Buster Keaton Trivia
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59 free Buster Keaton trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Buster Keaton is the silent comedian film critics keep rediscovering, and this quiz covers why. It begins with the child hurled around vaudeville stages in The Three Keatons, the Houdini nickname story that was probably invented, and the 1917 afternoon when Fatty Arbuckle hired him on the spot. Then the great decade: the kit house of One Week, the one-man audience of The Playhouse, the police parade in Cops, the Hatfield-McCoy feud of Our Hospitality, the projectionist who walks into the screen in Sherlock Jr., the seven-million-dollar bride hunt of Seven Chances, and the locomotive that really did fall through a burning bridge in The General. From there it follows the falling facade of Steamboat Bill Jr., the MGM contract Chaplin and Lloyd warned him against, the Jimmy Durante talkies, the firing by Louis B. Mayer, the comeback in two-reelers and television, the cameo among Sunset Boulevard's 'waxworks', the only real scene he shared with Chaplin, Samuel Beckett's Film, the handcar ride across Canada and the pork pie hats he cut down from Stetsons. The easy tier suits anyone who has seen the window gag; the expert end asks about the 40th Infantry Division, William Goodrich and Muskegon. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Keaton and his films, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Buster Keaton's stoic, unsmiling screen expression earned him what nickname?
The Great Stone Face
The Great Stone Face began as stagecraft: as a child in his family's act he found, in his own words, that 'the more serious I turned, the bigger laugh I got', so he stopped smiling.
Q 02What were Buster Keaton's real first and middle names?
Joseph Frank
Joseph Frank carried a name from each side: his father was Joseph, or Joe, and his mother's father was Frank Cutler, whose travelling show Joe had joined.
Q 03Keaton was born in 1895 in Piqua, a small town in which US state?
Kansas
Kansas was an accident of the tour: his vaudeville parents were only passing through Piqua when his mother went into labour.
Q 04By Keaton's own story, which famous performer nicknamed him 'Buster' after he tumbled down stairs unhurt?
Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini worked travelling medicine shows with Keaton's father, and the nickname is said to be his word for the fall; a rival account gives the line to another actor.
Q 05As a toddler, Keaton joined his family's knockabout vaudeville act, billed as what?
The Three Keatons
The Three Keatons looked so violent that his father, to see off child-welfare investigators, had him inspected for bruises by New York's mayor; Joe threw him by a suitcase handle sewn to his jacket.
Q 06Which comedian starred in 'The Butcher Boy', the 1917 short that gave Keaton his film debut?
Roscoe Arbuckle
Roscoe Arbuckle. To join 'Fatty' in the movies for $40 a week, Keaton walked away from a $250-a-week part in a Broadway revue; by his account, his agent called it a wise move.
Q 07During World War I, Keaton left the movies to serve with the US Army in which country?
France
France. Serving there with the 40th Infantry Division, he caught an ear infection that left him so deaf he was nearly shot by a sentry whose challenge he could not hear.
Q 08Which short about newlyweds assembling a sabotaged kit house was Keaton's first independent release?
One Week
One Week. Keaton had already finished another short, 'The High Sign', but thought it too weak to launch with and held it back until the following year.
Q 09In the opening sequence of the 1921 short 'The Playhouse', Keaton famously does what?
Plays every role, including the audience
Keaton plays every role, including the audience, through multiple exposures. He was kidding producer Thomas Ince, who gave himself every screen credit he could on his own films.
Q 10In the 1922 short 'Cops', a whole police force chases Keaton after he accidentally does what?
Tossing a bomb into a parade
Tossing a bomb into a parade. He has blundered his horse-drawn wagon into the middle of a police parade when the bomb lands on him, and he throws it away without a thought.
Q 11Which Keaton feature turns a Hatfield-and-McCoy-style family feud into comedy?
Our Hospitality
Our Hospitality. The title is the joke: Southern manners forbid shooting a guest, so Keaton's Willie McKay is safe only while he stays inside his enemies' house.
Q 12Keaton broke his neck in a water-tower stunt for which silent feature, and only found out years later?
Sherlock Jr.
Sherlock Jr. The torrent from the tower's spout slammed his neck across a steel rail; he carried on filming, and a doctor spotted the healed fracture years afterward.
Q 13Keaton initially hired his disgraced friend and mentor to co-direct 'Sherlock Jr.' under which pseudonym?
William Goodrich
Q 21In 1989 'The General' was one of the first 25 films added to what?
