Since childhood I have thought Buster Keaton had the most beautiful face of any man I have ever seen, and finally in 1962 I got an opportunity to tell him so. We were in his Sheraton Hotel suite in Rochester during the time he was making a commercial film for Kodak.
I was speaking of a shot of him hiding under a table in The General: “You were so terribly beautiful in its tragic lighting, Buster, so out of key with your comic character -I can’t understand why you didn’t cut that shot out of the picture”
Although the tragic prophecy of that close-up was now visibly chiseled upon the purity of his face, he had evidently never considered people’s reactions to its beauty. For an instant his expression was mystifying shaken up like a snowstorm in a crystal paperweight and then, dismissing the whole damned thing, with his little-boy walk he trudged into the kitchenette to get himself a cold beer.
- Louise Brooks on Buster Keaton
