BUSTER KEATON, AKA GRANDPA:SILVER SCREEN LEGEND'S GRANDDAUGHTER KEEPS LEGACY ALIVE

To the world, he was the famous silent film star Buster Keaton, but to Melissa Talmadge Cox of Cloverdale, he was simply Grandpa Buster.

Cox remembers him as being a lot of fun, and she always enjoyed visits to his big house on more than an acre in the San Fernando Valley.

Grandpa Buster was a model train buff with an elaborate set-up in his garage, says Cox. He designed the tracks so they went outside through an opening in the wall, up and over the swimming pool, and around to a patio table and chairs on the other side. When Cox and her brothers visited, they sat at that table waiting for their snacks to arrive on little flat cars.

Her dad, James Talmadge, was Grandpa Buster's oldest son from his marriage to Natalie Talmadge. He was a publicist/photographer at 20th Century Fox, so Cox grew up around Hollywood celebrities.

When she was in second grade, she appeared on Art Linkletter's "Kids Say the Darndest Things" show. At 10, she bobbed for apples with Jayne Mansfield's daughter.

"I even have a picture of myself sitting on Hugh O'Brien's lap when I was in fourth grade," she says with a laugh.

It wasn't until she was in college that she actually saw one of her grandfather's movies.

"They were having a silent film festival at Berkeley," she recalls, "and the main show featured Grandpa. I was stunned. I'd never seen him as a young man.

"Watching him that day, I totally fell in love with silent films."

Since then, silent film festivals and fan clubs have become quite trendy. One of the most popular clubs is The Damfinos, better known as the International Buster Keaton Society (www.busterkeaton.com). Cox serves on its board of directors and, in 2010, she and her mom were special guests at the group's annual convention in Muskegon, Mich.

Cox has a number of keepsakes from her grandfather, including a signature pork-pie hat and a tie he hand-stitched. She takes many of these treasures to the conventions and festivals she attends.

After her step-grandmother, Eleanor, died in 1998, Cox became the family's goodwill ambassador on behalf of Grandpa Buster. She regularly travels around the country, attending film festivals and conventions in his honor. Last year, she went to Germany for a Buster Keaton film festival.

Cox moved with her family to Cloverdale in the mid-'70s and, with a degree in horticulture, quickly landed a job she dearly loved at a nursery.

People started asking her to help design their yards, so she enrolled at SRJC and soon became certified by the California Association of Nurserymen. For the past 25 years, she has been successfully self-employed as a landscape designer.

When the last of her three children went to college, Cox took up painting. She had no art background, but for some reason the idea appealed to her. After taking a weekend watercolor class, she discovered a talent she didn't know she had.

Cox's paintings now hang in private homes across the U.S. and she is a member of the Watercolor Artists of Sonoma County and the First Street Gallery of Cloverdale, where several of her originals hang. A few years ago, Cox drove to the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills to deliver 20 boxes of photographs that belonged to her Aunt Norma and had been in her attic for more than 30 years.

With the help of her dad, Cox was able to identify many of the people in the photos, and the Academy now calls it the best original silent film photo collection ever.