February 15, 2013 -

It's the Bulldozer for Buster's Baseball Field!

​American film legend Buster Keaton's childhood baseball field is about to go under the bulldozer to make way for a residential development in Bluffton, Michigan. It's hard to imagine how a little patch of land served as a crucible that helped to shape the direction of cinema history, but this tiny parcel of real estate did just that.​


Spearheaded by members of the International Buster Keaton Society, Inc., and legions of Keaton's friends, family and fans - an effort is being mounted to save this historic field from destruction.  Please take a moment to read about this historic field, and help our cause by signing our online petition!



 

About Buster...

Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895-February 1, 1966) is considered one of the greatest filmmakers and comedians of all time. His films are some of the best known and most beloved silent films, and many of them have been included on the National Film Registry, the AFI lists and the Sight and Sound list of best films. Keaton, an American Vaudeville performer, comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer, used physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face."



Buster Keaton was recognized as the seventh-greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Keaton the 21st-greatest male star of all time. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929, when he worked without interruption on a series of films that make him, arguably, the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies."  His career declined afterward with a dispiriting loss of his artistic independence when he hired on to MGM.  However, he later recovered in the 1940s, and successfully revived his career as an honored comic performer for the rest of his life, earning plaudits like an Academy Honorary Award in 1958 and the longest standing ovation in the history of the Venice Film Festival.

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Orson Welles called Keaton's The General is "the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made."