The second time I took Charlie unawares was on the day in 1951 when he sent for me to discuss doing a scene with him for Limelight, the last picture he made in this country. He seemed astonished at my appearance. Apparently he had expected to see a physical and mental wreck. But I was in fine fettle. I’d just been in New York for four months doing an average of two Tv guest shots a week. So I was prosperous and looked it.
“What have you been doing, Buster?” he asked. “You look in such fine shape”.
“Do you look at television, Charlie?” I asked.
“Good heavens, no”, he exclaimed. “I hate it. I will not permit it in my house. The idea of actors letting themselves be shown on that lousy, stinking, little screen!”.
“Don’t you even have it in the kids’ rooms, Charlie?”.
“There last of all. Oona has enough trouble as it is with the lively little boun cers. They are darlings, but mischievious. There would be no controlling them at all if we let them see all that tripe on television. Should be done away with. It is ruining the whole country”.
Then he said again, “But Buster, tell me, how do you manage to stay in such good shape. What makes you so spry?”.
“Television”, I said.
He gasped, choked, got red, then said, “Now about this sequence we’re going to do together”.
The subject of Tv was not mentioned again during the three days we did the sequence in Limelight in which I played the near-blind pianist and he the fiddler.
Tv had brought me back as an actor. By 1949, except for an occasional day’s work — which seemed to me to be getting more occasional all of the time — I had not put on grease paint for the cameras in almost five years. The summer theatres had put in no bids for my services since 1941 when I toured in The Gorilla. My most important engagement had been a four-week date as star of a famous Paris circus, back in 1947. So it was one of the thrills of my life when I got a chance in December of 1949 to do my own weekly Tv show on KHJ, the “Los Angeles Times” broadcasting station.
By then I had almost given up hope of getting another real chance as an actor. I emphasize the word almost, because no one with actor’s blood in his veins ever really admits to himself he is through, no matter what he says to other people. No, I did not really believe it in my heart, even after so many years of little success, no home runs, and plenty of errors.
The Buster Keaton Show was a success, but only on the West Coast where it gradually worked its way up to the position of Number One Comedy Program. In those days the only way to sell a Hollywood show to a national network was with kinetoscopes, and these were dismal things to look at eight or nine years ago. And my show was never sold to a sponsor as a coast-to-coast attraction. I think the story would have been different if I had waited for just two more years. But I had never, of course, wanted less to wait for anything.
The important thing, though, was how these appearances on local television shows steamed up the interest of producers in other fields. I did about twenty-three Buster Keaton Tv shows in 1950 and seventeen more in 1951. The same day I turned in the final 1951 show Eleanor and I left for Paris to play a return engagement at the Paris circus. The date was so successful that I was booked for another four-week engagement during the following year.
Buster Keaton, Charles Samuels, My Wonderful World of Slapstick, Doubleday, New York 1960