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On the flight to Los Angeles, oxygen had to be administered to Keaton. When the plane landed he was so weak that he made no objection to being pushed in a wheelchair to his car. The next day he saw his doctor. After the examination and X rays, the physician took Eleanor aside. "When he gets dressed, take him to the hospital. Go now." At West Hills Hospital in Canoga Park, Keaton underwent a biopsy of the lymph nodes in his neck.

He had inoperable lung cancer, with a prognosis of one week to three months. Keaton left West Hills with medication to make him comfortable. Unaware of the diagnosis, he continued to believe that he was suffering from severe chronic bronchitis.

Word of his condition traveled quickly. A Van Nuys informant passed a tip to Hedda Hopper: "You might like to know that he came home from the hospital last week and is very ill with a chest complication. He probably won't recover."

For a while he seemed to bounce back. He joined Lucille Ball and Dick Van Dyke on a CBS television tribute to Stan Laurel. In December, he posed for a Levy's Rye Bread advertisement. "This medication is working," he assured Eleanor. Since he enjoyed seeing visitors, Ruth and Henry Silva brought over a new comedian whom he had seen on television and found quite amusing. They took him into the den where Keaton was seated at his card table. "He was playing double-handed solitaire," Bill Cosby remembered. "I went over to him and asked how he was doing, and he said, 'How are you, young fellow?' That was all he said to me, period. I could have sat at his feet, but he was playing that solitaire."

Bill Cosby was one of Keaton's last guests at Woodland Hills. Soon enough the cancer metastasized to his brain, and then he began losing ground rapidly.

 

At the end of January, Raymond Rohauer described his plans for a Keaton film festival in London in the spring. He wanted Buster to be there.

"Okay," Keaton agreed. "Well, you know you can count on me."

On Sunday, January 30, Jane Dulo stopped by for brunch and cards, as she often did. They were in the middle of a game when Keaton suddenly seemed to lose interest and went into his den to finish a game of solitaire. Half an hour later, he began choking and lost consciousness. That night he spent at West Hills Hospital, but the hospital released him the following day.

Arrangements were made to set up a hospital bed in his den and to obtain the services of a nurse. By this time Keaton's mood had turned rebellious. He refused to lie down on the hospital bed. He refused to get into his own bed. He refused to sit down on chairs.

"He became more and more irrational," Eleanor Keaton said. "He wanted to fight, and he didn't care about what or who. He wouldn't let anybody touch him." He paced the floor, dragging one foot a little. Out poured long rambling stories. Never before had she heard him talk quite so much.

At 7:00 p.m. the nurse gave him an injection that knocked him out. Eleanor Keaton recalled, "We finally got him into bed and he went out like a light. That was it. He never came back."

At 6:15 a.m. on Tuesday, February 1, 1966, Joseph Frank Keaton made his exit in his sleep at the age of seventy.

 

Eleanor and Ruth Silva arranged for the funeral service. The funeral director was prepared to sell them a burial befitting one of the great names in the film industry. Eleanor remembered her husband's clucking when Gracie Allen had died and George Burns spent something like $25,000. She said to the mortician, "We're not going to spend one penny over $3,500. I don't care how you do it, that's the top."

The startled undertaker nodded. "What do you think would be Mr. Keaton's favorite music?" he asked.

Eleanor did not hesitate for a second. "'Hello, Dolly!'"

 He was buried at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills in Burbank. Eleanor placed a rosary in one pocket—and a deck of cards in the other. Come what may, he would be ready for his close-up.

 

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