land from his Indian companions. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

The homely Longfellow poem about The Village Blacksmith"will never seem the same after viewing this two-reel spoof. (Buster Keaton) is the assistant to the town blacksmith (Joe Roberts), a big, mean-tempered sort. In the early '20s, it was common for a blacksmith to double as a car mechanic, and Keaton is equally inept at both tasks. This short is essentially a string of wonderful gags -- Keaton helps Virginia Fox's horse pick out just the right shoe, and he methodically and hilariously destroys a gleaming new Rolls Royce. By the end of the film, everyone is out to throttle Keaton for his countless blunders, but somehow he still manages to get the girl! ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

Although The Balloonatic was one of Buster Keaton's final two-reelers before he graduated to feature-length comedies, it has no plot to speak of. The gags, however, are especially rich and otherworldly. Basically, Keaton wanders off from an amusement park and winds up floating away in an experimental balloon. All this is merely a device to land him in the middle of a forest where he encounters a girl (Phyllis Haver). Before he patches up the balloon and takes off, it becomes clear that she is by far a better outdoorsman than he. The Balloonatic is a charming little film although it breaks no new ground. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

Thirty years after its release, Buster Keaton admitted that his first feature film was essentially three two-reel comedies strung together. Perhaps this was a way for the comic filmmaker to play it safe; he had achieved success for his short films and if Three Ages wasn't going very well, its trio of storylines could have been chopped up into separate films. The picture was a send-up of D.W. Griffith's 1916 masterpiece Intolerance. But instead of following greed and hatred through the ages, Keaton focused on love. His settings were the Stone Age, the Roman era and 1920s America, with Margaret Leahy as the girl and Wallace Beery as the villain in each segment. The stories are intercut, but they're basically the same: the villain uses either brutish or dishonest means to get the girl and Buster must somehow overcome him. Although they're the most crude-looking, the Stone Age scenes often offer the funniest moments: Buster flirts with a cavewoman who turns out to be twice his size; when a foe throws a rock at him, Buster hits the rock with a club, baseball-style, and squarely knocks out his opponent. The modern era offers the most thrilling scene -- Buster tries to jump between two tall buildings, but misses and falls. The fall was unintended, but instead of retaking the shot, he used it to create a series of events that led his character to the back of a moving fire truck.

While this picture ultimately didn't rate among Keaton's most classic work, it was a solid success when it first came out. Keaton did exactly what he'd set out to do, which was establish himself as a feature filmmaker. But it hadn't been all smooth going -- Margaret Leahy was pretty but had no talent for acting whatsoever. The girl was an English beauty-contest winner, and the prize was supposed to be a role in a Norma Talmadge film. She was so bad that Talmadge's director threatened to quit. So the star's producer/husband, Joseph Schenck (who was also Keaton's producer) put her in Three Ages instead. Keaton couldn't really complain -- because of his marriage to Natalie Talmadge, he was Norma's brother-in-law. So he made the best of it, although he later complained that Leahy caused him to throw away many scenes. Leahy eventually left the movie business and found a happier career working as an interior designer. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

At the request of his star Buster Keaton, producer Joseph M. Schenck purchased an obsolete ocean liner for $20,000. Keaton wanted to use the boat as a "prop" in his upcoming feature comedy, but went into production with nary a plot idea in his head. Eventually, Buster and his chief gagman Clyde Bruckman came up with a story involving two wealthy, pampered young people (played by Keaton and Kathryn McGuire), who through a series of fantastic but logical plot convolutions end up stranded together on a drifting, deserted ocean liner. At first, the young couple is helpless because they've never had to lift a finger in their lives. As the weeks pass, Keaton and McGuire become quite adept at fending for themselves, utilizing the huge facilities of the liner (its steam room, its enormous kitchen) for the simplest and most basic of necessities. An attack by a cannibal tribe requires Keaton to be more resourceful than ever; the build-up to the climactic contretemps between Keaton and the cannibals is almost as side-splitting as the climax itself. While the film is rife with some of Buster Keaton's most elaborate gags, he scores equally well with smaller, more intimate comedy bits, notably his losing battle with a deck chair and his attempt to shuffle a waterlogged deck of cards. Reasoning that the comedy in The Navigator would work best if built upon an utterly serious storyline, Keaton hired actor/director Donald Crisp to handle the "straight" scenes. Alas, as Keaton would later recall, the constitutionally humorless Crisp "turned gagman on us", resulting in miles of wasted footage. Thus, pay no attention to the "official" directorial credits: Buster Keaton alone is responsible for the helming of The Navigator. Joe Schenck's initial 20 grand investment proved sagacious when Navigator ended up as Buster Keaton's most profitable silent feature film. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

With this delightful film, Buster Keaton rivals Charlie Chaplin for comic poetry and pathos. Keaton's character, known only as Friendless, is a Midwestern boy who is down on his luck. After an abortive attempt to get by in the city, he follows Horace Greeley's advice to "Go West, young man!" As a result, Friendless winds up on a cattle ranch and is about the most unlikely cowboy imaginable (in fact, he never does trade in his porkpie hat for a ten-gallon). Various bits of comic business abound; standouts include the milking scene and a card game in which Friendless accuses a player of cheating. The sharpie tells The Great Stone Face "When you say that -- smile!" More importantly, Friendless finds true love -- not with the rancher's daughter (Kathleen Myers) but with Brown Eyes, a cow who seems nearly as out of place in the herd as Friendless does on the ranch. Cow and boy become devoted, but Brown Eyes is headed for the slaughterhouse. Friendless resolves to rescue her, sneaking on the train that's taking her and thousands of other cattle to the Los Angeles station. The herd escapes from the cattle cars at the destination and runs amok through downtown L.A.; it is then up to Friendless to round them up. Look closely during the hilarious stampede scene -- Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle plays a part in drag, and Keaton's father also has a bit in a barber shop. With the help of a costume shop, Friendless saves the day...and his cow. Go West is Keaton's most heartfelt film, and certainly one of his most underrated. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi