15
Giving In
CLEARLY THE INVESTORS WANTED OUT. The decision had already been made, but to Buster Keaton, immersed in the making of a film, it came as a complete surprise. “So many times I’ve thought it over,” he reflected in the mid-1950s. “Hell, I knew I was a money-maker. And not a big spender. Why, Christ, my pix cost a couple of hundred grand—Fairbanks couldn’t make one under a million. It wasn’t that.” The stockholders of Buster Keaton Productions, Inc., had committed to six pictures for United Artists, yet they were calling it quits after just three. It occurred to Keaton that Joe Schenck, who was still an independent in an age of consolidation, was being squeezed.
“He was too big to knock down, but maybe his brother Nick at M-G-M said, ‘Look, Joe, it’s hurting the business.’ Could be.” But not likely—Schenck was one of ten stockholders in Keaton Productions, albeit the managing partner, and he still had big plans for United Artists. While he never explained his reasoning, possibilities present themselves when considering the timing and the justifications that later came out.
The triggering event appears to be the expiration of Keaton’s contract. At the completion of Steamboat Bill, Jr., his agreement of September 9, 1924, would be up, and if they wanted to continue, all that Schenck had to do was negotiate a new one. United Artists, however, wasn’t reimbursing production costs on the Keaton features; the stockholders of Buster Keaton Productions were on the hook for the entire outlay. After six months in release, The General was still inching its way through the market, and it was uncertain whether it would ever break even, much less turn a profit. And although College was considerably cheaper to make, its commercial and critical success in New York were anything but assured. Moreover, Keaton was back to spending on the same approximate level as The General with the new picture, seemingly unable to work consistently within the $300,000 range anticipated when the 1924 contract was signed.
Keaton always stressed that successful comedies, by their very nature, took longer and cost more to make. “Take any program feature-length picture,” he said, “I mean your standard stars such as Gloria Swanson, Norma Talmadge, Rudolph Valentino—not Doug Fairbanks doing Robin Hood or those big elaborate expensive pictures—but the average program picture. For instance, Norma Talmadge makes, with an all-star cast, Within the Law. The budget of Within the Law was $180,000. The Navigator with me was $220,000. Our pictures always ran almost a third more in price than the dramatic pictures.”
Within the Law not only cost less than The Navigator, but it brought in more money—$879,323 in worldwide rentals versus $680,406 for The Navigator. So the risk of making a feature comedy was greater, while the return was typically no better than for a comparable drama. The Schenck brothers each owned 19⅔ percent of Keaton Productions, with Loew’s executive David Bernstein accounting for another 16⅔ percent. On a profitable film with a cost approximating that of The General, Joe and Nick Schenck stood to make less than $20,000 apiece, Bernstein around $15,000 and change. Nobody, in other words, was getting rich on Buster Keaton features other than perhaps Keaton himself, who had his own 25 percent share of the cumulative net profits.
“You are right when you say that a lot of money has been spent on Buster Keaton,” UA treasurer Arthur Kelly confided in a letter to Syd Chaplin, “but as far as Mr. Schenck is concerned, no money has been made out of his pictures. As a matter of fact, we did as well with his pictures in foreign territories as we did in the U.S.”
With real estate and the stock market booming, there were easier, less risky ways of making money. And if a certain fatigue had set in among the investors, what was the exit strategy for a company formed a decade earlier to make Fatty Arbuckle shorts? One option was to simply shut it down, selling off the inventory and the studio on Lillian Way, cutting Keaton and his staff loose to fend for themselves. Another would be to sell the assets to a larger company, but this would require making a new contract with Keaton—assuming he would go along with such a plan. Here is where the later justifications provide a clue as to what may have happened.
On October 12, 1927, Variety published news of Buster Keaton’s departure from United Artists, framed in such a way as to imply the move was being made at his own behest. The headline had him “angling” for a four-year contract, which would mark his “return” to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. “No reason is set forth for Keaton leaving UA,” the item continued. “It may be that Chaplin felt he should be the only screen comedian to provide releases for that organization.”
