Red Skelton

by Wes Gehring

  While Skelton never knew his father, he maintained entertaining memories of Ella and Ida Mae’s mother, Elizabeth “Granny” Fields, who often took care of him when her daughter worked. In yet another folder of the comedian’s autobiographical writings, he affectionately said of the “notorious madam,” “I don’t think I ever referred to her a ‘grandmother’ … when I talked to her. It was always ‘Ella.’ I wasn’t prompted to call her ‘Ella.’ She just had a dignity about her that called every bit of respect one could give to her. She was kind and gentle.”15

  A young Skelton poses for a Vincennes photographer (circa 1919). (Wes D. Gehring Stills Collection)

  Though Granny Fields told entertaining Civil War stories, and her woodcarving husband, A. C. Fields, had artistic tendencies, the boy clearly preferred Ella. He found her more affectionate and generous with food—major factors for a neglected and underfed child. In yet another autobiographical musing, Skelton even flirted with the idea of doing a book on the two women. As the following pages will document, throughout Skelton’s long career there would be periodic announcements about various writing projects, none of which came to fruition. The comedian tended to spread himself too thin on his many creative projects. But I also feel these pronouncements were Skelton’s way of simply saying, “I like these people and/or topics.” What follows is Red’s tongue-in-cheek comment about a book on Ella and Granny: “I always wanted to write a book about my two grandmothers—one being an undertaker [a popular profession in Fields’s family] and the other being a madam—and call it ‘My Grandmothers—They Got You Coming or Going.’”16

  Of course, over the years, the comedian’s most public comments about family involved his father, with Red often claiming Joseph was a noted circus clown. Indeed, a New York Sun article from 1938, “Red Skelton of ‘Having Wonderful Time,’ Discusses His Hollywood Debut,” went so far as to describe the elder Skelton as an “internationally famous clown.”17 This is a great story, but there is little or no evidence to support it. As Skelton author Wesley Hyatt later observed, “What we do know is that for a man [Red Skelton] who came across so open to the public, he was remarkably mysterious about his own history.”18

  The comedian’s father had possibly been a minor circus clown sometime before he married Ida Mae Fields (April 13, 1905). Such a nomadic profession would explain how Joseph Elmer (born in Princeton, Indiana) might have met his Nebraska native wife. But if such a circus link existed, it was ancient history by the time of Joseph’s death. His 1913 obituary headline observed, “North End Grocer Dies Suddenly,” with no mention of any big-top experience.19 Though one might argue that this small-town death notice was not particularly detailed, the obituary did go so far as to mention his membership in a series of lodges (Knights of Pythias, Moose, and Odd Fellows). However, these organizations might represent a clue to Joseph’s entertainment roots. Years later, the only vague memory Ida Mae’s half-brother, Fred Foster, had of Joseph Elmer doing any clowning involved “a Masonic organization.”20

  Away from the hoopla of big-city journalists, such as the New York Sun’s Eileen Creelman (who conducted the aforementioned interview), Skelton sometimes assumed a less romantic perspective on his father, too. For example, when the comedian himself applied to join his hometown Masonic Lodge in 1939 (quite possibly to emulate the parent he never knew), “he listed his late father’s occupation as ‘grocery man.’”21 Plus, as early as 1908, the Vincennes city directory listed Joseph Elmer Skelton’s occupation as grocer. One should add that at this point in time, being a grocer was a common occupation in small-town Indiana. Neighborhood markets were found every few blocks. If one also factors in the aforementioned court cases involving Red’s father, the window of time in which Joseph could have been a circus clown, even in the best of circumstances, would have been very brief.

  So why was Skelton often rather inventive about his father’s past? First, one does not have to be a psychiatrist to assume Skelton was attempting to connect with a parent he never knew. This point was reinforced by an interview I had with the daughter of Carl Hopper, one of Skelton’s childhood friends. Brenda Hopper told me that her dad recognized that when young Skelton expounded about his famous clown father, it was more a reflection of not having a father.22

  Second, the clown connection Skelton credited to his father probably came from the comedian’s mother. Late in Skelton’s life he confessed, “Mom used to say I didn’t run away from home [to entertain]. My destiny just caught up with me at an early age.”23 That is, Ida Mae allegedly waited to share any circus-related information about Joseph with their youngest son until after Red had expressed interest in entertaining. Ironically, there was even some hyperbole to Skelton’s telling of this story, too. He never “ran away from home” to perform. The boy first went on the road, after joining a medicine show, with his adoptive mother’s blessings. These were tough times for the Skelton family, and one less mouth to feed meant that much more for his siblings. Moreover, Ida Mae quite possibly received some modest reimbursement for her son’s novice beginnings. Certainly, this was the case with many poor youngsters trying to break into show business. Comedian Joe E. Brown enjoyed telling people throughout his life that he was the only youngster who ever ran away to join the circus—with his parent’s blessing!24 Appropriately, Brown’s struggling family received a small stipend for young Joe’s summer acrobatics with a circus. (Show business or not, “hiring out” children was long a common practice for poor families.)

