Sunday Night Open Thread

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I love old movies.

[The YouTube]

What’s been on your mind? Got something you’d like to share? A topic to discuss? It’s Sunday Night Open Thread.

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5 Comments

  2. Buster Keaton, My Wonderful World of Slapstick:

    Somehow I have always found it impossible to borrow money from anyone. Perhaps the fact that I’ve paid my own way since I was four has something to do with this. Some sort of crazy pride even prevented me from asking friends to return money I had loaned them back in my $3,000-a-week days.

    When I went broke, I had $15,000 in personal debts outstanding, not counting the tens, twenties, and fifties every star in show business is expected to hand out to down-and-outers as a matter of course.

    Some of the friends I had loaned solid amounts to never got into a position where they could pay. It was that way with Arbuckle, who died owing me $2,500, and with Lew Cody, who died owing me $2,000.

    But there were several others, including a cowboy star, a prominent comedian, and a pal who inherited a fortune, who could have paid me but never came near me.

    . . . .

    I enjoy having expensive things, but it did not bother me when I had to turn my Cadillac in for a Ford and wear ready-made suits instead of custom-tailored jobs and live without servants in a cheap bungalow court. After I made the pictures in Paris I made another in London. But these two pictures, as I said, were too cheaply made to re-establish my reputation. After that I had to take anything I could get. And what I got was a contract to make comedy short subjects for Educational Films. When this expired I was signed for a similar deal by Columbia Pictures. It meant a living, for I was paid $2,500 each for them and made about six a year.

    These two-reelers, shot in three days each, were what picture people call “cheaters,” meaning movies thrown together as quickly and cheaply as possible. . . . And making these “cheaters” was the way I supported myself and my family from 1935 to 1940.

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