Our Hospitality was very much a Keaton family affair. With Busters wife playing
the heroine, his son playing Buster as a baby, and his father as the locomotive
engineer. 'Big' Joe Roberts, who Keaton considered 'more of a father than his own',
played Canfield Sr.. A friend from vaudeville days, he had been with Buster since
'One Week' (1920), playing the 'heavy' in most of Buster's films up to and including
Our Hospitality. He died shortly after it's completion, having suffered a stroke during
the latter days of shooting.The story set in 1831, is based on the factual feud between
two families, the Hatfields and McCoys. Buster renamed his families Canfield and
McKay. The film was shot on location on, (and in!) Lake Tahoe and along the
Truckee river, the scenery is still unspoiled by the modern development now adorning
parts of the area.

The opening scene is an unexpected one, coming from Keaton, it is pure, dramatic
intrigue, setting the scene for the action to follow. A frightened woman is alone in a
log cabin with her baby son, there is a storm raging outside. She is waiting for her
husband to return. Outside, a flash of lightning reveals two figures for a brief instant.
Two guns blaze in the now dark night, a second flash of lightning reveals the two men
now lying on the ground. The woman runs out and cradles her dying husband's head
in her arms, the baby is in his crib crying. We cut to the Canfield house were news of
the shooting has reached the the family. Pa Canfield announces that because of the
death of his son, 'the feud must go on....' The next day, McKay's widow takes her son
to live with his aunt in New York, where he will have a better start in life.

The story jumps twenty years and we see the now, grown up Willie McKay as a New
York Dandy. He has been summoned to take possession of the McKay estate. He
closes his eyes and visualizes a large, white, colonial mansion. His aunt tells him about
the feud between his and the Canfield family. He tells her not to worry and prepares to
start out on the long, rigorous railroad trip across country. His aunt accompanies him to
the 'station', or rather the place the railroad tracks stop when they reach town. Keaton
was scrupulous to detail, and it shows in this scene. The train is a copy of the original
ones imported from England in 1829. The rather eccentric driver (Joe Keaton), is very protective of his locomotive with it's carriages, reminiscent of a stage coach body on
train wheels. There is a guard perched on the back of the last carriage with a post horn,
ready to inform passengers of their impending departure. Sharing Keatons four seater
carriage is a young girl, they strike up a friendship during the journey, she invites him
to meet her family and have supper with them when they reach their destination. The
actual journey is far from uneventful, track leveling would seem to be a thing for the
future, nothing has been cleared form it's path. At one point the track has even been
laid over some fallen tree limbs giving the passengers a far from smooth ride on the
corrugated track. The journey has several interruptions too. A donkey is standing in
the path of the train. Joe Keaton gets down from the locomotive, studies the situation
for a moment, then walks over to the track and pulls it over to one side out of the
donkeys way. They come across, what appears to be, a group of farmers in a field
who start to throw stones at the train, this incenses it's driver. He retaliates by throwing
the wood supply for the trains boiler at the farmers, as soon as the train passes they
rush forward and gather up the firewood for their own use. Much less effort than having
to cut their own. Another incident is a variation of a favorite Keaton joke theme. The locomotive comes unhooked from the rest of the train, just as it passes a split in the
track. The carriages run along the shorter parallel track rejoining the main one ahead of
the engine, much to the drivers bewilderment.

On arrival, Busters dog, who has been following the train through its long journey, is
reunited with his overjoyed and amazed master. Keaton loses sight of the girl as she is whisked away by her family... The Canfield clan! Buster has to find someone to ask directions to his paternal home, he stops a man nearby who just happens to be another Canfield. When he discovers who Buster is, he tells his brother and they follow Keaton,
bent on his destruction. Buster eludes the pursuit of the two Canfield brothers, totally
innocent that they are after him. One brother goes after him with a small gun, which
jams. Keaton seeing this, courteously assists the man out of his plight almost shooting
off his own foot in the process. When the other brother finds Keaton, he is trying unsuccessfully to fish with a stick, string and bent pin given him by some children. Buster
is seated on a ledge, unaware that above him some men are dynamiting the damn holding
back gallons of water. As the Canfield brother approaches, the damn blows and Keaton is hidden by the torrent of water cascading over him.

