Buster Keaton

From 1920 to 1928 Keaton made his silent shorts and features for producer Joseph Schenck; Turner Classic Movies' Susan Doll counts 19 shorts and several features and says he had complete creative control over them. Roger Fristoe lists his standing team as co-director Eddie Cline, technical director Fred Gabourie and head cameraman Elgin Lessley.

The General was shot in the summer of 1926 around Cottage Grove, Oregon, after a plan to use the original locomotive in Chattanooga fell through, according to the Oregon Encyclopedia. The company built a set representing Marietta, Georgia, in 1862 and a 215-foot trestle over the Row River for the train-wreck scene.

James Neibaur writes that television was Keaton's most effective and lucrative outlet for performing from 1949 into the 1960s: a live comedy show in 1949, a filmed series in 1950-51, and later guest appearances and commercials.

On 23 July 1926, at Culp Creek on the Row River in Oregon, Keaton filmed a locomotive collapsing through a trestle built for The General. Julian Smith writes in Alta Journal that six cameras were placed, that Keaton oversaw several trial runs, and that dynamite charges were fixed to partly sawn timbers so the bridge would fall on cue; the Oregon Encyclopedia gives the scene's cost as an estimated $42,000.

Staging the wreck with a real locomotive rather than a miniature, on a scene Smith says could be shot only once, is consistent with this profile's high risk-tolerance score; it is scored as dual-edged because Smith also reports Schenck's anger over the film's rising cost, and the preparation he describes points to a calculated rather than careless risk. Risk Tolerance

For his first MGM film, The Cameraman (1928), the studio had a script. Film historian James Steffen writes that Keaton convinced producer Irving Thalberg to let him depart from it, and James Neibaur that he talked Thalberg into letting him revise the script and film with director Edward Sedgwick undisturbed; Dana Stevens says the Yankee Stadium baseball pantomime and a crowded dressing-room scene were improvised. Steffen's account draws partly on Keaton's own 1960 memoir.

Seeking room to improvise inside a scripted studio production illustrates this profile's ambiguity-tolerance score, though Steffen and Neibaur both report that his later MGM films allowed him less room, so this is one episode rather than the whole picture. Ambiguity Tolerance

Dana Stevens writes that on Labor Day weekend 1927, the day before the housefront scene of Steamboat Bill, Jr. was filmed, Joseph Schenck told Keaton that his production company would be shut down. Keaton then signed with MGM at Schenck's urging; James Steffen says Keaton later called the move the worst mistake of his career in his 1960 memoir.

His later work as a gag contributor, television performer and commercial actor is consistent with this profile's adaptability score, although Neibaur stresses that financial need shaped some of it, so it should not be read as a simple choice of new media. Adaptability