In a British television documentary about his career, his widow Eleanor told producers of Thames Television that Keaton was up out of bed and moving around, and even played cards with friends who came to visit at their house the day before he died.

In Mama's Boy, director Tim Hamilton's feature film debut, Keaton starred as the mother of a self-absorbed 29-year old ( played by Jon Heder ) whose world turns upside down when his widowed mother starts dating and considers booting him out of the house.

Hugh Laurie dropped out of the project in August 2012 and was quickly replaced by Michael Keaton in the same role Actress Abbie Cornish is currently in talks to play Murphy's wife.

Thelma Todd became highly regarded as a capable film comedian, and Roach loaned her out to other studios to play opposite Wheeler & Woolsey, Buster Keaton, Joe E. Brown, and the Marx Brothers.

** Curly ( voiced by Josh Keaton )-A hispanic lost boy with a cap shaped like a tiger's head with the face cut out.

He manhandles the smaller, more slender Keaton, at one point picking him up by the feet and dumping him out of his trousers.

DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson commented that " Other than a nice guest turn from Michael Keaton, ' Mom ' doesn ’ t do much to stand out from the crowd.

When Keaton tried to avoid a Ferrari waiting in line at a standstill on the race track, the Porsche went out of control, left the inside race track and careened onto the grass, hitting a barrier at an estimated speed of 100mph.

This elaborate trick-photography sequence turns out to be only a dream when Joe Roberts rouses Keaton from bed.

Keaton and Seely try to move it out the way of an oncoming train, which eventually passes on the neighboring track.

* The fall Keaton takes when he steps out of the bathroom and falls two stories down, is one of the few occasions he truly hurt himself making films.

Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of a possible four :" When I did a seminar at the Hawaii Film Festival several years ago, comparing the physical comedy of Chan and Buster Keaton, martial arts fans brought in their bootleg Hong Kong laser discs of this film and told me that I had to see the final 20-minute fight sequence.

Many silent filmmakers such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton used improvisation in the making of their films, developing their gags while filming and altering the plot to fit.

The two amicably parted ways after 10 days of filming and Daniels replaced Keaton in the role.

She attempted two unsuccessful series in a row: Mary, which featured David Letterman, Michael Keaton, Swoosie Kurtz and Dick Shawn in the supporting cast and lasted three episodes, which was re-tooled as The Mary Tyler Moore Hour, a backstage show within a show, with Mary portraying a TV star putting on a variety show.

When the film opened in June 1989, it was backed by the biggest marketing and merchandising campaign in film history at the time, and became one of the biggest box office hits of all time, grossing well over US $ 250 million in the US alone and $ 400 million worldwide ( numbers not adjusted for inflation ) and earning critical acclaim for the performances of both Keaton and Nicholson, as well as the film's production aspects, which won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction.

The result was Batman Returns which featured Michael Keaton returning as the Dark Knight, and a new triad of villains: Danny DeVito ( as the Penguin ), Michelle Pfeiffer ( as Catwoman ) and Christopher Walken as Max Shreck, an evil corporate tycoon and original character created for the film ( similar to Superman IIIs Ross Webster ).

Joe Keaton owned a traveling show with Harry Houdini called the " Mohawk Indian Medicine Company ", which performed on stage and sold patent medicine on the side.

According to a frequently-repeated story, which may be apocryphal, Keaton acquired the nickname " Buster " at about eighteen months of age.

In 1926, Keaton spent $ 300, 000 to build a home in Beverly Hills, which was later owned by James Mason and Cary Grant.

In 1933, he married his nurse, Mae Scriven, during an alcoholic binge about which he afterwards claimed to remember nothing ( Keaton himself later called that period an " alcoholic blackout ").

Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow, which won two Emmy Awards and was directed by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, is considered a much more accurate telling of Keaton ’ s story.

The " roll dance " the tramp character performs in the film is considered one of the most memorable scenes in film history, although Roscoe Arbuckle did something similar in the 1917 movie The Rough House which co-starred Buster Keaton.

“ It has even been suggested that the inspiration for Waiting for Godot might have come from a minor Keaton film called The Lovable Cheat in which Keaton plays a man who waits endlessly for the return of his partner-whose name interestingly enough was Godot .”

In 2010, he was the executive producer and star of The Other Guys, a buddy cop film, which also has an ensemble cast which consists of Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Michael Keaton, Steve Coogan, Ray Stevenson, Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson.

At the end of the film, Keaton dives into a swimming pool which has been emptied of water.

