Steamboat Bill Jr.

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Steamboat Bill Jr. is a feature-length silent comedy film featuring Buster Keaton, one of the masterpieces of American silent film comedy ^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}. Released by United Artists on May 20 1928, the film is the last product of Keaton's independent production team and set of gag writers.

The story concerns a young man straight out of college making good as a Mississippi steamboat captain, trying to follow in his father's footsteps, and falling in love with the daughter of John James King (Tom McGuire) who is his father's business rival.

But Steamboat Bill's finest moments come during its cyclone sequence. Keaton filmed close to Sacramento valley, building $135,000 worth of breakaway street sets on a riverbank and then filming their systematic destruction with six powerful Liberty-motor wind machines and a 120-foot crane. Keaton himself, who calculated and performed his own stunts, was suspended on a cable from the crane and hurled him from place to place, as if airborn. The resulting sequence on film is astonishing and still watchable as spectacle, if not comedy. And it comes punctuated by Keaton's single most famous stunt. Keaton stands in the street, making his way through the destruction, when an entire building facade collapses onto him. The attic window fits neatly around Keaton's body as it falls, coming within inches of flattening him. Keaton did the stunt himself with a real building section and no trickery. It has been claimed that if he had stood just inches off of the correct spot Keaton would have been seriously injured or killed. The stunt has been re-created several times on film and television, though usually with facades made from lighter materials.

Theatrical poster to Steamboat Billy, Jr. (1928)

The director was Charles Reisner, the credited writer was Carl Harbaugh (although Keaton wrote the film and publicly called Harbaugh useless but "on the payroll"), and also starred Ernest Torrence, Marion Byron, and Tom Lewis.

The movie was parodied by Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie, which also was the first Mickey Mouse movie to become commercially successful.''.

External links

[Watch the Movie at the Internet Archive]
[thorough Epinions description]
[Choice clips] from this Public Domain classic (in Windows and Real Media format)

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