Buster Keaton was no stranger to landing on his backside, but even he found the Steamboat Bill Jr (1928) shoot gruelling. “I took a pretty good beating,” he said, which is quite an admission from a man almost addicted to high-risk stunts. The film, which is rereleased in UK cinemas this month, is more violent than most. It sees Keaton jumping between paddle steamers, and being tossed in the air by a storm created by gallons of water and six high-powered wind machines.

Film-making was always a bruising business for Keaton. He had broken his ankle larking around on a moving staircase for The Electric House, been knocked unconscious by cannon fire on the set of The General and even broken his neck during the shoot for Sherlock Jr – not that he knew it until several years later.

Undeterred, Keaton claimed that he never refused a stunt, however dangerous; in fact, he frequently doubled for other actors when they needed to take a fall. That’s because he was a pro, who had learned to land soft and withstand a few knocks from his childhood in vaudeville, playing The Little Boy Who Can’t Be Damaged in a family act. For Keaton, it was almost second nature to “land like a cat”, using the art he called “body control”.

Some stunts require agility, others an inner strength. The crowning glory of Steamboat Bill Jr, possibly Keaton’s greatest gag of all time, was a stunt as beautiful as it was potentially lethal but it required him simply to stand still. And he didn’t get a scratch on him. The celebrated moment in Steamboat Bill Jr when the facade of a house drops to the ground with a two-tonne thwack, leaving Keaton serene amid the debris, relied on precise mathematics and nerves of steel. Keaton’s position on the ground had to line up exactly with an open window in the top of the house; thankfully for him, it did. More importantly, he had to be sturdy enough to trust the sums, and not flinch.

Far beyond the awe-inspiring evidence of his films, urban legends abound on the subject of Keaton’s ability to make a good landing. For instance, there is the oft-spun yarn that he earned his nickname as an infant when Harry Houdini, no less, saw him fall down stairs and exclaimed: “That was a real buster!” More outlandishly, Keaton and his parents claimed that aged just 20 months old, he was sucked out of his bedroom window by a tornado, spun and deposited, unharmed, in a nearby field. Great publicity for the act, of course– and, by coincidence, for Steamboat Bill Jr 30-odd years later.

Whether Keaton really did possess heroic powers of invincibility or not, he was tougher than most of his Hollywood peers. In fact, he was a bit of a throwback. In the early days of cinema, stars could hardly afford to be delicate flowers. But by the time that Keaton made Steamboat Bill Jr in 1928, stunt doubles and safety regulations were making life easier for the big-name talent.

‘The little boy who can’t be damaged’ … Buster Keaton as a child. Photograph: Allstar

In the pioneer days of the 1900s and 1910s, actors had been expected to muck in, from the rough-and-tumble of slapstick comedy, right up to the point of danger. Rather than hiring a stunt performer as well as a star, studios would rather save the cash and hire an actor with the guts to take the plunge. Even a star as glamorous as Gloria Swanson recalled being pressured into feats that modern actors might wince at. For The Danger Girl (1916) she was asked to dive into deep water in her underwear; she was terrified, partly because she couldn’t swim.

Almost everyone had a war story. The waiflike Lillian Gish famously suffered frostbite in her fingers when she lay down on an ice floe at the climax of Way Down East (1920), for example. More seriously, Grace McHugh was thrown from her horse and into a river while shooting Across the Border (1914). Owen Carter, a cameraman, jumped in to save her, but they both drowned. In one notorious case, matinee idol Wallace Reid was so badly injured in a train crash while filming The Valley of the Giants (1919) that he started taking morphine to cope with the pain. He became addicted to the drug and died four years later during an attempt at rehab, aged 32.

There were workarounds of course. Stunt performers had first been employed in the movies in the 1900s, but they remained something of a trade secret. Audiences were expected to believe that serial heroines could jump out of rising hot air balloons, and screen cowboys could race their horses along cliff edges. But accidents will happen, and it was impossible to maintain the pretence at all times.

Look at early films, and you may well see the joins for yourself, but sometimes the truth hit the headlines. Pearl White, star of the Perils of Pauline and The Exploits of Elaine serials, was promoted as the “peerless fearless girl” who bravely executed all her own stunts. But then, in 1922, a performer called John Stevenson died after fracturing his skull while doubling for her. If anything, incidents like that only boosted the hype machine, with stars and studios making ever grander claims about their bravery and agility.

So here are four truly tough silent movie stars who can stand alongside Keaton in the stunt stakes:

1. Tom Mix

John Wayne is regarded as the archetype of the macho cowboy, but he modelled his moves on Tom Mix, a silent-era megastar who was rarely seen on screen without his white 10-gallon hat. A very physical actor, Mix was a former cattle wrangler who had learned to perform as part of touring wild west shows. Along with his horse Tony, he incorporated stunts into all his westerns, with high-speed chases and lasso tricks a speciality. In case anyone was in doubt that he did his own stunts, Mix took part in rodeos between films. At one, in 1915, he was caught in a smash-up between two wagons, breaking his jaw and his leg as well as crushing his chest. When he made a full recovery, headlines such as “Tom Mix Emerges from Hospital after being Declared Dead” only enhanced the legend of his indestructibility.

2. Helen Gibson

A stuntwoman and actor, Helen Gibson was another graduate of the wild west show circuit, who combined work as an extra in cowboy films with trick riding in rodeos. In 1915, she was employed as the stunt double for the serial heroine Helen Holmes in The Hazards of Helen, proving her mettle when she had to jump from a roof to the top of a moving train. Soon she had the chance to play the lead in two instalments, before being given her own serial to star in, The Daughter of Daring. Illness and bankruptcy dented her career in the 1920s, but she continued to work; her last role was as an extra in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

3. Douglas Fairbanks Sr

Athletic, agile and adventurous, Douglas Fairbanks Sr would have done all his own stunts if the producers had allowed it. As it was, he did plenty: jumping to incredible heights in Robin Hood and The Thief of Baghdad, thanks to hidden trampolines on set, skimming down a sail in The Black Pirate on the point of his dagger, and completing parkour-style rooftop chases in The Mark of Zorro. Fairbanks’s performances are always so physically exuberant, he makes these dangerous feats look like sheer fun.

4. Harold Lloyd

The nerdy “boy-next-door” with the glasses and the straw hat might not look like an action hero, but Harold Lloyd’s best comedies feature thrilling stunts, from the high-speed trolley chase at the climax of Girl Shy, to the clock tower climb of Safety Last! The famous image of Lloyd dangling from the clock face in the latter film was both more, and less, dangerous than it appears. The tower set was built on top of a Los Angeles building, so the traffic in the background appears to be far below Lloyd, but in reality he didn’t have far to fall. Then again, years previously an accident with a trick bomb, which turned out not to be a trick bomb, left Lloyd with only three fingers on his right hand, so this stunt, like so many he performed, was accomplished almost single-handedly.

• Steamboat Bill Jr is released in UK cinemas on 18 September as a double-bill with The Playhouse.