Twenty year old Leahy was a beauty contest winner, the 1923 Wampus Baby Star (which was a thing), and was signed to a three year movie contract. She was fired from her first film for being terrible and overweight before appearing here with Buster. Negative reviews followed and thus ended her film career. She married a businessman but divorced him because he forced her to wear last season’s fashions. Life was tough for her. Distraught after her mom passed, she drowned her sorrows with Draino. She was 64.
But this is the beginning of Buster Keaton as we know him today. The first of a dozen films he had creative control before selling his soul to MGM. Three Ages was done in three eras so if it failed, he could release them as three separate shorts. Fortunately this did not happen and a star was born.
Perhaps not as inventive as his later work, Three Ages still contains comic bits that hold up today. His sundial wrist watch has been done many times since but likely not prior. It has tedious moments intermingled with genuine laugh out loud gags, plus a pretty fair stop motion dinosaur. AMRU 3.5.
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