My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [51]
“Stan was never really applauded for his art because he took too much care to hide it, to conceal the hours of hard creative work that went into his movies. He didn’t want you to see that—he just wanted you to laugh, and you did!
“You could never get him to pontificate about comedy. He was asked thousands of times, all through his life, to analyze comedy. ‘What’s funny?’ he was always asked, and he always said: ‘How do I know? Can you analyze it? Can anybody? All I know is just how to make people laugh.’
“That’s all he knew!”
I ended with the recitation of a poem of unknown authorship that I had come across years earlier, “The Clown’s Prayer.”
God bless all clowns.
Who star in the world with laughter,
Who ring the rafters with flying jest,
Who make the world spin merry on its way.
God bless all the clowns.
So poor the world would be,
Lacking their piquant touch, hilarity.
The belly laughs, the ringing lovely.
God bless all the clowns.
Give them a long, good life,
Make bright their way—they’re a race apart.
Alchemists most, who turn their hearts’ pain,
Into a dazzling jest to lift the heart.
God bless all clowns.
I met Buster Keaton the same way I did Stan. I found out that someone I knew had his phone number and one afternoon I called him up. His wife, Eleanor, answered and put Buster on. After a short talk, he invited me to lunch. He lived in Woodland Hills, about ten minutes from my Encino house. He had a beautiful piece of property, maybe a quarter of an acre.
While Stan was very much an English gentleman, he was still gregarious and friendly. Buster was the opposite. He was extremely shy. After meeting him, in fact, I was surprised I had been invited out. His wife greeted me at the door and chatted with me in the kitchen. After a while, I saw Buster through the kitchen window. He was walking around outside. His wife smiled the patient smile of a woman who knew him well.
“He’ll come to you,” she said. “Give him time.”
Sure enough, he finally entered the kitchen. He had on his flat hat and was playing a ukulele, singing, “Oh Mr. Moon, Carolina moon, won’t you shine on me.” He was more comfortable in character, as the showman, or talking about his work. I asked if he remembered the bit where he put one foot on the table and then the other and we saw him suspended in midair before he fell. Not only did he remember, at age sixty-eight, he did it for me, then and there.
Way out in the back he had a little picnic table where we had lunch. A miniature railroad ran through the yard. Buster made hot dogs for us and ran them out to the table on the train. He got a kick out of that. On another one of my visits, we were in the kitchen when his dog, a giant St. Bernard named Elmer, sauntered through the back door, looked up at Buster, then at me, and let out a loud and clear meow.
“How the heck did you get him to do that?” I asked.
Buster opened the dog’s mouth and pulled out a newborn kitten. It was soaking wet from the dog’s slobber.
“It’s in his mouth like a wad of chewing tobacco,” I said.
Buster laughed.
“He found the kitty and has been taking care of it,” he said. “He carries it around like that.”
I also learned Buster was something of a pool shark. He had a specially built table and custom-made pool cues. We played a couple games and he massacred me. Given that the cues had his name on them, who would have expected any other result? In fact, he ended up leaving those cues to me after his death in 1966.
I gave the eulogy at his funeral as well. All the same people from Stan’s funeral the previous year were present again, everyone except Buster.
My connection to the older stars extended to Harold Lloyd, who wanted me to play him in a movie, and a number of actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age whom I met on visits to the Motion Picture Home, where characters like Babe London treated me to stories about Charlie Chaplin, W. C.