Puzzled Puss: Buster Keaton’s Star Turn

Iknew Buster Keaton.​ I carried his ukulele to Grand Central Station, where he and my father, Bert Lahr, were boarding a train to Toronto to make a film called Ten Girls Ago. It was 1962; I was 21, old enough to know I was walking with two comedy legends. In my mind’s eye, I can still see the platform and the waiting silver carriage. I remember my surprise at Keaton’s gravelly voice and the swank black cigarette holder that seemed out of place in his rumpled forlorn face. There was mischief in their banter. These old vaudevillians were back on the road again, comrades in comic arms, doing what they had done from the beginning of their long peripatetic careers, surviving by their wits.