Love triumphs over all. Buster Keaton’s first feature comedy Three Ages (1923) tells three tales of love, set in the Stone Age, the Roman Age, and the Present Age (i.e. 1923), where against all odds underdog Buster wins the girl played by Margaret Leahy by defeating villainous Wallace Beery.

The movie ends with brief postscript finales – caveman Buster and wife, and their 10 caveman kids exit their cave one-by-one. Next, elegant Roman Age Buster and wife and 5 children, all wearing graceful togas, exit their formal columned home. For the final shot in the movie, Present Age Buster and wife exit their Hollywood bungalow, along with … one tiny dog! What a perfect, purely visual joke to end the film.

The Roman home was a backlot set, and as reported years ago in my book Silent Echoes, the domestic cave was filmed at the Iverson Ranch (details below). But I’ve sought out the Present Age bungalows for over 25 years. Then once again, suddenly, a clue from another silent film revealed this location, and more remarkably, the home is still standing unchanged. Below, does this view look familiar?

I closely follow Joseph Blough’s wonderful YouTube channel, as he regularly posts rare and seldom seen silent and classic-era films, often sourced from the Library of Congress Archives. Joseph posted a beautifully clear 7-minute fragment from a Buster Brown silent comedy short Buster’s Bustup (1925), starring Arthur Trimble as Buster and Pete the Dog as Tige. Sitting on a steel girder at a construction site, Buster and Pete find themselves rising high up in the air. Buster and Pete remain relatively calm and nimble, so the fun is in watching them cleverly overcome their obstacles, rather than trembling in fear, while getting the best of a cranky construction foreman.

Click to enlarge – as Buster and Pete rise in the air, at 2:19 the first point of view shot looking down clearly matches Buster’s Three Ages bungalow! Buster’s doorway is the sunlit doorway closest to the corner.

Click to enlarge – studying the Buster Brown frame revealed the landmark St. George Court Apartments in the background (above), still standing to the south at 1245 Vine Street. USC Digital Library.

Click to enlarge – other views revealed the Taft Building to the north at Hollywood and Vine. Triangulating from these north and south landmarks, I quickly fixed the SW corner of El Centro and Leland as Buster’s home location. HollywoodPhotographs.com.

More remarkable, whereas many/most little Hollywood homes have been replaced by giant modern apartment blocks, Buster’s bungalow is still there! The arrow marks Buster’s path from his front entrance at 1425 El Centro. The tiny palm trees planted in the wide sidewalk median visible during the scene are now perhaps 100 feet tall.

Click to enlarge – these matching views looking SW show the corner of El Centro and Leland in the foreground stands only a few blocks from Buster’s former studio at Lillian Way and Eleanor (yellow oval) above. The storage building clock tower still stands on the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and Cahuenga. The storage building was featured in two recent posts, how Buster and W.C. Fields crossed paths filming near Buster’s studio (HERE), and how Stan Laurel also crossed paths with W.C. Fields near Buster’s studio (HERE). The Greek-style building to the left of the curve in both images was the former Hollywood Methodist Episcopal Church, once standing at 1201 Vine at the corner of Lexington. The aerial view above was taken in 1924, before St. George Court was built up the street from the church. HollywoodPhotographs.com.

Another fun discovery – Buster in 3D! Different Blu-ray releases of Three Ages are presented from either the A or B camera negative. (Silent movies were commonly filmed with two cameras placed side-by-side. The A camera negative would generate prints for American theaters, while the B camera negative would be sent to Europe to create prints locally.) The parallax offset between two adjacently photographed images creates a 3D effect. It may not be easy, but if you can focus looking forward, beyond these twin images, and cross your eyes a bit, the right image as seen by your left eye will overlap with the left image as seen by your right eye, yielding a 3D image in the center. Richard Simonton, who personally rescued and restored several of Harold Lloyd’s films, and who manages Harold’s photo archives, including thousands of Harold’s 3D images, cropped and aligned these twin images. He reports the images yield a modest effect when viewed with a cardboard 3D viewer.

Switching gears, Keaton filmed the Stone Age scenes at the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, about 25 miles north of Hollywood, beside the unusual rock formations called the Garden of the Gods. I cover more than a dozen caveman scenes in my book. Above, just for fun, here’s 25 year old photo of me sitting beside Buster’s Stone Age bathtub, along with a shot from the 1926 Fox film Silver Treasure. The two prominent rocks at back, perhaps the most famous in the Garden of the Gods, are called the Tower Rock at left, and The Sphinx at right. As reported by Hollywood and Chatsworth film historian and “Iverson Movie Ranch Blog” host Dennis, these landmark rocks and other spots at the Iverson appear in the earliest days of film, and in hundreds of major Hollywood productions, “B” westerns, and television shows, and is still used even today. Here’s the link to his phenomenal, vast, and extensively researched Iverson Movie Ranch Blog.

Buster’s closing scene was filmed beyond the south end of what is now the community pool for the Indian Hills Mobile Home Village near the Iverson Movie Ranch. The giant cleft rock is obscured by trees. While I report this spot in my book, I have never visited the site in person, and Dennis patiently explained to me precisely where Buster’s now relatively inaccessible setting was located.

With a color photo and common details provided by Dennis, a closer view of the back corner of the community pool shows the entrance to Buster’s “cave” was actually an open space between these two rocks.

Of particular interest, one of Dennis’s posts explains the fake rock house Buster used in Three Ages appeared in earlier films! Here it is, to the left of Tower Rock and The Sphinx. Read more HERE. Dennis also writes about Buster filming The Paleface at the Iverson HERE, and filming an episode of the television show Route 66 HERE.

For a great overview of Dennis’s incredible work, and to see for yourself how the Garden of the Gods appeared not only in Three Ages, but in Man-Woman-Marriage (1921), Richard the Lion Hearted (1923), and Tell It To The Marines (1926), download his amazing 43 page PDF program hosted by the Chatsworth Historical Society.

Dennis also wanted to share the earliest known filming at the Iverson was the 1913 lost film Everyman, starring Linda Arvidson (estranged wife at the time of D.W. Griffith), read his post HERE, while his post HERE about the 1917 William S. Hart Western The Silent Man mentions other lost silent movies and filming at the Iverson Ranch by Thomas Ince.

Remember, Dennis also covers classic-era films, “B” westerns, and vintage to present-day television appearances filmed at the Iverson – the early silent era is but one field of many covered at his blog http://iversonmovieranch.blogspot.com/.

In closing, Dennis and I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Ben Burtt, one of the premiere Iverson historians, for introducing us to this hallowed filming location. It was Ben who first discovered nearly all of the Three Ages rock locations, including the bathtub rock. The multi-talented writer, director, editor, and film-maker is perhaps best known as the 4-time Academy Award-winning sound designer and editor for such films as Stars Wars, ET, and Indiana Jones.

The recent Eureka Entertainment Blu-ray release of Three Ages includes the video essay about Three Ages I prepared for Kino-Lorber a few years ago. The essay includes later discoveries not reported in my book.

Below, Buster’s bungalow at 1425 El Centro in Hollywood. Look at those towering palm trees!