Joe Schenck was a father figure to Buster Keaton, older, wiser, and at five ten and a half, taller and more powerfully built than most of the other picture moguls. He had a presence and a strength of character that earned him the sobriquet “Indian Joe,” and even if he wasn’t acting in Buster’s best interests, he wasn’t about to close the company down without arranging a soft landing for the man who was married to his wife’s sister and who was father to her two nephews. Keaton had come to require a certain level of income, yet Schenck knew he cared little about money. Operating on his own, he would likely fail as an independent producer. He needed a Lou Anger to keep an eye on operations, and Harry Brand lacked Anger’s managerial gravitas. “His pictures have cost, it is said, around $350,000 to $500,000 for UA,” Variety reported, “with Metro-Goldwyn figuring it can turn out a Keaton comedy for from $225,000 to $250,000.”
Beginning with its release of Three Ages in 1923, Metro had publicized Keaton as one of its big attractions. When Metro-Goldwyn was created in 1924, and subsequently Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he continued to be part of their roster of stars, which had grown to include such household names as Lillian Gish, Marion Davies, Norma Shearer, Lon Chaney, and John Gilbert. So when the Keaton features stopped releasing through M-G-M in 1926, it appeared as if the studio had lost its star comedian to United Artists. A year later, M-G-M was still without a first-rank comic, while UA effectively had two—Chaplin and Keaton. Nicholas Schenck, vice president and general manager of Loew’s Incorporated, who would be elected president of Loew’s following the death of Marcus Loew, saw a need in the M-G-M lineup for a comedian of Keaton’s stature, and with the concurrence of production chief Irving Thalberg, likely made his brother a proposition. He and Thalberg would make a place for Keaton at Metro, where a disciplined production system and organizational efficiencies would bring down the average cost of a Keaton picture. This would enable them to pay Keaton more than he could earn as an independent, and a percentage of the profits would go to Buster Keaton Productions.
Getting the stockholders to agree to such an arrangement would have been a simple matter. Collectively, the two Schenck brothers and David Bernstein owned 56 percent of Buster Keaton Productions—a controlling interest. Moreover, those owners who were also M-G-M stockholders accounted for a 51⅓ percent ownership stake. Going forward, Keaton would still generate income for the company, but without the risk of any capital.
“We loaned [Keaton] out, just like we did with Arbuckle,” Leopold Friedman, one of the original shareholders, explained. “It was too much of a risk making these pictures ourselves…better to have Metro risk them.”
The downside to it all were the conditions under which Keaton would be required to work. Ominously, Variety outlined these as well: “According to present plans, it is said that a deal is to be made with M-G-M whereby Keaton will make four pictures a year for that organization with all production to be made on the M-G lot instead of the Keaton studios. The plan also calls for M-G to supervise all pictures, Keaton simply to be starred and an M-G director supervising. Keaton maintained a personal staff while at his own studios, which it is understood will be disbanded should he go over to M-G.”
That last condition would have been particularly vexing to Keaton, who saw relatively little turnover in his studio personnel. “His crew loved him,” said Buster Collier. “Every luncheon period all the crew ate together. They’d pull the shade and everybody’d go out and spend an hour or so eating or having a drink together. It was fun. He was a very decent, well-behaved guy. Very charitable. If anybody needed anything, he’d be the first one to help out.”
As Clyde Bruckman put it, “Buster was a guy you worked with—not for.”
The discussion that day couldn’t have taken much time. Joe simply told him they were shutting down the company and that Metro wanted him to come work for them. The money would be better, the opportunities greater, the audience bigger. Joe’s brother Nick would be in charge and would see that Buster was given every consideration. And Thalberg, who had a brilliant story mind, would personally oversee his productions. Predictably, the news left Keaton in a state of shock. Joe, who was a businessman, not an artist, could not possibly have appreciated what taking away the studio and his independence would have meant to Keaton. In Joe’s mind, he must surely have thought he was doing his best to ensure Buster’s continued happiness and prosperity, yet in reality he had signed his creative death warrant.
There was something else, too. Steamboat Bill, Jr. was supposed to end with a spectacular flood, but as Harry Brand pointed out, the year 1927 had seen unprecedented levels of flooding along the Mississippi River, particularly in the Delta. The deadly waters killed as many as one thousand people—estimates were sketchy—and left roughly 640,000 homeless. The waters were just beginning to recede, but the devastation would remain historic in scope, covering twenty-seven thousand square miles. To appear to derive comedy from such an event would invite a backlash that would make the objections to The General seem trivial in comparison. Oblivious to the news, Keaton was angry that Brand had once again meddled in the creative side of the business.
