Oh, if only these walls could talk. Actually, that would be pretty ironic, since these particular walls housed the operations of two of the most enduring stars of the silent film era, first, Charlie Chaplin, and then, Buster Keaton.
Here in Hollywood, between Lillian Way, Eleanor Avenue, Romaine Street, and Cahuenga Boulevard, the Little Tramp and the Great Stone Face each plied their comedic trade. This small acreage was a far cry from the plethora of stages and sets of a major film studio—even the Metro Pictures studio lot located just across Romaine was significantly larger. The layout here included a bungalow at Lillian and Eleanor, and—per historian John Bengtson’s research—a shooting stage that was originally open air and then enclosed, as well as dressing rooms, a film lab and editing room, and a barn. Other scenes were filmed nearby, in vacant lots.
Under the rubric of Lone Star Studio, Chaplin created a dozen of his famous shorts during 1916 and 1917. By 1920, the site was reborn as Buster Keaton Studio, with the renowned actor-writer-director working with the assistance of a production team previously affiliated with Keaton’s mentor, Fatty Arbuckle.
During the eight years Keaton was based here, the prolific auteur made 19 short films and 10 features, including Our Hospitality (1923), Sherlock Jr. (1924), and The General (1927). Pictured below is Keaton with the titular balloon from 1923’s The Balloonatic. That short begins with the protagonist encountering a skeleton, smoke, a dragon, and a trap door. Then, a live bull and a live bear. And ultimately concludes with a romantic canoe ride in the sky.
Keaton, born Joseph Frank Keaton IV to a vaudeville family, was many things: storyteller, special effects innovator, superstar performer, stoic stuntman, gag and pratfall king, and enduring cultural icon whose show business career spanned seven decades and whose reputation has only grown posthumously.
His studio, however, did not endure. The late ‘20s was the pivot point when silents begat talkies, and the technology required to make these modern films was expensive. By 1928, Buster Keaton Studio was kaput, and the iconoclastic legend went to work for an ill-fated five years as a piece of the MGM moviemaking machine.
By 1931, physical remnants of Buster Keaton Studio were gone. Today, on both sides of the street there are historical plaques and––on an external wall of the soundstage that occupies 1005 Lillian Way––a mural portrait of Keaton. Why, though, the seemingly competing markers? “In perfectly Keatonesque fashion,” the website Atlas Obscura wrote of the original homage, “the plaque was placed on the wrong corner.”