Buster Keaton Productions

A pampered millionaire named Alfred Butler goes on a camping trip to toughen up and falls for a mountain girl who has no patience for his softness. To win her, Alfred passes himself off as a famous boxer who happens to share his name, and the impersonation spirals toward a real fight he has no hope of winning. Buster Keaton directed and stars, and the film is one of his more plot-driven features, leaning on mistaken identity rather than pure stunt work. It was Keaton's highest-grossing picture at the box office, even if it is less celebrated today than The General or Sherlock Jr. The film entered the public domain in the United States in 2022.

Comedy · Silent

A bookish high school graduate gives a graduation speech condemning athletics, which costs him the girl, who prefers the jock. Ronald follows her to college and tries to win her back by joining every sports team on campus, failing at baseball, track, and rowing in a string of set pieces built around his total lack of athletic ability. When the girl is threatened by the school bully, Ronald finally gets to act instead of fumble, sprinting and pole-vaulting across campus in a rescue that reuses every sport he failed at earlier. James W. Horne directed, with Keaton producing and doing his own stunts, including the pole vault into a second-story window. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Action · Silent

A broke wanderer hops a freight train west and lands a job on a ranch where he is hopeless at everything, until he forms a bond with a dairy cow named Brown Eyes. When the herd is shipped to market, Friendless goes along to protect his companion, and the climax turns into a stampede through downtown Los Angeles as hundreds of cattle thunder through city streets and department stores. The sequence is an enormous practical stunt staged in real streets with a real herd. Keaton wrote, directed, and starred, and the film is unusually warm for him, built around a man and a cow rather than a romance. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Comedy · Action · Adventure · Silent

A steamboat captain's effete college son comes home to a Mississippi river town and falls for the daughter of his father's business rival. Willie tries to live up to the image of the rough riverman his father wants, with little success, until a cyclone tears through the town. The storm sequence is the film's centerpiece, with buildings collapsing around Keaton, and it contains the most famous single shot in silent comedy: the full facade of a house drops over him and he survives only because he is standing exactly where an open window in the wall passes around his body. The real clearance was a matter of inches. Keaton's deadpan expression never changes throughout. This was his last independent production before moving to MGM.

Comedy · Action · Silent

Johnnie Gray is a railroad engineer in the South who is turned down for service when the Civil War breaks out because he is more useful driving trains than fighting. His sweetheart thinks he is a coward. Union spies steal his locomotive, The General, with Annabelle on board, and Johnnie gives chase in another engine. The chase runs in both directions and is built almost entirely from real trains, real track, and real stunts, with no miniatures. The famous shot of a locomotive plunging into a river was a single take with a real engine, and the wreckage sat in the river for years. The film was a commercial disappointment on release but is now regarded as one of the greatest comedies ever made. Buster Keaton produced, directed, and starred, and performed his own stunts.

Comedy · Action · Silent