The Railrodder

I had just posted a Mystery Guest segment from What's My Line? with Buster Keaton.  But I had a nagging thought that I had posted it already a long while back...and so I had. 

Within the write-up for the almost re-posting, I wrote that what's remarkable in the appearance is when the blindfolded-panelist question gets asked if the guest's film career goes back as far as silent movies and later is asked if he has a current movie -- and the answer to both is "Yes."Keaton's first film credit was in 1917, and this broadcast was 1966.  I have to assume that his "YES!" answer for any current film must have been for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which was released that year.  That said, the previous year, I noted, he was in a remarkable eight different productions.  That includes the wonderful silent short, The Railrodder, where he travels across Canada on a rail cart.  From the National Film Board of Canda, the film won an award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1965.

Now, I may have already posted that What's My Line? video with Buster Keaton, but I don't think I've ever had The Railrodder.  It's a little long, but it's nonetheless a joy, watching Buster Keaton do at the end of his life what he always did so wonderfully from the very first, half a century before.  This is no easy undertaking, as you'll see.  (Almost as good as the short itself is a documentary on the making of it, Buster Keaton Rides Again, where you see Keaton working hard to come up with comic gags, some reasonably dangerous for anyone, let alone a 69 year old man not in the best of shape.)  Buster Keaton passed away the next year, all the more reason to treasure that this film got made.