A review of the film for the San Francisco Examiner was one of many in which Keaton once again received comparison to Katharine Hepburn: " No longer relying on that stuttering uncertainty that seeped into all her characterizations of the 1970s, she has somehow become Katharine Hepburn with a deep maternal instinct, that is, she is a fine and intelligent actress who doesn't need to be tough and edgy in order to prove her feminism.

" In 1997, Keaton, along Hawn and Midler, was a recipient of the Women in Film Crystal Award, which honors " outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry ".

Keaton received her second Satellite Award nomination for her portrayal, on which Peter Travers of Rolling Stone commented, " Keaton, a sorceress at blending humor and heartbreak, honors the film with a grace that makes it stick in the memory.

In fall 2010, Keaton joined the production of the comedy Darling Companion by Lawrence Kasdan, which was released in 2012.

Also in 2011, Keaton began production on Justin Zackham's ensemble comedy The Big Wedding, in which she, along with Robert De Niro, will play a long-divorced couple who, for the sake of their adopted son's wedding and his very religious biological mother, pretend they're still married.

In 1997, Midler, along with her co-stars from The First Wives Club, Goldie Hawn, and Diane Keaton, was a recipient of the Women in Film Crystal Award, which honors " outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry ".

As a result, she appeared in a small role in The First Wives Club, a comedy starring Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler, before accepting the title role in the straight to video anime Armitage III: Poly Matrix which also starred Kiefer Sutherland.

O ' Connell served as executive producer on the film, which starred Katie Holmes and Michael Keaton.

In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert wrote, " Diane Keaton gives us a fresh and nicely edged New York intellectual.

Reunited with an old partner ( Keaton ), Calvero gives a triumphant comeback performance but immediately suffers a heart attack and dies in the wings while just a few feet away Terry, the second act on the bill, dances on stage.

Even though there was often no set release schedule, these series could be considered somewhat like a modern TV sitcom – lower in status than feature films but nevertheless very popular ( comedians such as Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton all ' graduated ' from shorts to features ).

Buster Keaton made his final film appearance in the role of Erronius.

In American film, the most prominent comic actors of the silent era were Charlie Chaplin ( although born in England, his success was principally in the U. S .), Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.

It was in these early years that Remi developed a love of cinema, particularly favouring Windsor McCay's pioneering animated film Gertie the Dinosaur and the films featuring Charlie Chaplin, Harry Langdon and Buster Keaton ; his later work in the comic strip medium would display an obvious influence from these early films in style and content.

* 2005: The Three Ages ( new soundtrack to the Buster Keaton film )

However, during his own silent film career, the nearest Keaton had appeared in a " police comedy " was The Goat ( 1921 ) and Cops ( 1922 ).

Starring Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, and featuring Michael Keaton as the obnoxious bio-exorcist Beetlejuice, the film grossed $ 80 million on a relatively low budget and won an Academy Award for Best Makeup.

* January 5 – Diane Keaton, American actress and film director

* October 4 – Buster Keaton, American actor and film director ( d. 1966 )

** Buster Keaton, American actor and film director ( b. 1895 )

Having grown up in Hollywood, the son of a studio production manager and grandson of a silent film director, Edwards had watched the films of the great silent clowns, including Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Laurel and Hardy.

Slapstick continues to maintain a presence in modern comedy that draws upon its lineage, running in film from Buster Keaton and Louis de Funès to Mel Brooks to the Jackass movies to the Farrelly Brothers, and in live performance from Weber & Fields to Jackie Gleason to Rowan Atkinson.

By the time he was 21, his father's alcoholism threatened the reputation of the family act, so Keaton and his mother, Myra, left for New York, where Buster Keaton's career swiftly moved from vaudeville to film.

" Mason found numerous cans of previously " lost " Keaton films in the house in the 1950s ; the films were quickly transferred by Raymond Rohauer to safety film before the original cellulose nitrate prints further deteriorated.

In 1955, Keaton was awarded The George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.

A 1957 film biography, The Buster Keaton Story, starred Donald O ' Connor as Keaton.

In 1994, caricaturist Al Hirschfeld penned a series of silent film stars for the United States Post Office, including Rudolph Valentino and Keaton.

Hirschfeld said that modern film stars were more difficult to depict, that silent film comedians such as Laurel and Hardy and Keaton " looked like their caricatures ".

Keaton said he was lucky if he used only six hats in making a film.

In 1987 Italian singer-songwriters Claudio Lolli and Francesco Guccini wrote a song, Keaton, about his work in Italy on the film Due Marines e un Generale

Based on Scott McPherson's screenplay adaptation of his own 1991 stage play of the same name, the film revolves around two sisters, played by Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton, who are reunited through tragedy after 17 years of estrangement.