Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

74 Twelve More Bottles to G o By reading this story you will not only learn what they contain, but how they happen to stand between Buster Collier and his longed-for freedom. By Helen Louise Walker THIS is the story of a pact between two friends, two men who have been in motion pictures since both they and the industry were very young. Two men with the same nickname, whose friendship has ripened through the years into a regular Damon and Phythias combination. The culmination of the pact — if they keep it, and I believe they will — will mark the ends of two notable careers in pictures. The men are "Buster" Collier and "Buster" Keaton. They are friends in the sense that men sometimes, but not often, achieve friendship. Each has a tremendous regard and respect for the other. More than that, a deep affection. The pact came about like this. Buster Collier had, for years, been using a certain kind of liquid make-up which was made by a man in New York from a secret formula. For a long time he had been trying to persuade Keaton, who used no make-up at all, to try it. A few months the manufacturer and the formula lost. So Collier the remainder of a bottle to a chemist and had it analyzed. Then he had a local cosmetician make up twelve bottles of it for himself, and twelve for his friend. "That will last us a long time," remarked Buster C. to Buster K. as they gazed at the twenty-four bottles, all in a row. "Wonder what we'll be doing, you and I. when the bottles are all empty?" returned Buster K. v "I'll bet you we both finish in pictures about the time those bottles are gone," said Collier. They looked at each other. "Let's make it a bargain," suggested Keaton, and they shook hands on it. Buster Collier told me about it, sitting on a set at the F. B. O. studio. He was wearing a week-old mustache, and a blue-satin blouse for the hero of a Russian opus. A vaulted corridor, a balcony, a large, ferocious sentry, with a rifle and bayonet, and Marian Nixon garbed as a peasant maiden, with a shawl over her head and a dagger tucked in her bodice, told me pretty well what the story would be. Buster was tired. Through a fluke and the premature signing of a contract, he had just lost a role which he wanted very much to do. He viewed his Russian trappings with distaste. "How many pictures will the bottles make?" I wanted to know. "About three to a bottle quite that many for Buster. ago died was took The monotony of acting, of playing the same scenes over and over, wearies Buster Collier. for me," he replied. "Not He works more slowly, you see. I make from fourteen to seventeen pictures a year. Roughly — two years and a half. "We've both had quite enough. You get so tired, you know. We both began in this business when we were youngsters. "There is nothing new for me to do. I've played every kind of scene a thousand times. I've made the same gestures. I've fought and struggled and died and cried and kissed, over and over and over. The same thing — in a different uniform— with or without a mustache — in a different setting — with a different girl. But the same scenes — ahvays! And I've even repeated a few times on the uniforms and settings. I've about used up all the kinds there are. "Buster, of course, doesn't make so many pictures, so he doesn't have quite so much of that kind of repetition. But he plays the same frozen-faced, wistful, little man over and over. Some day he is going to smile in a picture — and give the world a shock ! Fie has a wonderful smile, but he's saving it." Buster Collier is a good-looking chap. Dark, rather small, with a nice smile, and a dimple which just saves him from always playing heavies, and casts him now and then as a juvenile, who gets the girl in the final clinch. When he talks there is the merest suspicion of a lisp. "I am not a great actor," he assured me. "I am not star material. Chaps like Charles Rogers — big, handsome guys — are the ones to be starred. Women go crazy over them. No flapper ever had my name tattooed on her shoulder ! I've never had that kind of a following at all. I've made money just by plugging along in mediocre roles. I've never had but one big picture and it wasn't successful. [Continued on page 112]