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 his hair and adventure zipping toward him around the next bend. It is the "angle" that you remember: the figure perfectly straight but tilted forward, like the Spirit of Ecstasy on the hood of a Rolls-Royce... [in "The Three Ages"], he drives a low-grade automobile over a bump in the road, and the car just "crumbles" beneath him. Rerun it on video, and you can see Buster riding the collapse like a surfer, hanging onto the steering wheel, coming beautifully to rest as the wave of wreckage breaks. Film historian Jeffrey Vance wrote: Buster Keaton's comedy endures not just because