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''Steamboat Bill, Jr.'' is a 1928 silent
comedy film The comedy film is a film genre that emphasizes humor. These films are designed to amuse audiences and make them laugh. Films in this genre typically have a happy ending, with dark comedy being an exception to this rule. Comedy is one of the o ...
starring Buster Keaton. Released by United Artists, the film is the final product of Keaton's independent production team and set of gag writers.
Charles Reisner Charles Francis Reisner (March 14, 1887 – September 24, 1962) was an American film director and actor of the 1920s and 1930s. The German-American directed over 60 films between 1920 and 1950 and acted in over 20 films between 1916 and 1 ...
directed the film, and the credited story writer was Carl Harbaugh. The film, named after Arthur Collins's popular 1911 recording of the 1910 song " Steamboat Bill," also featured Ernest Torrence, Marion Byron, and Tom Lewis. The film is known for what may be Keaton's most famous film stunt: The facade of a house falls around him while he stands in the precise location of an open window to avoid being flattened. The film was not a box-office success and became the last picture Keaton made for United Artists. Keaton ended up moving to
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, commonly shortened to MGM or MGM Studios) is an American Film production, film and television production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered ...
, where he made one last film in his trademark style, '' The Cameraman,'' and '' Spite Marriage,'' before his creative control was taken away by the studio. In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States
National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation (library and archival science), preservation, each selected for its cultural, historical, and aestheti ...
by the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
. The copyright of the film expired in 1956.


Plot

William "Steamboat Bill" Canfield is the owner and captain of a
paddle steamer A paddle steamer is a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine driving paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. In antiquity, paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, whereby the first uses were wh ...
, the ''Stonewall Jackson,'' that has seen better days. ''The King,'' a new steamer owned by the rich J.J. King, threatens to steal his customers. Canfield receives a
telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...
saying his son is arriving on the 10 am train, having finished his studies in
Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
. Canfield has not seen him for many years. King's daughter Kitty arrives home from college to visit him. Canfield meets Bill Jr. at the train station, but is deeply disappointed with his slight, awkward son, who is wearing a foppish beret and has a
pencil moustache A pencil moustache is a thin moustache found adjacent to, or a little above the lip. The style is neatly clipped, so that the moustache takes the form of a thin line, as if it had been drawn using a pencil. A large gap is left between the nose ...
and a ukulele. Canfield sends him to the barber to have the moustache removed, and there the young man bumps into Kitty, whom he knows from college. Both Canfield and King are determined to break up the developing relationship between Bill Jr. and Kitty, but Bill Jr. slips off and boards the ''King'' at night. Canfield sees Bill Jr.'s clumsy and rebellious effort and buys him a ticket back to Boston. Kitty is angry at him for planning to leave and snubs him on the street. When Canfield's ship is condemned as unsafe, he accuses King of orchestrating it. He assaults his enemy and is put in jail, prompting the son to tear up his train ticket. Bill Jr. makes a clumsy attempt to help his father escape, but ends up being knocked out by the sheriff and sent to the hospital. A cyclone hits, demolishing buildings and endangering the ships. The hospital walls are torn away, leaving Bill Jr. exposed. As he makes his way through the town, a building front falls all around him as an unbroken facade, but Bill Jr. is untouched due to a fortunately placed open window. The jail is knocked off its foundations and starts to sink, with Canfield trapped inside. Bill Jr. rescues Kitty, Canfield, and King. Then he jumps into the water and comes back towing a minister in a lifebelt.


Cast

* Buster Keaton as William Canfield Jr. * Ernest Torrence as William "Steamboat Bill" Canfield Sr. * Marion Byron as Kitty King * Tom McGuire as John James King * Tom Lewis as Tom Carter * Ford West as The Barber * Joe Keaton


