The Balloonatic

Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face". Buster Keaton was recognized... as the seventh-greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Keaton the 21st-greatest male star of all time. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929, [when] he worked without interruption on a series of films that make him, arguably, the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies." Orson Welles stated that Keaton's The General is "the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made." A 2002 worldwide poll by Sight & Sound ranked Keaton's The General as the 15th best film of all time. Three other Keaton films received votes in the magazine's survey: Our Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator. Keaton was born Joseph Frank Keaton into a vaudeville family.
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Edward Francis Cline was a screenwriter, actor, writer and director best known for his work with comedians W.C. Fields and Buster Keaton. He was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin and died in Hollywood. Eddie Cline began working for Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios in 1914 and supported Charlie Chaplin in... some of the shorts he made at the studio. At one time he claimed credit for having come up with the idea for the Sennett Bathing Beauties. When Buster Keaton began making his own shorts, after having worked with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle for years, he hired Cline as his co-director. In Keaton's short films Cline and Keaton himself were the only two regular gag men. For Keaton's 1921 short, Hard Luck, Cline is credited with originating Keaton's personal favorite gag from his films. At the end of the film, Keaton dives into a swimming pool which has been emptied of water. Years later he emerges from the hole which his fall created, accompanied by a Chinese wife and two small Chinese-American children. Besides working on most of Keaton's early shorts, Cline co-directed Keaton's first feature, Three Ages .
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