  A third potential take on this inventive yarn about his dad being a notable clown probably went beyond just filling in the blank spots with a unique father. Joseph Ehart (Skelton) and his clan were essentially hell-raisers, pure and simple. Skelton’s cosmetically revisionist history made an embarrassing family tree go away. I am reminded of a line written by novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, “So being born in that atmosphere [of people looking down on my family] … I developed a two-cylinder inferiority complex.”25 Between all the poverty and scandal attached to Skelton’s background, he probably had a V-eight inferiority complex!

  A fourth possible explanation for Skelton’s creative take on having a famous father might be called the Big Fish phenomenon, after the Daniel Wallace novel and director Tim Burton’s brilliant screen adaptation of the same name. Big Fish is the story of a man whose oral history tends to have tall-tale tendencies. But as the man’s son investigates this life, he finds it often loosely anchored in the truth. The title character, like all entertainers from the beginning of time, simply wants to tell a better story. I would posit, this is part of what drove Skelton’s son of a clown perspective, though Joseph quite possibly did amateur entertaining. Red was a great clown, and making his father into a famous funnyman creates a better story. In writing over two dozen books, the majority of which are about entertainers, I have seen countless variations of this Big Fish tendency, starting with Charlie Chaplin.26 Unlike the conclusion of Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous poem, “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” which posits: “You must [literally] change your life,” Skelton and others merely reinvented themselves.

  Charlie Chaplin created his famous Tramp character in 1914, the year after Skelton’s birth. Chaplin was always the comedy model for Skelton. (Wes D. Gehring Stills Collection)

  What makes Skelton’s creative take on his personal history all the more poignant, however, is the degree of genuine love that the comedian generated for the father that he never knew. With such passion in mind, the young narrator of Big Fish observes in the novel, “I think, that if a man could be said to be loved by his son, then I think that man could be considered great.”27 On this level, if no other, Joseph “could be considered great.” Skelton had more than been the good son.

  Still, there was little time in the comedian’s early years for pondering career choices of a long-departed father. Poor was all Skelton knew as a youngster, and he attempted to reframe these dire beginnings into something positive. The aforementioned Brown’s populist take on early survival coul
d just as well have been Skelton’s childhood mantra: “I began life as an undernourished baby who grew into a gaunt, too-thin … boy; it was a fact that disturbed me not the slightest. Most of the kids in my family and neighborhood were equally thin. And if it was a hardship, it was good conditioning for the [tough performing] life I later knew.”28

  Skelton did all he could to help his financially struggling family. “My family was hungry, and I had to make money somehow,” he recalled.29 His odd jobs started at age seven with the street-corner sale of newspapers before and after school. Like a brash Tom Sawyer, Skelton said he “soon learned to sass the customers so that they bought papers to get rid of him.”30

  Skelton enjoyed this huckster gamesmanship, though the original catalyst remained the quiet desperation of poverty. While earning pennies racking balls in Kramer’s Pool Hall, Skelton collected discarded decks of playing cards. Demonstrating his flair for art early, he doctored the cards into “new” novelty deck items. As survivor Skelton proudly noted in 1941: “I worked [sold the cards to] the gullible citizens of the [nearby] towns right on the main streets.”31 Like a young Thomas Edison, Red also sold sandwiches on the local passenger train. But again, Skelton played the huckster. Years later he confessed, “I put a lot of ham and lettuce outside the sandwich [hanging from the sides] and nothing in the middle.”32

  Fittingly, for someone attracted to show business, young Skelton also regularly attempted to sneak into Vincennes’s Pantheon Theatre. Invariably booted from this movie mecca, the boy often gravitated to Pauline DeJean’s candy shop, which was in the same building. DeJean’s nephew, Joe O’Toole, knew Skelton from these days. Consistent with the young con-artist character previously described, O’Toole remembered Sketon “as a kid who was always on the lookout for a new gimmick to scrounge a nickel or dime from anyone whose attention he could divert.”33 Still, O’Toole found Skelton to be a resiliently entertaining fellow, who was using a sardine can lid to cover a hole in the sole of his shoe—an experience Skelton no doubt tapped into later with the creation of his greatest comedy character, the tramp Freddie the Freeloader.