National Film Registry
National Film Registry. Congress created it in 1988 amid the row over colorizing black-and-white classics, and the law made altered versions of listed films carry a notice saying so.
Q 22How does Keaton survive when a house front collapses on him in 'Steamboat Bill, Jr.'?
An open window falls around him
An open window falls around him. Keaton used a real two-ton wall with no trickery, and standing a couple of inches off his mark would have meant being crushed.
Q 23What natural disaster strikes the river town in the climax of 'Steamboat Bill, Jr.'?
A cyclone
William Goodrich. By Keaton's account he first proposed the punning 'Will B. Good', which was judged too facetious; the comeback went badly, and Keaton finished the film himself.
Q 14How does Keaton's rich idler Rollo end up on the drifting liner in 'The Navigator'?
He boarded the wrong ship
He boarded the wrong ship. Keaton built the film around a real liner headed for scrap, the Buford, the 'Soviet Ark' that had deported hundreds of radicals to Russia in 1919.
Q 15Which Keaton feature ends with a mob of would-be brides chasing him through the streets?
Seven Chances
Seven Chances. The avalanche of boulders that follows the brides was an afterthought, added only after a preview screening, and it became one of Keaton's most celebrated chases.
Q 16Keaton's 1926 masterpiece 'The General' was inspired by which real Civil War episode?
The Great Locomotive Chase
The Great Locomotive Chase. The real raiders were Union men stealing a Confederate train; doubting audiences would accept Southern villains, Keaton told it from the side of the railwayman chasing them.
Q 17Though set in Georgia, 'The General' was mostly shot around Cottage Grove in which western state?
Oregon
Oregon. The wreck from the film's burning-bridge collapse was simply left lying in the Row River there until the scrap drives of World War II.
Q 18In 'The General', why is Keaton's hero rejected when he tries to enlist?
His job is too valuable
His job is too valuable: the recruiters decide he is worth more to the South at his work than in the ranks. Nobody tells him so, and his sweetheart shuns him as a coward until he is in uniform.
Q 19In 'Go West' (1925), Keaton's lonely drifter Friendless finds his one true companion in what?
A cow
A cow. Her name is Brown Eyes, and by Keaton's own account he trained her himself until she followed him like a pet; he called her his leading lady.
Q 20Which director called 'The General' the greatest comedy, and perhaps film, ever made?
Orson Welles
Orson Welles. On release the film had been a financial disappointment; only later generations came to rank it as Keaton's crowning achievement.
A cyclone. The climax was built as a flood until real floods on the Mississippi made that look tasteless; producer Joseph Schenck ordered it out, and Keaton rebuilt his sets for wind.
Q 24'Steamboat Bill, Jr.' was Keaton's last picture for which distributor before he moved to MGM?
United Artists
It was not a box-office success, which helped push him into the studio deal he later called his worst mistake.
Q 25Which 1928 film was Keaton's first under contract to MGM?
The Cameraman
The Cameraman. On location in New York, Keaton talked production chief Irving Thalberg into letting him throw away the studio's script, and the film was a hit.
Q 26Which two rival comedians warned Keaton against giving up his independence for MGM?
Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd
Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. Both guarded their own studios, and by Keaton's account Chaplin told him 'They'll ruin you helping you'; he signed anyway, out of loyalty to his producer.
Q 27Which Hollywood studio chief signed the 1933 letter that fired Keaton?
Louis B. Mayer
Louis B. Mayer. In Keaton's telling, the last straw was skipping a Saturday show for studio visitors to be a college team's mascot; the dismissal came in a letter over the boss's signature.
Q 28At MGM in the early 1930s Keaton was teamed in three talkies with which loud, rambunctious comic?
Jimmy Durante
Jimmy Durante. The three films made money, but Keaton thought the pairing a mismatch: 'we just did not belong in the same movies', he wrote, adding that he had heard rumours the studio meant to build Durante up at his expense.
Q 29What was the name of Keaton's first wife, a sister of film stars Norma and Constance?
Natalie Talmadge
Natalie Talmadge. After she divorced Keaton in 1932, she had their two sons' surname changed, so the boys grew up as Talmadges rather than Keatons.
Q 30What is the Beverly Hills mansion Keaton had built for $300,000 in 1926 commonly called?
The Italian Villa
The Italian Villa. Keaton had first built a smaller house as a surprise for his wife, who said it had no room for the staff, so he sold it to studio executive Eddie Mannix and built this one.