“I’ve simply been brought up being knocked down. My pop’s idea of comedy was to kick me clean across the stage or throw me through every backdrop on the Keith circuit, and I’ll bet I’ve taken more punishment in the way of being used as a human mop than Bat Nelson, Ad Wolgast, and Jim Jeffries combined. The funny part is that I liked it. By the time I got up to around seven or eight years old, we were called ‘The Roughest Act That Was Ever in the History of the Stage.’
It was Sarah Bernhardt who said, ‘How can you do this to this poor boy?’ when they were throwing me around madly. Everybody said that. We used to get arrested every other week—that is, the old man would get arrested. Once they took me to the mayor of New York City, into his private office, with the city physicians & they stripped me to examine me for broken bones and bruises. Finding none, the mayor gave me permission to work. The next time it happened, the following year, they sent me to Albany, to the governor of the state. I got so used to it that I took my clothes off every time I saw an officer.”
-Buster Keaton, 1921
