Canadave
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,290
- Location
- Toronto, ON, Canada
Wow, this is a cool revelation from busterkeaton.com;
Buster Keaton, interviewed in 1964 at the Movieland Wax Museum by Henry Gris
"In those days,almost every comedian you saw affected a derby hat. Even Harold Lloyd, when he was playing his Lonesome Luke character in 1917, wore a derby - which he later deserted for his signature straw hat and horn-rimmed glasses. So I decided to get a hat that was my very own. I knew straw was too fragile for my kind of antics, so I chose felt and designed this particular porkpie."
Straw was fine for vaudeville song-and-dance but not the movies.
"I took a good Stetson and cut it down, then I stiffened the brim with sugar water."
"My recipe calls for three heaping teaspoons of granulated sugar in a teacup of warm water."
"You wet the top and bottom of the brim, and then smooth it out on a clean, hard surface and let it dry to a good stiffness."
"I did the earliest ones myself, always - and then I trained my wife. Now she does them for me."
"In the old days, the Stetsons cost me $3.50 each- I pay $12.50 for the same one now. It gets to be expensive - as I've used up thousands of them through the years.
"In the first place, I used to do more water stuff - stunts where I got dumped into water - than most comedians. And felt disintegrates if you get it wet enough! So the mortality was high. I was lucky if I only used half a dozen in each picture. Then people want them for souvenirs - they snatch them off my head, so I have to have extras on hand. Then, when I started making feature pictures, they showed them at the biggest city theaters, and always had all the usherettes wearing my porkpie hats - somehow I never had one returned to me!"
At any rate, thanks to Buster Keaton himself, his waxen reproduction at Movieland now wears a genuine Buster Keaton porkpie.
Editor's note: Eleanor Keaton tells us that when she made Buster's porkpie hats, she used gray fedoras.
--------------------
David
Buster Keaton, interviewed in 1964 at the Movieland Wax Museum by Henry Gris
"In those days,almost every comedian you saw affected a derby hat. Even Harold Lloyd, when he was playing his Lonesome Luke character in 1917, wore a derby - which he later deserted for his signature straw hat and horn-rimmed glasses. So I decided to get a hat that was my very own. I knew straw was too fragile for my kind of antics, so I chose felt and designed this particular porkpie."
Straw was fine for vaudeville song-and-dance but not the movies.
"I took a good Stetson and cut it down, then I stiffened the brim with sugar water."
"My recipe calls for three heaping teaspoons of granulated sugar in a teacup of warm water."
"You wet the top and bottom of the brim, and then smooth it out on a clean, hard surface and let it dry to a good stiffness."
"I did the earliest ones myself, always - and then I trained my wife. Now she does them for me."
"In the old days, the Stetsons cost me $3.50 each- I pay $12.50 for the same one now. It gets to be expensive - as I've used up thousands of them through the years.
"In the first place, I used to do more water stuff - stunts where I got dumped into water - than most comedians. And felt disintegrates if you get it wet enough! So the mortality was high. I was lucky if I only used half a dozen in each picture. Then people want them for souvenirs - they snatch them off my head, so I have to have extras on hand. Then, when I started making feature pictures, they showed them at the biggest city theaters, and always had all the usherettes wearing my porkpie hats - somehow I never had one returned to me!"
At any rate, thanks to Buster Keaton himself, his waxen reproduction at Movieland now wears a genuine Buster Keaton porkpie.
Editor's note: Eleanor Keaton tells us that when she made Buster's porkpie hats, she used gray fedoras.
--------------------
David
