Steamboat Bill, Jr. Steamboat Bill, Jr. Steamboat Bill, Jr. is a 1928 silent comedy film starring Buster Keaton. Released by United Artists, the film is the last product of Keaton's independent production team and set of gag writers. It was not a box-office success and became the last picture Keaton made for United Artists. Keaton ended up moving to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer where he made one last film in his trademark style, "The Cameraman", before his creative control was taken away by the studio. Charles Reisner directed the film, and the credited story writer was Carl Harbaugh, although Keaton wrote the script and publicly called
The Opry House by Walt Disney Productions. It appears in black and white, and the audio was recorded using Pat Powers's cinephone system. It was animated mostly by Ub Iwerks, Walt Disney's first employee who later became known as a “Disney Legend”. The short became the most expensive early Disney short, its negative cost being almost $2,500 more than the "Steamboat Willie" cartoon produced just a year prior. This short is an early example of how the Disney studio's animated shorts became more sophisticated than previous ones. The short shows more realistic animating. The early Disney cartoons, like "Steamboat Willie" show many similarities