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Sound of Silent Star -- Sound of Silents

Buster Keaton, silent film star, circa 1923
Buster Keaton, silent film star, circa 1923

Buster Keaton at home, circa 1962.
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Buster Keaton at home, circa 1962.

Part 1: Buster Keaton and the Ukelele

Quest for Sound Curator Jay Allison and Lost and Found Sound brings us Buster Keaton. Listener Bob Borgen has a tape of the silent film star at a party in 1962. Some friends gave him a ukelele and recorded his songs, stories and memories of Vaudeville.

Part 2: Sound from the Silent Film Era

Film critic Bob Mondello reviews the days of silent films and how the introduction of sound forever changed the beauty and benefit of silence.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Bob Mondello, who jokes that he was a jinx at the beginning of his critical career — hired to write for every small paper that ever folded in Washington, just as it was about to collapse — saw that jinx broken in 1984 when he came to NPR.