The first major biography in more than two decades of one of motion pictures' greatest comedians and filmmakers, by acclaimed film historian and biographer of W. C. Fields, Preston Sturges, James Whale, and Spencer Tracy.
It was James Agee who christened Buster Keaton "The Great Stone Face." Keaton's face, Agee wrote, "ranked almost with Lincoln's as an early American archetype; it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful, yet it was also irreducibly funny. Keaton was the only major comedian who kept sentiment almost entirely out of his work and... he brought pure physical comedy to its greatest heights.
