Buster Keaton, horse whisperer.
In Cops, … [Buster] is tricked into buying a wagonload of furniture drawn by a downtrodden horse named Onyx (Clyde Bruckman bestowed the name because the animal purchased for the role was a bedraggled white in color). Onyx is singularly lacking in energy, and Buster’s efforts to urge the horse along have no discernible effect. Finally, he takes the bit in his mouth—literally—and starts pulling the wagon alongside the horse. “We planned it to lead into another gag,” Buster remembered. “We wanted to pan the angle shot slowly from me and on to show Onyx riding in the wagon and then to the furniture all unloaded and piled in the street. For two days we tried to get Onyx up into the wagon but he wanted no part of it. He wouldn’t walk up a ramp, refused to be hoisted in a veterinary’s belly band, kicked whenever we came near. Saturday we passed up the baseball game to work on the problem. But no soap. That night we quit, tired and disgusted. Monday morning we saw the reason for it all—a brand new colt standing wobbly alongside of her. Her I said. What a bunch of dopes we were.” Keaton, it should be noted, named the colt “Onyxpected.”
James Curtis. Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life, 2022, pp. 191.
