The great tragedy concerning one of the world's funniest men, our Star of the Month for October, Buster Keaton, comes from the fact that so many of Buster's 70 years were spent in relative obscurity. The brilliant work he'd done earlier in his career was ignored and his billing in movies (when he could land a part) drastically downsized compared to his glory days in the silent screen era.

Once considered among the most valuable jewels in the crown of the MGM studios--his name as important on a film as anyone in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer hierarchy including Garbo, Shearer, Chaney, Crawford--just one decade later, he returned to that studio to anonymously work behind the scenes, adding gags to Red Skelton vehicles, only occasionally landing an on-camera part.

In 1945, in a B-budgeter made at the studio where he once reigned supreme, Keaton had a mere bit as a bellboy in the film She Went to the Races and received no screen credit for it. The rare times when he did land a good, substantial part in a major movie, as he did in MGM's 1949 In the Good Old Summertime with Judy Garland and Van Johnson, you won't find Keaton's name in any of the ads for the film. At that time, unfortunately, his name meant nothing to the movie's box-office future and was considered, perhaps, a liability. MGM theorized that a moniker so associated with films from the past might be harmful in selling something new.

Nor did Keaton receive any billing of note in the one genuinely classic film he made in the 1950's, Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd, in which Keaton had but a brief cameo, playing a relic from Hollywood's silent screen days. But at least those two films were classy, big-studio efforts. Later his career dwindled downward to working at minor studios in movies with titles such as Pajama Party (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)--a far cry from the brilliant films Keaton made as a producer-director-star in his heyday, such as 1924's Sherlock Jr. and The Navigator, 1925's Go West, 1927's The General and College and 1928's Steamboat Bill, Jr. and The Cameraman, all of which, we're happy to say, are among the 51 features and shorts starring Buster that we'll be bringing you this month (almost half of them TCM premieres).

We'll also be including some extra surprises. And amongst the treasures, there are also two features of particular importance in Keaton's complicated, curious career: 1952's Limelight (airing October 9), because it is the only film in which Keaton and Charlie Chaplin appeared together. In the 1920s both men had been the absolute kings of screen comedy but now, almost 30 years later, Chaplin still held his iconic status while Keaton was the forgotten man. But the two are dazzling as they work in tandem.

And on October 30, check out 1966's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It's the last movie the man born Joseph Frank Keaton VI ever made, and considering the teeter-tottering his career had been undergoing for over 35 years, it leaves you with a warm feeling that at least his fabled career finished not with a whimper, but with a big-time, big-budget flourish--the kind that Keatonites of all ages can point to with both gratitude and a great sense of relief.

by Robert Osborne