Directed by Buster Keaton and Charles Reisner • 1928 • United States
Starring Buster Keaton, Ernest Torrence, Tom McGuire
STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. was Buster Keaton’s last independent silent comedy and also one of his finest. He stars as the sensitive son of a gruff riverboat captain (Ernest Torrence) who struggles to earn both his father’s respect and the love of beautiful Marion Byron. But the film is best remembered for the climactic cyclone sequence—a slapstick tour de force in which Keaton’s comedic stunts are performed amid the full-scale destruction of an entire town.
Up Next in Classic Hollywood
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The Palm Beach Story
Directed by Preston Sturges • 1942 • United States
Starring Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary AstorThis wild tale of wacky wedlock from Preston Sturges takes off like a rocket and never lets up. Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert play Tom and Gerry, a married New York couple on the skids, fin...
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Ball of Fire
Directed by Howard Hawks • 1941 • United States
Starring Gary Cooper, Barbara StanwyckBarbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper make sparks in this snappy screwball take on the Snow White tale. She’s a burlesque queen with a colorful vocabulary who needs to lay low for a while as the police close in on ...
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Detour
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer • 1945 • United States
Starring Tom Neal, Ann SavageFrom Poverty Row came a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir. As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist ...
