If I bring to life whatever I can dream¹ ~ [James Dangerfield as] Joseph Frank Keaton

This reviews James Dangerfield in his ‘Buster’ Keaton show, When You Fall Down

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14 September

This is a review of James Dangerfield in his one-man ‘Buster’ Keaton show, When You Fall Down, at The Hen and Chickens Theatre, Islington, London, on Thursday 14 September at 7.30 p.m.

Run against the wind

But they won’t see the strain

James Dangerfield has written, scored, and performed a one-man show about Joseph Frank ‘Buster’ Keaton that leaves us wanting more : it runs to around fifty minutes, during which - with a consistency of diction - he blends in and out of spoken song (or lightly accented speech). Moreover, in Dangerfield’s original lyrics, there are allusions to the guiding forces in Keaton's life and that to which they have given rise in him as values (or principles).

However, without diluting the artistry of story-telling and of much that is cinematic in this presentation, we can easily imagine it extended to a full evening, and bringing others in Keaton’s life on stage with him (and not by the artifice of a candle-stick telephone), such as producer Joe Schenck (who worked alongside Keaton at Buster Keaton Productions), or Keaton’s wife Natalie²...

The show gives us significant moments in the early film-career of Keaton, before he signed to MGM³ (The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation), as if Keaton were introducing himself to the staff of MGM through a précis – each moment chronological, and heralded by its own film-clip (announcing the month and year), from the period when he started making films (March 1917) until he signed to MGM (January 1928).

In the script of the show, and importantly in its songs, James Dangerfield has chosen moments that tell us what matters to Keaton (please see below). In doing so, he employs ways not only to show that Keaton had values of hard work, fidelity in friendship, trust, and pursuing his insight into what could be achieved in film (and where those values came from), but also that evoke Keaton through costume, the grace of movement (and of dance-steps), magical sleight of hand, and, of course, through footage from Keaton’s films, such as Sherlock Jr. (1924), The General (1926), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928).

Two images from The General (1926)

As Keaton, James Dangerfield presents himself as being very light footed, and he has composed original music that is very sympathetic to the tone-colours of his voice (and to where it lies). The very opening theme is auspicious, and leads into Keaton - at the time when he has been appearing, in March 1917, in the Shubert Brothers' review, The Passing Show - having been urged, by his friend Roscoe Arbuckle, to take his first steps on film [in The Butcher Boy (1917)].

Performing almost as long as you’ve been alive⁴

All those years as a human mop⁴

Keaton reflects on his life, and, contemplating the camera, considers (in 'What is this ? What are you ?') all that he sees that the camera is capable of depicting for others to see :

And bring to life

Whatever I can dream

The optimistic tone of the opening resumes in this number, to end triumphantly - already, the audience was with Dangerfield as Keaton, just as assuredly it was (in October 1924) in '[I am ]The Navigator', a big and inspiring musical number of self-belief :

I'm ready to employ
The best effects
Ever seen
On celluloid !¹

Two images from Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Early on, we heard that he married Natalie and moved to LA (at the age of twenty-five), but, within six years, he is ruefully calling out her name, and soon – which Dangerfield did in real time on stage - drawing bigger and bigger images of the houses that he offered to build her...

Even so, in Keaton's 3.5-acre Italian villa, where Harold Lloyd, Louise Brooks, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin visited, we learn that Natalie’s relations look on me like a clowning oddity, in a house with The bedroom where I now sleep separately.

The quality of the writing, and of the song, stop Dangerfield being maudlin, but having Natalie portrayed directly would obviously give the problems of the marriage a rounded impression...

Just one who gets back on his feet,
Whatever has been thrown at me

We also saw Keaton in real pain at others ruining my friend, 'Fatty' Arbuckle – who had got him into film – after the world determined that They want to hang you out and cry ; 'This happened because Hollywood ain’t dry !' :

They tried you three times
And never gave you blame

We hear Keaton say, of his film-making, that you Don’t always need to speak to be heard, and, both in re-creating how Keaton might have gone about meeting himself on screen – in the midst of his off-screen life – and evoking Keaton being chased, and also with Martyn Stringer (who arranged Dangerfield's songs and wrote the instrumental numbers), Dangerfield has worked carefully to be filmic.

In September 1927, the final moment in the show, Stringer gives us the sense of danger in his score before we even hear that Keaton has been being told that it is Not like the old days now [by Chuck Reisner, directing Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)], and we see the creative Keaton fearing that he might lose all creative control by signing to MGM…

Even so, he does, of course, sign (and a series of closing-titles tells us what happens to Arbuckle, Keaton, and his marriage), but not before a rousing reprise of ‘The Navigator’ - with Keaton’s eye back to the camera.


A well-written and very confidently performed and convivial one-man show by James Dangerfield, which deserves to be seen more widely, and with which, for now, Keaton and he have a date at The Buster Keaton Convention - all present on the night enjoyed the spectacle, as well as learning more about Keaton’s life, and we wish the show a very bright future !


End-notes :

¹ The songs quoted are (in order of being quoted) : And bring to life [...] from 'Day-dreams' ; I’m ready to employ [...] from 'The Navigator' ; look on me like a clowning oddity from 'My Wife's relations' ; What the press decides [...] and Roscoe, they want to hang you out [...] from 'The Goat / Cops' ; and, from the start of the show's text, You take the knocks [...] .

² Natalie Talmadge, sister of Norma and Constance Talmadge, and who retired from acting in 1923 : the image shows her on screen with Keaton in Our Hospitality (1923). (When married, she called herself Natalie Talmadge Keaton.)

³ Apparently, against the advice of both Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin.

⁴ It seems that Houdini gave Keaton the nick-name ‘Buster’, after seeing him fall down a flight of stairs as a very young vaudeville artist, and saying to Keaton’s parents ‘That was some buster your son took’. In Buster Keaton : Cut to the Chase (Da Capo Press, 1977), Marion Meade (for one) wants to say, about the physical nature of his father Joe Keaton's stage-act, that it 'pushed slapstick so far that it straddled the line between physical comedy and child abuse'.

You take the knocks
Absorb the shocks
And then you keep on going¹

There’s nothing left of me
They could tear down

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)