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But Keaton still refused to cry for himself; he got married again—this time to a 21-year-old dancer—and welcomed the obscurity that enveloped him for nearly 15 years. Then, in 1949, television revived him in a Los Angeles comedy series that made him a national celebrity all over again. People who had forgotten his name suddenly hailed him as a genius; filmniks recalled that James Agee once wrote of Keaton's silent classics: "Barring only the best of Chaplin, they seem to me the most wonderful comedies ever made." Comedians mimicked his woebegone expression, his films were re-released and shown on TV, and in 1956 Hollywood slapped together a screen bio entitled The Buster Keaton Story, with Donald O'Connor in the title role.
The Bum Smiles. Buster began to pick up cameo roles in big movies—Hollywood Cavalcade, Limelight, Sunset Boulevard. And, pushing 70, he started a new career making TV commercials for Ford trucks, falling off chairs and tables just to amuse the technicians on the set. Even then he refused to allow a photograph of himself grinning. "I did smile once," he recalled recently, "in a fadeout where I was supposed to get the girl. We thought people would say, 'Oh, goody, Keaton smiled.' But do you know what the preview audience said? 'Look, the bum's laughing.' We had to cut it out." Which was the way Keaton always wanted it; he never doubted that the smiles would be waiting for him on the other side of the screen.
* Their only child, Actor William Hopper, plays Detective Paul Drake on the Perry Mason show.