KEATON.

By Rudi Blesh '21. New York The Macmillan Co., 1966. 395 pp. $8.95

A labor of love enables a reader to overlook a personal prejudice about details which should be stressed or better left in the biographer's notes. In this life story all Keaton's weaknesses, personal or artistic, are regarded with compassion, and the classical tragedy of the clown is sketched in tender, loving detail. Fortunately Mr. Blesh began his work before Keaton's death, for it might have imposed a tremendous block. Buster had collaborated closely, provided many details never before revealed, and had eagerly awaited the final publication.

The Dartmouth Film Society was fortunate in being able to hear Rudi Blesh lecture in Hopkins Center last spring just as the book became available. Illustrating his remarks with two seldom seen Keaton films, Steamboat Bill Jr. (1927) and SevenChances (1925), he was able to provide the student and faculty audience with an outstanding film experience.

As professor and scholar, Mr. Blesh took pains to provide an admirable index and a valuable list of Keaton films which Keaton played in, starred in, or produced from 1917 to 1966. In such work Mr. Blesh was aided by Raymond Rohauer, Curator of Films for the Gallery of Modern Art in New York.

A highlight of the book is a review of the Arbuckle incident, the talk of the country in 1922 and 1923. Closely associated with "Fatty" for about two years, Buster made at,least 14 two-reel comedies with him. "In all Hollywood only Buster Keaton tried to help Roscoe Arbuckle. He opened his purse — no one will ever know how much money he gave his friend. More practically, he pleaded with Joe Schenck to let the exiled star become a director. Schenck objected. Fatty's name, he said, was anathema - or a shorter, simpler word to that effect."

Blesh emphasizes that early films stand in great danger of disappearing. The Italian villa in which Natalie Talmadge Keaton and Buster had lived had many owners after Natalie sold it in 1933. "It was [James] Mason who, in 1955, happened on the secret panel to a film-storage vault behind a private projection room of the villa. There untouched for twenty-two years was a cache of films - all of Keaton's own features, from the first, The Three Ages, to the last, SteamboatBill Jr., plus a number of shorts."

The General is given its fair share of coverage. "Its rich diversity of incident - bad, bumptious, heroic - makes up a cinema masterpiece.... It deserves the further honor of never being retired again, of being shown anew to each generation. Its setting is timeless, and as a work of art it comes close to being a new genre: a romantic-historical period dramatic comedy."

The book provides more than 100 photographs, almost all new to your reviewer. These rediscovered publicity stills and personal snapshots bring to life again an age which our present generation might have missed. We revere the "great stone face," Buster Keaton, and thank Rudi Blesh for making him more understandable.

Director of the Office of Instructional Services, Mr. Watson is Faculty Adviser to thepopular and important Dartmouth Film Society managed by 11 undergraduates.