Buster Keaton – “The Great Stoneface” – the child vaudeville performer who famously never smiled on stage, the silent comedy star who promoted his deadpan persona on film. Yet working with friend and mentor Roscoe Arbuckle, Buster started his film career in 1917 with a very different vibe, laughing and smiling with joy and glee.

Studying his Arbuckle films closely – spoiler ahead – I was stunned to discover Buster smiles to some degree in EVERY ONE of their films (granted, catching Buster smiling during Back Stage is a close call). Buster engages in other non-deadpan antics as well.

Was Buster simply following director Arbuckle’s instructions? Was Buster experimenting, finding his way, rebelling against his father Joe’s strict onstage rules “Face! Face! Freeze the puss!”? Or, being happy and free, on his own for the first time in his young adult life, was he simply having too much fun, getting it out of his system, intuitively knowing he’d resume the deadpan later for his solo career?

Keaton fans are familiar with Buster’s debut appearance on film in The Butcher Boy. A chance meeting on an New York street, an intriguing invitation, and so Buster visits Roscoe Arbuckle’s studio to give film a try. But look at what the movie reveals.

To begin, Buster smiles at Roscoe during their very first onscreen encounter, when Buster ‘remembers’ he left the coins to pay for his molasses in the bottom of the bucket. That didn’t take long – Buster broke his deadpan rule his first time at bat.

Moments later, reentering the store, Buster smiles gesturing to another customer “hey, I forgot my hat.”

Back inside, Buster is famously knocked to the floor by a sack of flour, his debut cinematic pratfall. Buster relates Roscoe told him it’s hard not to flinch when you’re expecting to get hit, so look the over way, and when Roscoe says “turn,” turn, and the flour sack will be there. The trick works, and as Buster liked to recall, “it put my feet where my head had been.” But then what does Buster do?

Buster retaliates by throwing a pie! Left-handed as well, so he won’t block view of the action with his body as he flings the pastry stage left. This is the first of only two pies tossed during his entire silent film career (the second was in The Garage), and it’s literally his first day on camera. Since pie-throwing had become somewhat passé by 1917, blogger Lea Stans of Silent-ology fame wonders whether this might have even been a bit of an inside joke — Buster demanding with mock indignation, “What, give up my stage career for some two-bit flicker? I refuse unless you let me toss a pie!”

Struck by the pie (see further above), Arbuckle’s co-star and nephew Al St. John returns fire with another bag of flour, missing Buster, and striking that other customer in the face. Buster’s response is to double over laughing at the man’s misfortune.

Reel two of The Butcher Boy takes place at a girl’s boarding school, where Roscoe’s sweetheart portrayed by Josephine Stevens is exiled. When Roscoe gains entry disguised as a girl, Buster assists Al to gain entry with a similar female disguise. Here, Buster delights at Al’s ridiculous costume.

Later, as intruders held at gunpoint by the school headmistress, Buster smiles to reassure her they aren’t really a threat. In all, a fan familiar with Keaton’s stage work, eager to witness his first onscreen appearance, might very well have wondered “this is frozen-faced Buster?”

In The Rough House (above) Buster plays both a bearded gardener and a delivery boy. While barely a glimmer of a smile escapes Buster’s lips as he assists Roscoe with the garden hose, his unique makeup alone deserves mention.

Next, delivery boy Buster flirts with Josephine Stevens, displaying a more subtle, close-mouthed grin.

Next, Buster returns to his more characteristic smile, laughing in derision at Al’s calamity.

The cops break up Al and Buster’s fight and drag them to jail. When offered positions on the police force in lieu of imprisonment, Buster and Al’s mutual smile seal their accord.

During His Wedding Night, Buster delivers a wedding dress to Roscoe’s fiancé portrayed by Alice Mann. Buster’s reward for winking suggestively to Roscoe, thanks to a large speck of dust lodged in his eye, is a hearty glass of ale that puts Buster in a visibly happier mood.

Unaware Buster is modeling the wedding dress for Alice’s prior visual inspection, Al mistakenly kidnaps the fully veiled Buster (not Alice) from the store in a forced elopement. Remarkably, this two story set (above), replete with a horse carriage and dirt road, was an interior set contained within the upper floor glass shooting stage of the Biograph Studio in the Bronx, several stories above the street.

After being forcibly married to Al, while still shrouded incognito, and then recovering from a blow to the head, Buster, now unveiled, seems quite pleased with his marital status.

During Oh Doctor!, Buster portrays Roscoe’s bratty son. While Buster receives parental abuse from Dad, Buster in turn ridicules Dad with showers of mocking laughter over his misfortune betting on losing horses. Oh Doctor! ranks among Buster’s least ‘stoneface-ish’ performances. First the laughter –

– then the tears. You can still visit that street corner on the left today, at the NW corner of W 246th and Fieldston in the Bronx.

Many other Arbuckle-Keaton Bronx exterior film locations from Oh Doctor! may still be visited. Above, looking along E 175th St towards the corner of 1801 Marmion. Read a detailed blog about touring the Biograph Studio studio filming sites HERE.

Many more Keaton smiles will be covered in later posts. If you can’t wait, you may access a 13MB pdf file outlining each Arbuckle-Keaton smile from a two-part series of stories I contributed to Comique Magazine, edited by Paul E. Gierucki, David B. Pearson, and Eryn Merwart. Click to download the full two-part story HERE. You can also read the two stories online.

The link to my article for Vol. 1, page 32     https://archive.org/details/ComiqueMagazine1/page/32/mode/2up

The link to my article for Vol. 2, page 94     https://archive.org/details/comique-the-classic-comedy-magazine-issue-no.-2/page/94/mode/2up

In closing, Buster even smiled once during The Cameraman, the closing moment from my latest YouTube video about the many locations where Buster made the film.