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Was Silent Film Star Buster Keaton an Abused Child?
Joseph “Buster” Keaton was born in 1895 into a performing family. His father Joe owned a traveling vaudeville show with Harry Houdini called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company (they sold patent medicine after the shows). When Keaton was 18 months old, his father witnessed him fall down a flight of stairs without injury. An actor friend George Pardey said, “Boy, he’s a real buster.” The nickname stuck.
When Buster was three, his parents included him in their stage comedy act called The Three Keatons. The show gained a reputation as “the roughest act in vaudeville.” Buster was manhandled and tossed around stage by his father while his mother played saxophone. The gags included using Buster to mop the floor or as a hammer to pound nails into a wall. A suitcase handle was sewn into Buster’s clothing making him easier to toss. Authorities feared Buster was being subjected to child abuse.
“We used to get arrested every other week,” Buster said. “That is, the old man would get arrested. Once they took me to the mayor of New York City, into his private office, with the city physicians … and they stripped me to examine me for broken bones and bruises. Finding none, the mayor gave me permission to work. The next time it happened, the following year, they sent me to Albany, to the governor of the state.”