“So Schenck told me, ‘You can’t do a flood.’ I said, ‘That’s funny, since it seems to me that Chaplin during [the war] made a picture called Shoulder Arms, which was the biggest money-maker he’d made at the time.[*] You can’t get a bigger disaster than that, and yet he made his biggest laughing picture out of it.’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s different.’ I don’t know why it was different. I asked if it was all right to make a cyclone, and he agreed that was better. Now, he didn’t know it, but there are four times more people killed in the United States by hurricanes and cyclones than by floods. But it was all right as long as he didn’t find that out, and so I went ahead with my technical man and did the cyclone.”
As Schenck left town, undoubtedly relieved to have the unpleasant business with Buster behind him, he agreeably told The Sacramento Bee he probably would shoot another picture in the area in the near future. “I have traveled the state over,” he said, “and I am frank to say that I have found no place in California with more picturesque settings for motion pictures.” Keaton, meanwhile, set out to quickly revamp the entire third act of the story to remove any hint of a flood while preserving as much of the essential action as possible. And in doing so, he sent to Los Angeles for Clyde Bruckman.
As much as Keaton hated to admit it, the cyclone turned out to be a better option in terms of the possibilities it offered, wind naturally being more cinematic than water. “And a twister could cause the same sort of destruction as a flood,” he said. “Either of them could do many things our script called for: blow buildings into the river, fill the little town jail with water almost up to the ceiling, and sink the sleek craft owned by the heavy, my girl’s father.”
Having the town of River Junction blown apart by winds meant that standing sets had to be built out so that their insides could be revealed. Keaton asked Gabe Gabourie how much it would cost to stage a cyclone instead of a flood. “Gabourie, a whiz at his job, said thirty-five thousand dollars….It turned out that the changes we made cost slightly less than that.”
They figured out, for instance, how to retain the harrowing rescues planned for the end of the picture by simply restaging them in the river, rather than having the river stand in for the flooded townsite. “The best new gag we invented [was] a breakaway hospital. We used a 120-foot crane set on a barge to pick up this whole structure, leaving only the floor.”
The revised sequence opens with commendable understatement:
WEATHER CONDITIONS
Storm clouds in the offing.
Initial gusts send trash and debris rolling down the street, and J. J. King is warned the pier isn’t strong enough to hold his boat. As the citizenry scatters and the storm worsens, a car is blown backward down the street, dragging the driver along with it. The corner facade of a two-story building is blown away, and the Stonewall Jackson is pulled from its moorings. The King’s Fish Palace, a food stand, collapses. As nurses and patients flee, the hospital is blown off its foundation, revealing Willie in one of the beds, an icepack perched squarely on his head. As he grabs his hat and starts for the exit, the building behind him falls to pieces, driving him back into the safety of the bed, which is blown down the road and into a stable. He comes to a stop just long enough for the horses to regard him with benign curiosity, then another set of doors gets blown open and he is again on his way.
For a highlight, Keaton appropriated a gag he had used twice before. In the Arbuckle comedy Back Stage, he causes a flat to fall forward as Fatty is serenading his sweetheart while she is perched on a ladder. The window opening lands exactly where the ukulele-playing star is standing, allowing him to remain completely unaware of what has just happened. Upping the ante a bit, Keaton used the gag himself in One Week, this time having a two-story wood frame wall falling as the flat did and the window opening once again saving the day. But with neither stunt was there any real sense of weight—and with it danger—so neither gave the audience much of a thrill. The stakes, he realized, had to be even higher, and with whole buildings collapsing around him in Steamboat Bill, Jr., he now had the perfect setup. The design of the structure was crucial, with its facade hinged at the bottom so that it would fall exactly as intended, and with its back built out to reveal rooms and furnishings.
“First I had them build the framework of this building and make sure that the hinges were all firm and solid,” Keaton explained. “It was a building with a tall V-shaped roof, so that we could make this window up in the roof exceptionally high. An average second story window would be about twelve feet, but we’re up about eighteen feet. Then you lay this framework down on the ground and build the window around me. We built the window so that I had a clearance of two inches on each shoulder, and the top missed my head by two inches and the bottom my heels by two inches. We mark that ground out and drive big nails where my two heels are going to be. Then you put that house back up in position while they finish building it. They put the front on, painted it, and made the jagged edge where it tore away from the main building, and then we went in and fixed the interiors so that you’re looking at a house that the front has blown off. Then we put up our wind machines with the big Liberty motors. We had six of them and they are plenty powerful; they could lift a truck right off the road. Now we had to make sure that we were getting our foreground and background wind effect, but that no current ever hit the front of that building when it started to fall, because if the wind warps her she’s not going to fall where we want her, and I’m standing right out front.”
