With Kino International's 10 disk DVD release of Buster Keaton's early, independent work, a new generation of Americans can become acquainted with the man who pioneered the physical comedy genre some 80 years ago.

Born into a family of vaudevillians on October 4, 1895, Buster was christened Joseph Frank Keaton. Interestingly, no one can pinpoint when or where Joseph F. Keaton picked up his famous nickname of ëBuster'. Most people believe that Keaton got the moniker from Harry Houdini after falling down a staircase as a young boy, or while splitting his pants on stage, but recent research by the newspaper Classic Images has shown both stories to be false. Involved in his parents vaudeville act from a very early age, Buster quickly learned how to perform a variety of amazing stunts and falls, training that would serve him very well in the years to come. The Keaton family act was a popular one, namely because of the rough nature of the performance; Buster would often be thrown around on stage by his father and together, the two perfected an act called the Human Mop, where Buster would be used as a broom, face to the ground, cleaning the stage.

In 1917, after the Keaton vaudeville act had disbanded, Buster met with his old vaudeville friend Fatty Arbuckle. Arbuckle persuaded Keaton to have a cameo in a film short he was shooting. After a couple of years working with Arbuckle, Buster was finally given the chance to star in his own film in September of 1919.

Partnered with producer Joseph Schenck, Buster was soon under contract to make eight film shorts a year, on which he would have complete artistic and technical control. Over the next eight years, Keaton churned out numerous film shorts, including the marvelously entertaining Neighbors, as well as approximately ten feature films, most notably The General, an effort that landed on the AFI top 100 list.

After making the films College and Steamboat Bill Jr. in 1927 and 1928, Keaton made a decision that, in retrospect, affected him greatly. He signed a contract with MGM to make movies, but, in doing so, relinquished control of his pictures. Unable to perform his own brand of comedy magic for other directors, directors who, for the most part, failed to utilize his myriad talents, Keaton plunged into despair. Drinking and divorced from his first wife, Natalie, Keaton remarried and redivorced before finally getting back on track in 1937 when he accepted a position as a gag writer for MGM. While there, Keaton crafted lines for Clark Gable, Red Skelton and The Marx Brothers among others.

Keaton didn't return to the lime light until 1954, when he and his third wife Eleanor, a woman 24 years his junior, were offered a television showóeventually called The Buster Keaton Comedy Showóthat ended up being a phenomenal success.

With the rediscovery of Keaton's early silent films during the ë50's and ë60's, especially after his death in 1966, most of Keaton's pictures were restored and, in some cases, shown again to new and appreciative audiences.

The appeal of Buster Keaton's work, like that of Jackie Chan's work today, comes with the symbiotic relationship between comedic situations and jaw dropping stunts. Only, unlike Chan, Keaton did his death defying style of acting over 80 years ago, a time when the safety precautions taken while filming weren't as stringent as they are currently.

Silent films provided much of the setting for this genre of motion picture; dramatic films popular today, like Shakespeare in Love and The Sweet Hereafter would have failed miserably minus their dialogue. And without spoken interchanges between the actors, it was necessary for the on-screen action to do most, if not all of the film's talking. And the action in Keaton's films did just that.

Agile, athletic and unbelievably strong and spry, Keaton was one of the most visible of all the early stuntmen in show business. The stunts in Keaton's films are what most Americans remember best about his work.

Probably the best known stunt of Keaton's took place in his last independent film, Steamboat Bill Jr. In the midst of a violent wind storm, Buster performed several comic pratfalls. After hiding under a runaway bed in the middle of a street for a minute, the bed blew away. As Buster comes to his feet, the face of the house behind him detaches from the rest of the house and starts to fall. Keaton remains completely oblivious to the whole thing, until the front of the house crashes down around him, with him standing unscathed in the second floor window frame. With no guide wires or computer graphics to assist the stunt, the effect of the scene is amazing, Keaton simply allowed the face of the house to fall around him.

Keaton's brand of humor is one that transcends the hands of time. People who marvel at the stunts Chan and his Hong Kong counterparts perform often have no idea that the man who virtually invented these comical scenes died 34 years ago. However, with this wondrous 10 disk release, the name of Keaton will continue to live on into the next millennium.