The Great Stone Face

From One Week (1920)

I saw four Buster Keaton films at Film Forum Monday night:

Electric House (1922)
One Week (1920)
High Sign (1921)
The General (1926)

They were great, all of them. I want to go every week; the theater is running a series, Keaton movies every Monday until September 25.

I like this story about how Buster got his name, from Buster Keaton: The Damfino's Official Website (home of the Buster Keaton Fan Club):

Sharing the bill with the Keatons were the great escape artist Harry Houdini and his wife, Buster's godparents. Houdini saw little Buster, then only about six months old, slip and tumble down a flight of stairs, arriving virtually unharmed, perhaps even amused, at the bottom. "What a buster your kid took!" Houdini is said to have cried out. With those simple words, Keaton became the first person to use Buster as a name. Buster Brown, Buster Crabbe and Buster Poindexter all came later, presumably owing their names indirectly to Harry Houdini.

For a great shiver, the silent film star singing, playing the ukelele, and telling stories, at a party in 1962, from NPR's Quest for Sound:

http://www.npr.org/programs/lnfsound/stories/990806.stories.html

Hearing his voice is kind of like seeing a photo of your favorite radio host: Bizarre and oddly wonderful, with that pang of - even though you're curious - the mystery being over.