She Blogged By Night

The 15th Annual Buster Keaton Celebration is Friday, September 28 and Saturday, September 29, at the Bowlus Fine Art Center in Iola, Kansas.

Buster Keaton was born October 4, 1895, in Piqua, Kansas. Piqua (pronounced "pee-quay") is a tiny town in southeast Kansas. In 1895 it was a railroad stop with a large hotel. Like many small town railroad stops, the hotel featured variety and Vaudeville shows. Joe Keaton and his wife Myra didn't live in Piqua, they were performers in a medicine show that happened to stop in town on October 4th of that year; Myra missed performing that night, as she wound up giving birth to little Joseph Frank Keaton. Keaton's father later recalled the medicine show was moved from the hotel to the "Catholic hall", due to a tornado that ripped through town the day Buster was born.

As a child, Buster was no stranger to accidents and falls. After a few minor injuries at work, his parents decided to keep him home with a guardian instead of taking him along to the theater. In one day Buster seriously injured his head and hands in separate falls, and then was unceremoniously whisked up by a tornado. The tornado thankfully plopped him down unharmed several yards away, but it was enough to make his parents change their minds: Buster was obviously safer on stage. At the age of three he began his act, being tossed and tumbled around the stage by what the New York Telegraph in 1909 called "a merciless father". This background provided Keaton with his trademark physical comedy, as seen in this still from "Steamboat Bill, Jr." (1928).

Keaton's legacy will be celebrated during the two-day festival in Iola, which is just a few miles from Keaton's birthplace in Piqua. The hotel is no longer in Piqua, having long been replaced by the co-op, but a field dedicated to his memory, along with a plaque and a small museum, mark Piqua's most famous son. Iola has held the Keaton Festival since 1993.

Links & Credit:
The Buster Keaton Museum
The 15th Annual Keaton Celebration
The Official Iola Keaton Celebration Site
Damfinos: The International Buster Keaton Society
Keaton and Chaney photo courtesy amy_jeanne at LiveJournal