You can imagine how exciting it must have been for Cottage Grove, a small town, to host a major Hollywood production for an entire summer. Buster spent that summer doing what he loved best fishing, playing baseball, and making movies. He’d been a feature film star for years, was at the top of his game, and was just 30 years old. Buster used trains in many films, and in his later years he built a model train equipped with special cars to run hot dogs and sodas from his kitchen out to the pool.īuster filmed The General on location in Cottage Grove Oregon during the summer of 1926. As a child star in his family’s vaudeville act, Buster grew up traveling the country by rail. Buster wanted it to be so authentic that it hurts, and watching it is like seeing Mathew Brady photographs come to life.īut I like to think of just how much fun Buster must have had when making The General. Almost purely visual, the story plays out as nearly one continuous chase, comprised of remarkably elegant tracking shots. To begin, it’s an epic, fact-based, historical, action-adventure, romantic-comedy. “Much has been said about Buster Keaton’s favorite movie, The General, long recognized as a masterpiece. My introductory speech – Buster Had the Time of His Life Making The General. This video further explains the alley – if you can, please leave a thumbs up. Prototype alley sign design by noted Dutch graphic artist – Piet Schreuders. Please help support naming the Chaplin Keaton Lloyd alley in Hollywood by posting a review on Google Maps. You can read all about filming The General in my Keaton film locations book Silent Echoes. from a talk I gave there further explains how Buster filmed The General in Cottage Grove.
#EARY BUSTER KEATON MOVIES UPDATE#
Update – the static slides appear further below, but here is my YouTube video showing how Buster made the film. My brief speech about how Buster had the time of his life making The General follows at the end of this post. Although Keaton had to travel 900 miles north from Hollywood to Cottage Grove, Oregon to film The General, the vast majority of the location shooting took place just steps from the hotel where Buster stayed (above). I had the honor of introducing Buster Keaton’s 1926 masterpiece The General at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s inaugural “A Day of Silents Festival.” Preceding the show, these informational slides (below) prepared by the festival’s Artistic Director Anita Monga, ran on a loop as people took their seats.
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Buster and crew stayed at the Bartell Hotel (1), steps from the Union Camp set (2) built north of the tracks and filmed looking north, (3) the half-mile length of parallel train tracks (dotted line) used for all of the tracking shots, all filmed looking south, (4) the open field (green outline) between Main Street and the tracks, used for the Confederate army retreat, filmed looking south, and (5), the Marietta and Chattanooga town sets, built south of the tracks and filmed looking south.
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