ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. — Melissa Talmadge Cox knew Grandpa Buster had made a bunch of silent movies long before she was born, but it wasn’t until after Buster Keaton died and Cox was in college that she saw one.
“I was absolutely speechless when it ended,” Talmadge says of the movie, “Steamboat Bill Jr.,” that she watched at a silent film fest in the late ’60s. “Here was this person I had never known my grandfather to be.”
Similarly, Bobbie Shaw Chance was a 19-year-old actress when she appeared in “Pajama Party” with Keaton in 1964. He became like an uncle, she says, as they also teamed up for “Beach Blanket Bingo” and “How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.”
