Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895 into a family of vaudeville performers. He joined his parents, Joseph and Myra on-stage in a series of comedy acts titled, 'The Three Keatons', at the age of three. The sketches mainly constituted Buster getting thrown about the stage. It may have been at this point that he developed the dead-pan expression that earned hin the nickname, The Great Stone Face, for Buster who enjoyed the choreographed routines learned early that the more he laughed at his fathers antics, the less the audience would find them funny.