Our final Sunday Silent for the season – Sunday Silents will return in September!
Classic laughs and thrills in one of Buster Keaton’s greatest silent comedies! Young ‘Bill Junior’ is a sorry disappointment to his gruff old dad, Steamboat Bill, but has a chance to prove himself when a cyclone hits their Mississippi town, and a falling house front nearly hits him!
In a small town on the banks of the Mississippi, old ‘Steamboat Bill’ Canfield is captain of a dilapidated old paddle steamer which still sails, just about, up and down the river. When one day news arrives that ‘Bill Junior’ (Buster Keaton) is returning home after years away, he hopes for a strapping lad to help him with business.
Unfortunately, Junior turns out to be a college-educated city-slicker with no sea legs. Worse still is that his sweetheart Kitty is the daughter of Canfield’s deadly rival – JJ King, the owner of a successful luxury riverboat which threatens to finish off their old steamer once and for all. Poor Junior tries and fails to win his father’s approval (it takes a cyclone for the sensitive urbanite to finally get a chance to prove his mettle) but he has his father’s determination, and is determined above all to get his gal.
A gloriously funny afternoon featuring some of Keaton’s finest slapstick and stunts, including as Bill Jr choosing a hat (definitely not the pork pie), whizzing through town in a hospital bed and narrowly avoiding being hit by a falling house front, a stunt revered and since replicated by artists and performers from Steve McQueen (‘Deadpan’, 1997) to Paddington (‘Paddington in Peru’, 2024).
Accompanied live on piano by the Palace’s own incredible Lillian Henley!
