A near-broken Buster Keaton — on screen and off — surveys the damage.
Mary Evans
INSTANT TRIVIA
1 Steamboat Bill, Jr’s director Charles Reisner (actually co-director; Keaton went uncredited) couldn’t watch the falling-house stunt being filmed. Instead he took himself into a corner and prayed as hard as he could.
2 The ‘hurricane’ was created with the aid of six Liberty aircraft engines and propellers mounted on the backs of cars, while the sets were pulled apart by cables attached to cranes.
3 Keaton sports a beret in this film, rather than his famous pork-pie hat. In one scene he tries on different hats in a shop mirror, immediately rejecting a pork-pie hat.
4 The falling-house gag has been imitated many times, in — among others — Jackie Chan’s Project A Part II, Jackass Number Two and Arrested Development (in which the wall closely misses — obviously — Buster Bluth).