1895-1966

By the time Buster Keaton became a professional performer and vaudeville star at the age of five, he had already lived a life as extraordinary and fanciful as his films would later become.

When only a few months old, he nearly suffocated after being accidentally shut in a costume trunk off stage while his mother and father performed, an incident that encouraged his parents to begin leaving him at whatever boarding house they were residing in. According to family legend, the Keatons then escaped from a series of fires and train wrecks that would have destroyed a less charmed family.

Source : The Buster Keaton International Society
http://www.busterkeaton.com/