The rolling hospital bed Willie is riding comes to a stop in front of the house, which was built at the south end of the River Junction set. Willie takes shelter under the bed, while a man appears in the upper window and jumps to safety, landing directly on top of it. It blows away, but the impact leaves Willie momentarily dazed, and it is in this state of confusion that he faces the camera. The front of the house begins to loosen behind him, all four thousand pounds of it. Were he to fail to stand exactly where the nails had been driven, were he to move forward even slightly, he would instantly be killed.
Chuck Reisner couldn’t bear to witness the scene. “My father, who was a very religious man, a Christian Scientist, had a practitioner up there,” his son, Dean, remembered, “and they were praying all day because here comes this stunt and my father couldn’t bear to see it. He and the practitioner were off praying in one corner and waiting to find out whether Buster came through it or not.”
Keaton surveys the damage to the town of River Junction in Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928).
With everything in place, the wind machines were started and the cameras began to roll film. Keaton positioned himself precisely where he was supposed to be, rubbing his neck and twisting his head as if to snap himself out of his stupor. Men positioned off camera yanked on a cable to bring the hinged edifice forward, and it landed with a resounding crash, nearly taking the star’s right shoulder with it.
“Two extra women on the sidelines fainted,” Keaton said in 1930, relishing the memory, “and the cameramen turned their backs as they ground out the film.” The thrilling shot, destined to become one of the most memorable ever made for a movie, came off beautifully. “But it’s a one-take scene and we got it that way. You don’t do those things twice.”
Struggling against the powerful winds on a muddy street, Willie races into them, leaps into them, and still he can make no headway. A flatbed truck rolls past, and he is inundated with its cargo of boxes. A tree he grabs onto is uprooted by the wind and blown out into the river. As he clambers aboard the Stonewall Jackson, he sees a house floating by with Mary clinging to its side. Springing into action, he tethers the structure using an anchor as a grappling hook and makes his way across the rope, only to have them both plunge into the waters as she clings to him. This was where Louise Keaton came in, for as a child Marion Byron had been caught in a flood in her native Ohio and was deathly afraid of water. Louise hung from her brother’s neck in all but the closest shots, expertly obscuring her face, and Buster thought she could have a future in stunt work if she wanted to pursue it.
When the jail holding Willie’s father breaks free of its foundation and is blown out into the river, Willie takes control of the aging steamer, ingeniously piloting it from the wheelhouse using a network of ropes hastily rigged in the engine room as if it were Ed Gray’s old house back in Muskegon. He rams the sinking building, freeing the old man at the last possible moment, then leaps into the water to save J. J. King, Mary’s father, as he clings to the wreckage of his floating palace, the one that was supposed to put an end to the Stonewall Jackson. As Mary gives him a grateful hug, he grabs a life preserver and once again leaps into the water, this time to retrieve a minister.
The company left a scene of utter desolation when it closed production in mid-September, and the banks of the Sacramento were cleared to make way for the next Hollywood production to discover the spot. Soon, they were shooting additional water footage at Newport, at first off the jetty, then in the bay that had made such a striking background for College, this time disguised and standing in for the Sacramento. Back at the studio, they made the relatively few interiors needed, and Keaton embellished his storm footage with a vignette set in an old theater decimated by the storm. He is beaned on the head with a sandbag, tries running into a scenery drop, encounters a creepy ventriloquist’s dummy, finds himself part of a magician’s illusion. He escapes the place through a doorway just as the wall collapses inward, and with it completes the final exterior to be shot in the vicinity of the Keaton studio.
It was a measure of Keaton’s regard for Chuck Reisner that he agreed to a shot on the fade that he would never have tolerated from another director. “As a gagman, he was his own best,” said Clyde Bruckman. “There’s only one word to describe his judgment. And that’s ‘taste.’ He never overdid it, never offended, and knew what was right for him. Chuck Reisner once argued him into smiling at the end of a picture—Steamboat Bill, Jr. ‘You’ve never smiled, it’s a surefire natural gag,’ he said. ‘It’s a misfire gag,’ said Buster, ‘but I’ll try it for you.’ The preview audience hissed that ending. Bus never said, ‘I told you so.’ We simply went back and shot it over.”
