Book review: Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century by Dana Stevens

Before reading Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century I knew the basic outline of Buster Keaton’s life: child star of vaudeville, moving to California to make what would become some of the greatest silent comedies, signing to MGM and losing creative control, dark days of alcohol abuse and finally a career resurgence before his death. But Dana Stevens adds an incredible amount of backstory not only to the pillars of Keaton’s life and career but also to put his life in the context of the history of popular entertainment that was happening at the same time. For a fan of Buster Keaton’s work, this is a remarkable book.

Buster Keaton was born in 1895. By sheer coincidence this year is considered the birth of movie-going as we know it, i.e. the first recorded instance of people paying money to gather in one public place to watch a film. Vaudeville was still the prime entertainment of this era and as Keaton enters the family business, Stevens provides a lot of detail on what this medium was like at that moment. Given Keaton’s extremely young age (which was not necessarily unusual — family acts were common), Stevens also takes the opportunity to talk about what child labor laws were developing and how they were affecting employment as a whole but particularly in the world of entertainment (entertainers were high-profile individuals and the guardians of child labor protections knew that by making well publicized enforcements it could act as a broad deterrent against violations of these new statutes).

As Keaton moves from his family vaudeville act into the world of cinema, Stevens again describes the lay of the land, what Hollywood was like before the studios were the behemoths they quickly became. I had a vague sort of understanding of what this era was like, but there was a lot of material that was extremely enlightening. The transition into sound movies and the increasing power of the studios happened at roughly similar times but are separate things and it was informative to have the two events delineated properly.

The heights of Keaton’s early independent career and the depths of his disastrous output at MGM are both covered with great detail. For anyone who has watched his MGM films in shock after seeing the triumphs he had produced earlier will not be surprised by anything that was going on behind the scenes. Yes, it’s obvious he had no control over his career at this point, but seeing what a talent MGM had brought in and then utterly failing to use that talent is as frustrating to read about as it is to see on screen.

Stevens also provides a fascinating look at what we would now call fandom, including movie criticism popping up around this new medium. This part of the book allows us to see both how Buster Keaton was perceived by his contemporaries and how critics were coming to grips with how a movie could be taken apart and analyzed.

In addition to the concise and informative look at the history of Hollywood, we also get a mini-history of Alcoholics Anonymous (and other alcoholic treatments) as Stevens discusses Keaton’s MGM-fueled descent into alcohol abuse. Was it full blown alcoholism? It depends on what definition you use. Certainly his recovery took place outside the confines of AA and his eventual “sobriety” did not closely resemble what AA thought of it or how we would use the term today.

The biography moves into Keaton’s work in television and rather than being a reluctant participant as I assumed he had been when he guest starred on the variety shows of the early days of TV, Keaton was a happy and fascinated early adopter of the newest technology, just as he had been when movies were in their infancy.

Camera Man is a great biography, not only of Buster Keaton, but of the state of the American entertainment industry as it existed during Keaton’s life. One thing that repeatedly comes through is Keaton’s dry, no nonsense attitude and sense of humor. And Stevens provides a very thorough analysis of Keaton’s films and his balanced approach to filmmaking. His character was usually a stoic — yet optimistic — person existing in a universe with a strong streak of fatalism binding it together. Stevens captures that voice perfectly. Highly recommended for anyone who is a Buster Keaton fan or just a fan of the movies in general.