Production

The original idea for the film came from
Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered o ...
collaborator
Charles Reisner Charles Francis Reisner (March 14, 1887 – September 24, 1962) was an American film director and actor of the 1920s and 1930s. The German-American directed over 60 films between 1920 and 1950 and acted in over 20 films between 1916 and 1 ...
, who was the director. Keaton, who had directed or co-directed many of his earlier films, was an uncredited co-director on this project.In June 1927, he traveled to
Sacramento, California Sacramento ( or ; ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of California and the county seat, seat of Sacramento County, California, Sacramento County. Located at the confluence of the Sacramento Rive ...
, and spent over $100,000 building sets, including a pier. Original plans called for an ending with a flood sequence, but due to the devastating 1927 Mississippi River Flood, producer Joseph Schenck forced him to cut the arrangement. Keaton also spent an additional $25,000 for the cyclone scene, which included breakaway street sets and six powerful
Liberty Liberty is the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views. The concept of liberty can vary depending on perspective and context. In the Constitutional ...
-motor wind machines. The cyclone scene cost one-third of the film's entire budget, estimated at between $300,000 () and $404,282 (). Keaton, who planned and performed his own stunts himself, was suspended on a cable from a crane, which hurled him from place to place as if airborne. Shooting began on July 15, 1927, in Sacramento. Production was delayed when Keaton broke his nose in a baseball game. The film includes his most famous stunt: an entire building facade falling all around him. An open attic window fits neatly around Keaton's body as the structure falls, saving him from injury. He had performed a similar, though less elaborate, stunt in his earlier short films '' Back Stage'' (1919) and '' One Week'' (1920). He used a genuine, two-ton building facade and no trickery. The mark on the ground showing Keaton exactly where to stand to avoid being crushed was a nail. It has been claimed that if he had stood just inches off the correct spot, he would have been seriously injured or killed. His third wife, Eleanor, suggested that he took such risks due to despair over financial problems, his failing first marriage, the imminent loss of his filmmaking independence, and recklessness due to his worsening alcohol abuse at the time. Evidence that Keaton was suicidal is scant—he was known throughout his career for performing dangerous stunts independent of any difficulties in his personal life, including a fall from a railroad water tower tube in 1924's '' Sherlock Jr.'' in which his neck was fractured. He later said, "I was mad at the time, or I would never have done the thing." He also said that filming the shot was one of his greatest thrills. It is one of the few Keaton films to reference his fame. At the time of filming, he had stopped wearing his trademark pork pie hat with a short flat crown. During an early scene in which his character tries on a series of hats (something that was copied several times in other films), a clothing salesman briefly puts the trademark cap on his head, but he quickly rejects it, tossing it away. At the end of shooting, Schenck announced the dissolution of Buster Keaton Productions.


Reception

''Steamboat Bill, Jr.'' was a box office failure and received mixed reviews upon its release. '' Variety'' described the film as "a pip of a comedy" and "one of Keaton's best." The reviewer from ''The Film Spectator'' appointed it "as perhaps the best comedy of the year thus far" and advised, "exhibitors should go after it." A less enthusiastic review from '' Harrison's Reports'' stated, "there are many situations all the way through that cause laughs" while noting that "the plot is nonsensical." Mordaunt Hall of the ''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' called the film a "gloomy comedy" and a "sorry affair." Over the years, ''Steamboat Bill, Jr.'' has become regarded as a masterpiece of its era. On
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
96% of critics have given the film a positive rating based on 52 reviews, with an average score of 9.00/10. The film was included in the book '' 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.''


Legacy

The film likely inspired the title of
Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney ( ; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the Golden age of American animation, American animation industry, he introduced several develop ...
's ''
Steamboat Willie ''Steamboat Willie'' is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It was produced in black-and-white by Walt Disney Animation Studios and was released by Pat Powers (producer), Pat Powers, under the name of Cele ...
'' (1928), which was released six months later and is considered the debut of
Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse is an American cartoon character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime icon and mascot of the Walt Disney Company, Mickey is an anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red shorts, large shoes, and white ...
. In it, Mickey whistles a melody from the film's opening title. The famous falling house stunt has been re-created several times on film and television (although with lighter materials and more contemporary safety measures in place) including the 1975 The Goodies episode " The Movies," the 1991 '' MacGyver'' episode " Deadly Silents," Jackie Chan's '' Project A Part II,'' the 2004 '' Arrested Development'' episode "The One Where They Build a House" (performed by the show's character named Buster), Al Yankovic's music video Amish Paradise (cross-referencing Peter Weir's 1985 film ''
Witness In law, a witness is someone who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, provides testimonial evidence, either oral or written, of what they know or claim to know. A witness might be compelled to provide testimony in court, before a grand jur ...
''), the 2006 comedy film '' Jackass Number Two,'' an Australian home insurance TV advertisement in 2021, episode 7 in the first season of '' Lucha Underground'' (with a ladder), and the 2024 film '' Paddington in Peru''. ''Deadpan,'' a 1997 work by English film artist and director Steve McQueen, was also inspired by ''Steamboat Bill, Jr.'' McQueen stands in Keaton's place as a house facade falls over him. This film was shot from multiple angles, and the scene repeats over and over again while McQueen stands seemingly unaffected. George Miller's 1987 film ''
The Witches of Eastwick ''The Witches of Eastwick'' is a 1984 novel by American writer John Updike. A sequel, '' The Widows of Eastwick'', was published in 2008. Plot The story, set in the fictional Rhode Island town of Eastwick in the early 1970s, follows the witc ...
'' references the scene where crates are blown all over Buster during the cyclone when Jack Nicholson gets debris (including boxes) blown over him in the windstorm sequence towards the end. The shot from the Keaton film is also seen in one of the multiple TVs in the media room in the final scene.


See also

* Buster Keaton filmography * '' The Wind'' * '' Volga-Volga'' * '' The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore''


Notes


References


Bibliography

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External links

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Various clips
in Windows and Real Media format. (Archived). {{Authority control 1928 films 1928 adventure films 1928 comedy films 1920s American films 1920s adventure comedy films 1920s English-language films American adventure comedy films American black-and-white films American silent feature films Articles containing video clips English-language adventure comedy films Films about father–son relationships Films directed by Buster Keaton Films directed by Charles Reisner Films produced by Joseph M. Schenck Films set on boats Films shot in Sacramento, California Silent American adventure comedy films Surviving American silent films United Artists films United States National Film Registry films