When College opened in New York on September 10, 1927, it wasn’t at the Capitol, where M-G-M’s pricey spectacle Ben-Hur was in its second week, nor was it at either the Rivoli or the Rialto, the two “sister” theaters United Artists had arranged to share with Paramount, both of which were also given over to extended runs. Rather, it was at the Mark Strand, Broadway’s first genuine movie temple—about half the size of the newer Capitol—where it posted a respectable week at $32,300. The knock on College was that it was one of Keaton’s weakest pictures, a conviction that prompted the Times’ Mordaunt Hall to bluntly label it a “piece of stupidity.” Irene Thirer in the Daily News thought it a wow, but the reviews overall were more gracious than superlative. As Norbert Lusk suggested in the Los Angeles Times, “This is partly attributable to the fact that college films in quantity are rapidly approaching the gravity of an epidemic which is rivaling the steady output of war pictures or pictures with war sequences in them. Enthusiasm cannot be expected of those who perforce must repeatedly view the same background no matter how the treatment may differ.” As if to underscore the point, the film that followed College into the Strand was First National’s The Drop Kick—another college picture.
College proved more an audience favorite than a critics’ darling, gathering worldwide rentals of $788,554 on a negative cost of $285,771. Factoring in distribution charges, the film eventually showed a profit of $216,814. The dark way Keaton chose to end the picture drew a considerable amount of attention. After Ronald has spent the whole of the story in his dogged pursuit of Mary, whom he throws over his shoulder and then dashes off to a church, there come three lap dissolves in rapid succession. First, to a scene of routine domestic life, Mary darning a sock while Ronald reads a newspaper, both doing their best to ignore three children, the youngest of which is an infant in a basket. Next, to a scene of solitary old age, Ronald bitterly snapping at her between puffs on his pipe. Finally to a pair of graves, side by side, an image that in turn leads to THE END.
“It must have taken either great courage or great faith in the picture to end it with two graves,” Variety’s Nellie Gray commented. “So many comedies reach there so soon, but perhaps College, carrying its own, like spare tires, won’t need it.”
Was Keaton simply stuck for a clever fade-out? Or was this cynical coda inspired by the deteriorating state of his own marriage, which may be seen, particularly in retrospect, as traveling the same trajectory? If so, he never said as much, and these final shots, “as macabre as the end of Cops” in critic David Robinson’s estimation, still deliver an unexpected wallop nearly a century later.
Leaving the cutting of Steamboat Bill, Jr. in Chuck Reisner’s capable hands, Keaton left for New York City, ostensibly to negotiate a new contract with Joe Schenck but in reality to attend the World Series and puzzle over what to do.
He had already consulted with Charlie Chaplin, who disliked everything about the scenario Schenck had laid out: “Don’t let them do it to you, Buster. It’s not that they haven’t smart showmen there. They have some of the country’s best. But there are too many of them, and they’ll all try to tell you how to make your comedies. It will simply be one more case of too many cooks.”
Harold Lloyd felt the same way. “It’s not your gang,” he said. “You’ll lose.”
Both Chaplin and Lloyd had something Keaton did not—full ownership of their productions and control over their own destinies. Buster was just as gifted, but he had never made self-determination a priority. Joe Schenck had been with him since his first day before the cameras, and Keaton had always had enough money to do whatever he wished. Now he felt as though he was being bought and sold like a commodity. Yet he never held Schenck personally responsible for the situation in which he found himself.
“He would never say a word against Joe Schenck, in spite of all that happened later on,” said writer Bill Cox, a longtime friend. “And I’ve spoken a hundred times to him about it. He’d go over the history of what happened. I’d say, ‘Jesus, Joe Schenck let you down.’ He’d say, ‘Joe didn’t mean any harm.’ Or: ‘Joe was like my father.’ I suppose the thing about Buster [was] he never looked over his shoulder. The past was the past to him. You’d say, ‘That person did something very wrong to you.’ He’d say, ‘Well, most people have a reason.’ It’s astounding how he stuck to that.”
In New York, Keaton went to see Adolph Zukor and proposed to make his pictures for Paramount. “I explained that I wanted to make them in my own studio.” Zukor, however, had been releasing Harold Lloyd’s comedies for the past year—For Heaven’s Sake and The Kid Brother so far, with Speedy still to come. Lloyd had cut a rich deal with Paramount, and Zukor saw no need to add another expensive comedian to the roster.
