Buster Keaton by Marion Meade

Author:Marion Meade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1995-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

That fall Irving Thalberg's attention was focused on script development for Grand Hotel, which was to be an all-star picture that included every big star on the lot, among them Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, John Barrymore, and Wallace Beery. One of the key roles still waiting to be cast was Kringelein, a fatally ill bookkeeper who spends his life savings to enjoy his last days at the Grand Hotel. Director-writer Edmund Goulding thought the role was custom-made for Keaton, and Keaton agreed. He would have done anything to play Kringelein. Fresh in L. B. Mayer's mind were Keaton's absences, alibis, and lies. The role was assigned to Lionel Barrymore.

For Keaton, what followed next was Speak Easily, about a pince-nezzed absentminded professor who believes he inherits a fortune and so decides to back a Broadway show, then a post-Prohibition comedy about two would-be beer barons, What! No Beer?, which Keaton called "a 100 per cent turkey." In both films he played straight man to Jimmy Durante, who was just as displeased as Keaton with the second-rate pictures. Durante also resented delays caused by Keaton's drinking and absences.

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