Buster Keaton to have a comic slant. After Keaton's successful work with Arbuckle, Schenck gave him his own production unit, Buster Keaton Productions. He made a series of two-reel comedies, including "One Week" (1920), "The Playhouse" (1921), "Cops" (1922), and "The Electric House" (1922). Keaton then moved to full-length features. Keaton's writers included Clyde Bruckman, Joseph Mitchell, and Jean Havez, but the most ingenious gags were generally conceived by Keaton himself. Comedy director Leo McCarey, recalling the freewheeling days of making slapstick comedies, said, "All of us tried to steal each other's gagmen. But we had no luck with Keaton, because he
Buster Keaton during this period. MGM tried teaming the laconic Keaton with the rambunctious Jimmy Durante in a series of films, "The Passionate Plumber", "Speak Easily", and "What! No Beer?" The latter would be Keaton's last starring feature in his home country. The films proved popular. (Thirty years later, both Keaton and Durante had cameo roles in "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World", albeit not in the same scenes.) In the first Keaton pictures with sound, he and his fellow actors would shoot each scene three times: one in English, one in Spanish, and one in either French or German. The