Keaton attended World Series games at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field and Yankee Stadium, appeared at the opening of Loew’s Oriental Theatre in Brooklyn, mourned the death of Marcus Loew on September 5, 1927, and was a pallbearer at the funeral of comedian Tom Lewis, whose last work was as first mate to Ernest Torrence in Steamboat Bill, Jr. Keaton was, by his own account, still brooding over the state of his career.
“I got myself thoroughly mixed up,” he admitted, “and then I made a mistake, just like in my comedies when I do just one little thing wrong and from then on I’m in the soup up to my neck.”
Prior to talking with Nick Schenck, a meeting he later conceded he should never have taken, Keaton had several drinks and, rather than strategically thinking the whole thing through, presented himself at Schenck’s office at 1540 Broadway “all softened up.”
“What is this thing?” he demanded. “Am I with M-G-M?”
“That’s right,” said Schenck soothingly. “Your studio is a little place. Our big new plant will give you bigger production, relieve you of producing. You just have to be funny. We got writers and directors out there. The best. Experts. Don’t worry. Be happy.”
Then Schenck broached the subject of money. He knew that quitting altogether wasn’t an option for Buster Keaton, that like so many M-G-M contract players, he needed the cash flow to support his lifestyle. Or, more specifically, his wife’s lifestyle. What Schenck might not have realized was that Keaton needed to work for reasons entirely apart from the matter of income—that filmmaking for him had become as necessary as breathing, and that he couldn’t imagine life without it.
“Three thousand a week,” Schenck offered, “and a percentage.”
“No percentage,” Keaton countered. “If I go with you I want bonuses.”
“Bonuses it is. Should we argue?”
“And five thousand a week.”
“Three thousand.”
“No, four thousand.”
“Three thousand a week is just right. And now we go to lunch.”
There was no grand announcement, no ceremonial signing of a contract with photographers on hand to record the historic moment. Nothing, in fact, was said publicly for more than a month, and all indications suggest that Keaton balked at finalizing an agreement with M-G-M. Instead, he hit the road for United Artists, supporting College with personal appearances, doing his Princess Rajah dance four times a day, five on Saturdays and Sundays. Natalie was with him, but it turned out to be unexpectedly rough duty, Keaton having worked falls and tumbling into the act. After a week in Detroit, he moved on to Pittsburgh in somewhat battered condition, and called a halt to the tour after three days.
Sensing, perhaps, that he needed a nudge, United Artists fed word to the trades that the company would not release Steamboat Bill, Jr. “It is stated UA did not want this picture,” Variety reported, “with the result that if present negotiations are concluded with Keaton to return to the M-G-M fold, that organization will release the film.” Three days later, an item in Billboard had Harry Langdon dickering with UA to fill the gap left by Keaton’s departure. Both plants underscored the fact that there was no place left for Keaton at UA.
Concurrently, George Shaffer, the Hollywood correspondent for the New York Daily News, reported that Keaton had permanently closed his studio on Lillian Way. “The tip is out that if Buster makes more pictures, it will be as a salaried comedian, not for Schenck’s United Artists, but for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.” Keaton, of course, had no direct role in ceasing operations. Buster Keaton Productions, which owned the studio, had simply stopped funding staff and management salaries in anticipation of his move to Culver City.
“In the end,” he said, “I gave in.” Within days, Keaton was observed touring the M-G-M lot with Nicholas Schenck. The Film Daily was first to carry official notice of his “return” along with the news that Irving Thalberg would personally supervise his productions.
There are no accounts of Buster’s final day on the Keaton studio grounds, the place where he made eighteen two-reelers and ten features over a period of seven years. If he walked around the compact lot, he would have seen standing sets dating back five years or more, buildings and storefronts and the variegated fence surrounding it all. The great stage where Joe Roberts so affectingly played his final scenes. The laboratory where all the exposed negative was processed, the chemical smells still lingering in the air. The old studio barn, the administration building where Lou Anger had his office and where payroll was made and extras and day workers were processed. Gabe Gabourie’s workshop, where seemingly anything could be fabricated on a moment’s notice. He may even have paused at the plot of land where Captain was buried. And if he walked past the studio’s row of dressing rooms he would have remembered that none of the doors were numbered but rather that each was named for one of the extraordinary comedies he made as an independent. Reading down the line were The Blacksmith, Convict 13, The Scarecrow, The Haunted House, The High Sign, Hard Luck, The Play House, The Goat, The Paleface, and The Boat.