Joe Keaton Joe Keaton Joseph Hallie Keaton (July 6, 1867 – January 13, 1946) was an American vaudeville performer and silent film actor. He was the father of actor Buster Keaton and appeared with his son in several of his films. Keaton was born a few miles south of Terre Haute, Indiana to Libbie Jane and Joseph Francis Keaton IV. Leaving home in 1889, the year of the Land Rush, he homesteaded in the Oklahoma territory for a time, securing a claim three and a half miles northwest of Edmond. A few months into Keaton's residency, the neighboring homesteader (a Canadian whom
Buster Keaton of feature films. Throughout the 1940s, Keaton played character roles in both "A" and "B" features. He made his last starring feature "El Moderno Barba Azul" (1946) in Mexico; the film was a low budget production, and it may not have been seen in the United States until its release on VHS in the 1980s, under the title "Boom in the Moon". Critics rediscovered Keaton in 1949 and producers occasionally hired him for bigger "prestige" pictures. He had cameos in such films as "In the Good Old Summertime" (1949), "Sunset Boulevard" (1950), and "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956).