Trivia for
The Cameraman (1928) More at IMDbPro »

• On the studio's insistence, Keaton shot an ending with him smiling. It was previewed, and hated, so it was replaced with the ending the film now has.
  
  
• When Buster falls off of the bus, a billboard for The Actress (1928) appears in the background. The titles for both films were written by Joseph Farnham.
  
  
• The film was almost lost forever. The master copy of it used today was made using a print that was found in Paris, in 1968, and a master positive copy of nearly the entire film, found in 1991. In modern copies of the film, the quality of the image varies dramatically; the scenes with best quality were obtained from the material found in 1991.
  
  
• Selected for the 2005 National Film Registry.
  
  
• The Cameraman was used for many years by MGM as an example of a perfect comedy. They would get all their directors and producers to watch it and learn. Only two scenes were improvised on the spot by Keaton, one was the baseball scene, and the other is the piggy bank scene.
  
  
• The scene in which Buster Keaton runs up and down the stairs of his rooming house when he's expecting Marceline Day's phone call was shot with an elevator crane. Though the German film Der letzte Mann (1924) had used an elevator crane, "The Cameraman" was the first time one was used in a comedy. In 1960, Jerry Lewis used an elevator crane in The Errand Boy (1961), and some writers have falsely credited him with being the first comedian to use one.
  
  
• The 1991 baseball movie "Pastime" copied the scene from "The Cameraman" in which Buster Keaton's character enters an empty baseball stadium and pantomimes a game, playing all the positions.
  
  
• The famous "Dressing Room Scene" was an on-the-fly bit added by Buster Keaton, who snagged unit manager Edward Brophy from the crew because he looked the part. The two men crammed, unrehearsed, into the cubicle, and ad-libbed the whole gag in a single take.
  
  

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