Buster Keaton Statue
(statue)Frauenthal Center of the Performing Arts
425 W Western Ave
Muskegon, MI 49440
Website: Buster Keaton Statue
Emmanuil Snitkovsky's life-size bronze honors silent film star Buster Keaton. Originally on display in the Hollywood Entertainment Museum, it was moved to Muskegon when the museum closed.
425 W Western Ave Muskegon MI
Yes, Buster Keaton does have a connection to Muskegon, Michigan...
Around 1903, vaudevillian performers began to summer in the Muskegon area. The Keaton family, like many others, discovered Muskegon during appearances at the theater in 1902 and 1905. They became enthralled with the area, and beginning in 1907, they returned annually.
In 1908 Buster?s father, with two show biz associates, purchased the Muskegon area property in Bluffton, on the shores of Lake Michigan and Muskegon Lake, and developed a lakefront community for vacationing vaudevillians (the Actors' Colony). They sold parcels of land to some 200 fellow performers who built summer cottages and retreated to the beach area for relaxation and to work on their acts for the following season.
The cottage the Keatons built for themselves was the only home they?d known as a family, and years later Buster wrote, ?The best summers of my life were spent in the cottage Pop had built on Lake Muskegon in 1908.?
The bronze sculpture honoring Keaton stands in front of the Frauenthal Theater in downtown Muskegon.