Buster Keaton ever made. Keaton was recognized as the seventh-greatest film director by "Entertainment Weekly", and the American Film Institute ranked him in 1999 as the 21st greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema. Keaton was born into a vaudeville family in Piqua, Kansas, the small town where his mother, Myra Keaton ("née" Cutler), was when she went into labor. He was named "Joseph" to continue a tradition on his father's side (he was sixth in a line bearing the name Joseph Keaton) and "Frank" for his maternal grandfather, who disapproved of his parents' union. Later, Keaton changed his middle name to
Buster Keaton the United States Post Office, including Rudolph Valentino and Keaton. Hirschfeld said that modern film stars were more difficult to depict, that silent film comedians such as Laurel and Hardy and Keaton "looked like their caricatures". In his essay "Film-arte, film-antiartístico", artist Salvador Dalí declared the works of Keaton to be prime examples of "anti-artistic" filmmaking, calling them "pure poetry". In 1925, Dalí produced a collage titled "The Marriage of Buster Keaton" featuring an image of the comedian in a seated pose, staring straight ahead with his trademark boater hat resting in his lap. Film critic Roger Ebert stated, "The