Directed by
Buster Keaton and John Blystone, 1923
Starring
Buster Keaton and Natalie Talmadge
New chamber ensemble score by
Andrew Earle Simpson (2023)
Joseph Canfield
Joe Roberts
His sons
Ralph Bushman, Craig Ward
The Parson
Monte Collins
The Engineer
Joe Keaton
The Aunt
Kitty Bradbury
The Girl
Natalie Talmadge
Willie McKay 1 year old
Buster Keaton, Jr.
Willie McKay 21 years old
Buster Keaton
This is a historical comedy, set between 1810-1832 in the United States. As an antebellum piece it offers the opportunity for Keaton to deploy historical artifacts throughout, particularly early locomotives, with which he was particularly fascinated. The locomotive in this picture is modeled on the Stephenson Rocket, one of the earliest wood-fired steam engines. Those who know Keaton’s masterpiece THE GENERAL will recognize in OUR HOSPITALITY many of the same jokes and devices which show up three years later in that film.
The subject of OUR HOSPITALITY is a generational family feud and Keaton’s unwitting entry into the middle of it. This is a warning that gun violence takes place in the film, and many guns get fired. But Keaton is able to take this unfunny situation and somehow turn it into comedy, in part by showing the ridiculousness at play.
It is also, in its casting, a true family film. Keaton’s real-life wife Natalie Talmadge plays the Girl; their son, Buster Keaton, Jr., is the baby in the film’s prologue; and Keaton’s father, Joe Keaton, is the engineer of the train. Joe and Myra Keaton, Buster’s mother, were vaudeville performers, and their son was brought into their act at a very young age. Keaton, then, was trained in theatrical performance and learned to take falls and do roughhouse comedy with the minimum possible injury. This skill pays off when he enters moving pictures, because he performs his own stunts, without a double. Remember that when you see Keaton engaging in all sorts of magnificent stunts.
Much of the film was shot on location in Truckee, California, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It is also believed that some scenes were shot on set in Los Angeles.
This new score was premiered in December 2023, commissioned by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, celebrating the reopening of the museum’s Warner Bros. Theatre and the 100th anniversary of OUR HOSPITALITY. It is an enormous pleasure to present this score again, at Atlas INTERSECTIONS.
Just Outside Bluegrass, for chamber ensemble, was premiered in December 2023 at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Incorporating bluegrass styles within a broader contemporary palette, the piece alternates ensemble choruses with solos from each instrument in the ensemble (violin, cello, banjo, piano, and percussion).
Our Hospitality is a score created as a responsive partner to Keaton’s 1923 film. Because the film is a 19th-century period piece, the score draws on antebellum American styles, including them within a broader contemporary classical palette. The opening theme recurs at appropriate places throughout the film, changing character as the story develops. A short pulsing rhythm (drawn from the first notes of the opening theme) serves to evoke the feud and its danger.
Anna Luebke
violin
Emily Doveala
cello
Mark Sylvester
guitar/banjo
Liz Hill
piano
Chris DeChiara
percussion
Andrew Earle Simpson
conductor
Phil Carluzzo
Stage Manager
Patrick Steele
Cohen Film Collection
Douglas Yeuell, Executive Director
Atlas Performing Arts Center