This 25-minute sales film starring Buster Keaton was finally rediscovered in 2000. In his later years, when Keaton was touring the country in plays such as Merton of the Movies and Once Upon a Mattress, his agent would call cities ahead of his appearances and offer his acting services. In late 1961, a Phoenix company, John F. Long Homes, took him up on the offer. They hired Keaton to perform in a film featuring a neighborhood of brand new tract homes being built in the suburb of Maryvale. Keaton (who performs silently throughout) obviously wrote all his own gags for the short and pretty much dominates the proceedings -- idealistic views of early 1960s suburban living notwithstanding. He arrives in a dusty Model T and pratfalls through three new home models. Then, he creates havoc in the community, falling into someone's pool with a shopping cart's worth of purchases from S. S. Kresge's, knocking over an unassuming waiter with a bowling ball at the local lanes and trying unsuccessfully to recork a champagne bottle at the neighborhood's ritzy restaurant. It's bizarre seeing Buster Keaton juxtaposed with this wholesome, post-World War II idea of middle-class living, and it's nice to note that the absurdity is neither lost on Keaton, nor on those who made this little curio.
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