Among the comedic actors to take their cues from the vaudeville stage, Buster Keaton and Groucho Marx are two stars positioned, seemingly, at opposite ends of the cinematic solar system.
Keaton’s famous stoic calm is in perfect contrast to the Marx Brothers’ anarchic, hyperverbal antics. Where Groucho’s greasepaint mustache and caterpillar eyebrows continually signaled to the audience his mordant intentions, the silent Keaton largely ignored his audience, concerned as he usually was with pressing on against the headwinds of an impossible fate, exhibiting what the film critic Anthony Lane described as a “casual reluctance to be crushed.”
But the through-line is there, if you’re looking for it. In fact, for a brief (and mutually unhappy) period in the late-1930s, their careers overlapped. The elder, then-wilting Keaton — his masterpieces, “The General,” “Sherlock Jr.,” “Steamboat Bill, Jr.,” “One Week” well in his rearview mirror — took work as a poorly paid gag writer at MGM during a run of Marx Brothers movies.
This is, in part, the subject of the first presentation at the 22nd Buster Keaton Celebration. Ohio University Zanesville professor Lisa Stein Haven will present “An Analysis of Keatonesque Humor in Three Marx Brothers’ Films” at 1:30 p.m. Friday at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center.
Stein Haven takes as her touchstone the films “A Night at the Opera” (1935), “At the Circus” (1939) and “Go West” (1940) — a trio of Marx Brothers movies bearing Keaton’s direct imprint (though the aging silent film star wasn’t always credited for his contributions).
In a phone conversation with the Register on Tuesday, Stein Haven — who first attended the Buster Keaton Celebration in 2006 — cited as “part of the beauty” of the Iola-based gathering the “astute crowds” who attend the event and the high-level of discussion produced by the mix of film purists and genuinely curious newcomers.
Another of this weekend’s speakers, and a true veteran of the event, is Professor Frank Scheide, who will deliver his talk — “Why Ruritania? Exploring the Marx Brothers’ American Melting Pot via ‘Duck Soup’” — at 2:20 p.m. Friday, following directly behind Stein Haven.
While Scheide’s specialty is Charlie Chaplin, the University of Arkansas professor’s expertise ranges across the landscape of silent film. Scheide has participated in the Keaton Celebration every year since 1994, lending his expertise to discussions of many of that era’s bright lights.
Part of Scheide’s talk Friday will dwell on the evolution of the Marx Brothers’ use of ethnic impersonation and broad dialect humor during their early vaudeville days — Chico as the elaborately-accented Italian, Harpo the ruddy, boisterous Irishman, and Groucho as the “brusque, acerbic” German.
In time, especially as their act made its way to celluloid, the troupe “refined” these ethnic stereotypes, said Scheide, softening the derisory edges and assimilating the ethnic differences into their popular art in a way that mirrored the real-life ethnic assimilation of early 20th century America.
Speaking of mirrors, Scheide will devote a portion of his lecture to the famous “mirror scene” from “Duck Soup,” in which Harpo’s character, pretending to be the reflection of Groucho’s, matches the brother move for move in a surreal, extended pas de deux. The discussion, said Scheide, will dovetail nicely with a lecture by another of this weekend’s presenters, Rob Arkus, who will trace the cinematic history of the mirror gag.
Afternoon registration for the Buster Keaton Celebration begins at 1 p.m. Friday at the Bowlus. The two-day celebration runs through Saturday.
Speakers: Marx Brothers, Keaton had occasional ties
