Silent Star Sank Roots in Orchard Home

Although silent film comedian Buster Keaton spent plenty of time in the Valley on location, his widow, Eleanor Norris Keaton, said he initially balked at her idea of looking for a home here in 1955.

“He said, ‘The Valley’s too hot,’ ” she recalled. “I said, ‘You have heard of air conditioning?’ ”

Keaton, born in 1895, is considered the most sophisticated of the great silent film comics. He is best remembered for his immobile features, a knack for building and operating gadgets and masterful timing. He probably honed the latter as the youngest of The Three Keatons, his parents’ acrobatic comedy act.

Keaton’s career spanned dozens of shorts and feature films over half a century, from “The Butcher Boy” in 1917 to “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” made in 1966, the year he died.

His personal favorite, and one of the silent screen’s greatest masterpieces, was “The General,” set in the Civil War. Keaton, already known for his technical mastery of props, used an entire railroad in Oregon, spending $40,000 (in 1927 dollars) on a train crash scene.

Although an epic comedy, its authentic background and the Matthew Brady-like quality of the photography added such dimension that some credit him with being the first director to show the seriousness of war.

“The General” is also a prime example of Keaton doing his own, and often dangerous, stunts. That’s no stand-in looking down the barrel of a cannon, or riding the drive wheel and jumping on and off the cowcatcher of a steam locomotive.

As far as moving to the Valley, Keaton needed no persuasion to purchase a home on 1 1/2 acres of the Girard walnut orchard on Sylvan Street.

“He picked it out right away,” Eleanor Keaton, 79, said. “I asked him, ‘Do you mind if I look inside first?’ ”

Buster Keaton loved living in the Valley with its “countrified atmosphere,” she said.

He ended up serving two terms as honorary mayor of Woodland Hills.