That evening Willie, the Keaton character, arrives at the girl's house having innocently accepted her invitation to supper. While inside the house, he hears the brother's talking
about their plan to kill him. He also hears their fathers injunction that the laws of
Southern hospitality be observed, forbidding that he be harmed while a guest under their
roof. Supper is a very tense time for all involved, Willie is spooked by Canfield sr.'s
method of sharpening the carving knife, and everyone jumps up in alarm when a pitcher
is dropped. After supper Buster tries every excuse not to leave the house, fearing his life.
He gets his dog to do tricks for them and then tries to lose his porkpie hat. He throws his
hat under a chair, which the dog thinks is a great game, and promptly retrieves it. The
local pastor had also been invited to supper, when he goes to leave, the Canfield family
insist that he stay the night due to a heavy storm that has started. As one of them points
out, 'It would be death to go out on a night like this!'. Willie also takes them up on the
offer, much to the Canfields consternation, and follows the pastor upstairs. The next
morning the rain has stopped, but Willie still has his problem. How to get out of the
house. He dallies with the girl as she plays the piano, a sheet of music blows out of the
open French windows, she asks him to retrieve it for her. This puts Willie in a bit of a predicament, one of the brothers is standing guard outside with a single shot, loaded gun. Willie solves this problem by going up to the brother, taking his gun, examining it and
firing it into the bushes. While the brother is hastily reloading the gun, Buster runs out
and safely retrieves the sheet of music. He decides to try to leave the house in disguise
and finds a crinoline dress, bonnet and parasol hanging on a door. He puts the dress on
and saunters past the Canfield family. All goes well until one of the brothers notices the
skirt is tucked into the top of Willie's trousers., the chase is on. The Brothers catch up
with Willie and are just about to fire at him when he turns sideways revealing the dress, draped over the rear end of a horse, the open parasol tucked into the girth and the bonnet
on the creatures head.

This time the brothers realy do catch up with Buster, he is sidling along a rock face below them. They decide to get a good shot at him one of them must climb down. The brother
ties a rope around his waist and drops the other end over the cliff. Buster sees this and
thinks it a good idea to tie the loose end around his waist. He gives it a tug, yanking the brother off the top of the cliff. Buster looks in horror as he sees him go plummeting past, realizing that he will be the next to go. Both he and the brother land in the river below,
Buster scrambles out and across the adjacent railway track just in time for the train,
starting on it's return journey, to pass by and cut the rope. He leaps onto the engine and
lands with one foot on the engine and the other on the following tender. The train
becomes uncoupled at this point, leaving Buster in a very awkward predicament. He
manages to scramble into the tender just as it leaps from the tracks and is hurled into the adjacent river in his makeshift boat. While shooting the rapids, he is thrown out into the
white, foaming water

What we see next is Keaton very nearly drowning in reality. He had his cameraman,
Elgin Leslie, trained that no matter whatever happened, he was to go on shooting.
Keaton and his effects assistant, Fred Gabouri, had devised a way to keep Keaton from
being swept away by the fast moving river. A line had been put round Busters waist,
with enough slack in it to allow him to be far enough away from Fred to keep him out
of camera shot. He was holding a baseball bat with the other end of the line around it,
and this they decided would be good enough to keep Buster safe. They had
underestimated the power of the river and the line snapped sending Buster out through
the rushing white water. He could not breathe in the foam and was only saved from
drowning by being able to grab onto an overhanging tree limb. Keaton liked the realistic
look of the take, and so that was the one he used in the movie.

The rope, still round Willie's waist gets entangled with a log, this in turn gets caught in
some rocks at the top of a precipitous waterfall. While he is trying to disentangle
himself, he sees the girl floating the water, She had decided to follow Willie to help him,
but the boat she had found capsizes, throwing her into the water. Here is one of the
many examples of Keaton doing stunts for other performers in his films. There was no
way he was going to let Natalie do anything dangerous, especially as she was pregnant
with their second son. He is the one you see in a dress battling through the water, Natalie
was only used for the close ups. Buster tries in vain to free himself from the log, he has
to save the girl, there is only one option left for him. The result is one of the most nerve wracking and brilliant stunts in movie history. As the girl approaches the crest of the
waterfall ( now doubled by a stunt man) he swings out on the rope, across the waterfall
and grabs the girls hands as she goes over the edge. Both swing crazily, he is now
hanging upside down and as they pass over a rocky ledge, he drops her to safety. He
still has the additional problem of freeing himself from the rope. He climbs back up the
rope and onto the log. Now personal danger is more imminent, their combined weight
has dislodged the log and it is about to go over the falls taking Willie with it. He
scrambles to the bank, wraps the rope around a rock and as the log goes over, the rope
is snapped by it's weight. Willie now free, jumps down to where the girl is recovering.
The pastor, who just happened to be passing, sees them and takes them back to the
Canfield house. The rest of the Canfield clan arrive home, still heavily armed and
looking for Willie. They go upstairs and see the girls bedroom door half open. Framed
in the doorway are Willie and the girl, kissing. The Canfields are horrified and are about
to step in to finish Willie off when the door swings open, standing there is the pastor
with prayer book in hand. He has just married them, the feud is over. Willie asks all the
men put down their weapons, when he is satisfied they all have, he starts removing all
the guns and knives he has had concealed about his body.