Buster Keaton "Francis". His father was Joseph Hallie "Joe" Keaton, who owned a traveling show with Harry Houdini called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company, which performed on stage and sold patent medicine on the side. According to a frequently repeated story, which may be apocryphal, Keaton acquired the nickname "Buster" at about 18 months of age. Keaton told interviewer Fletcher Markle that Houdini was present one day when the young Keaton took a tumble down a long flight of stairs without injury. After the infant sat up and shook off his experience, Houdini remarked, "That was a real buster!" According to Keaton,
Buster Keaton second foot up next to it and held the awkward position in midair for a moment before crashing to the stage floor. "I've Got a Secret" host Garry Moore recalled, "I asked (Keaton) how he did all those falls, and he said, 'I'll show you'. He opened his jacket and he was all bruised. So that's how he did it—it "hurt"—but you had to care enough not to care." Keaton's periodic television appearances helped to revive interest in his silent films during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1954, he played his first television dramatic role in "The Awakening", an episode