Customer Reviews

Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn't Lie Down (Limelight)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have read and own many books on Buster Keaton. This is the worst I have seen. Many "facts" are in error (such as who starred in The Buster Keaton Story, etc.) and that casts suspicion on everything else. Since I already knew a great deal about Keaton, this book offended me in what it got wrong. Make sure this is not the ONLY reference you read of The Great Stone Face, it's pretty much junk.

This book has many factual mistakes that are just stupid mistakes such as confusing the order of Keaton's sons. There were only 2 of them so how hard can it be to get the order right?
Also, Dardis writes things that seems rather unlikely to have happened then does not back the "facts" in his notes such as Keaton's second wife prostituting herself at the Biltmore Hotel with his sister's help! What the hell? One shocking thing he writes is some comment about Keaton "may have" lost the tip of his finger in a clothes wringer. What's this "may have"? I don't think there's any question about it. Keaton himself said he crushed it in a clothes wringer and back then something like that was a common occurrence. The one good thing about this book is it has excellent pictures-pictures I've never seen in any other books about Keaton.

Don't bother to read this book. It overlooks Buster's artistry, and is strangely obsessed with the finances of each film. A much better book on Keaton is the one by Rudi Blesh, which is unfortunately unavailable now.

This book has many things to recommend it, but many more not to. The oddest thing is when Dardis describes Keaton's second wife (twice he says she was a very attractive brunette - actually she was rather witchy-looking) and he goes on to say that she dumped him when she'd had enough of his drinking. Not true. She was a golddigging conniver who Keaton actually got rid of himself. He stopped drinking once he had.

Many other factual mistakes, but worse than those are his take on Buster. He seems not to respect him much. Why write this bio? He talks little of the artistry of the man.

There's a factual mistake on nearly every page of this book. Dardis is obsessed with Keaton's drinking, spending some 80 pages of the book on this subject, while cutting the last 25 years of Keaton's life to a mere 20 pages.
In short, this Dardis book is uniformed, inaccurate, unbalanced, and unhinged. However, despite all this, the Dardis bio is still somethat superior on the Marion Meade book, which is even worse. A solid Keaton bio has yet to be written.

But not a Biography. I agree with most of the reviewers regarding this book. There are some pretty great photos and some quotes I had never seen and Dardis does give some new insights into Keaton's life, but the rest is just mediocre and some is of dubious source. For a really great Biography,try the works of Imogen Sara Smith's and Edward McPherson. After reading both biographies you will have a well-rounded view of Keaton the man and the filmaker.

I am an unabashed fan of Buster Keaton, believing his to be the pinnacle of physical humor on film in the 20th century. This book balanced the many aspects of a complicated and brilliant man who spent only one day in a schoolroom. The final section is written very sensitively, and has some great photos.

If there were such thing as the perfect biography, instructions for its creation would probably include finding the proper balance of reverence and intellectual criticism. In this aspect of _Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn't Lie Down_, the author succeeds admirably. Of course, this still doesn't make for the perfect biography. The author seems relatively unconcerned with the intricacies of Keaton's art.

I read this book about 10 years ago and I thought it was very well written. It went into a lot of detail about his life which I thought was very interesting and well researched. I'd recommend this to anyone who'd like to read a good biography about Keaton.