“Life in Sometown, U.S.A.”
I’ve become quite the Buster Keaton enthusiast who, along with Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, is considered one of the pioneers of silent cinema. He was an artist who dedicated his life to his craft, renowned for his death-defying stunts performed in the name of comedy.
Last year, I realized I was close to watching every film Keaton directed, so I set out to complete his filmography. Almost all of his work as a director was done before 1929, at which point he quit for good after a falling out with MGM and a number of personal issues.
I say almost all because Keaton directed three additional shorts toward the end of the ‘30s. Two are available online, but one is not: “Life in Sometown, U.S.A.”
This late 1938 short showed up on platforms like Letterboxd. All of the Letterboxd reviews (three in total) had a random commenter asking the reviewer where they saw the movie. One reply was, “TCM a decade ago.”
So I contacted Turner Classic Movies. They pointed me to a third-party store. I emailed the store, but they didn’t have it. Dead end. TCM graciously forwarded my query to a “movie guru,” offering some hope. I haven’t heard from them since.
Online searches reveal plenty of mentions on movie tracking sites, old magazines, and evidence of it being used in education. Yet, there’s no sign of it online or evidence of it ever being online.
I also went to MGM’s site, thinking I could contact them directly, but there’s no email listed. What I did notice, however, was something I’d forgotten: Amazon bought MGM, so Amazon presumably owns this short now.
All that said, my mission to complete Keaton’s directing filmography on Letterboxd is technically complete because the film was removed from their database, whether by Letterboxd themselves or the maintainers of TMDb. A bittersweet end to a fun journey.
Fun fact: The events of Sherlock Jr. took place exactly one century ago today! It’s one of my all-time favorite films and available to watch on YouTube now. Check it out!