  Giving up on sneaking into the movies, Skelton later fed his fascination for film by ushering at Vincennes’s Moon Theatre. His other odd jobs ranged from washing dishes at a diner to crating boxes in a department store. Like his comedy idol, Chaplin, young Skelton sometimes simply sang and danced on street corners for small change. The comedian later told me he never had stage fright—it was only difficult when he did not have an audience.34

  Like later children of the Great Depression, Skelton never lost his appreciation of a dollar or creative ways to earn one. In 1979 Village Voice writer Ross Wetzsteon did an affectionately telling piece on the comedian titled “Red, the Renaissance Goof.” The article keyed upon the market for Skelton’s clown art, both original oils and reproductions on limited edition plates and in coloring books. The comedian comes across as without ego and constantly peppering the conversation with comedy. For example, when Wetzsteon asks about the genesis of his art, Red responds, “Have I been painting all my life? Not yet!”35

  What strikes me most about the piece today is how effectively Wetzsteon captured the childlike excitement Skelton still felt about a profitable project, all those decades removed from his childhood poverty. (To borrow a phrase from Skelton’s youth, such schemes never failed to make him feel “full of beans and conceit.”) I had experienced similar displays of Skelton’s entrepreneurial enthusiasm during his many appearances at Ball State University for concert dates. Always modest about his talents, he genuinely enjoyed sharing information about his profitable creative projects, as if he could not believe his good luck. And there lurked a degree of that little boy huckster. Note the comic honesty he shared with Wetzsteon, when discussing the price of his limited edition culinary line: “Fifty-five dollars a plate. I made $200,000. I wouldn’t give you a nickel for them myself, but people seem to like them.”36

  Skelton, the later millionaire who often carried huge sums of cash as an adult—yet another legacy of his early poverty—suffered through numerous childhood travails. Many were consistent with being poor: hand-me-down patched clothing, taunts about his wrong-side-of-the-tracks existence, and an attic bed that often had snow on the quilt when he awoke in the winter. Schoolwork was also a challenge for Skelton, not to mention more kidding from children over his mismatched attire and red hair. One rare bright spot for the boy, however, at Vincennes’s William Henry Harrison Elementary was the patriotic principal and teacher James S. Lassell. His creative extrapolations on the meaning of each word in the “Pledge of the Allegiance” later became the foundation for Skelton’s acclaimed 1969 recording of the “Pledge.”37

  Paradoxically, part of the grief young Skelton experienced came at the hands of the older boys he came to see as his half brothers. The future comedian was several years younger than the trio, and was babied by both “Mur” and his grandmothers, who often cared for the boys when Ida Mae worked. Red later claimed that the boys continually told him he did not belong. Whatever the reason, whether it was antagonism towards a redheaded outsider, or typical older siblings roughhousing the youngest, Joe Ishmal, Chris, and Paul gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “tough love.” Their pranks included dragging their brother by a rope behind an early motorcycle, and pitching him into a rock quarry lake. This nearly resulted in Red drowning when the boys made a game of not letting him out of the water. A dark comedy reframing of these “brotherly” misadventures could claim they helped prepare Skelton for his future slapstick tendencies as a clown. (Unbeknownst to his later fans, Skelton’s lifetime of pratfalls eventually resulted in his need to wear leg braces.)

  Ironically, the antics of Skelton’s brothers might also have been borrowing from Mack Sennett, the self-proclaimed “King of Comedy” in the 1910s. A brief examination of his pandemonium style turns up some parallels with the Skelton boys’ pranks. First, Sennett’s speeding Keystone Kops, in paddy wagons and motorcycles, reduced human beings to so many comic mechanical figures. By metamorphosing these people into inanimate objects, as they bounced and fell from racing vehicles, it was easy to laugh at them because they had ceased to be real. Second, in the simple story world of Sennett cinema, the perfect ending was to have one’s comedy conclude in a body of water. Even a Sennett character comedy, like the short subject The Rounders (1914, with Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle), closed with this duo going under in a sinking rowboat. Thus, one could argue that maybe Red was not the only Skelton youngster who was a student of early screen comedy.

  Chaplin (right) and Fatty Arbuckle in Mack Sennett’s The Rounders (1914), explore the comic possibilities of water. (Museum of Modern Art)

  Regardless of one’s take on the pranks of Joe, Chris, and Paul Skelton, young Red was a much more compassionate child than his brothers. This is borne out by his early relationship with the aforementioned Carl Hopper. The Hoppers were north Vincennes neighbors of the Skeltons. Both families were poor and comprised of male children. Carl, two years younger than Red, suffered from a severe hearing loss that caused many to consider him not quite “all there.” Later, ear surgery and a hearing aid helped Carl achieve a normal and successful adult life. But he suffered through a childhood of cruel putdowns over his difficulty in communicating with those around him. His hearing loss also resulted in a high-pitched voice and a tendency to comically butcher the language—both of which opened young Carl up to further peer ridicule. Despite this childhood mean-spiritedness, Carl remained a remarkably upbeat farm boy with a good sense of humor that often involved talking to himself and a fixation with hats.

  Skelton doing an Oliver Hardy imitation (circa 1945). Both comedians drew humor from observing people in childhood. (Vincennes University Foundation, Red Skelton Collection)

  Through an interview with his daughter Brenda Hopper, and correspondence, the Hopper family remains strongly appreciative of Skelton’s rare friendship for Carl, in what was often a sea of cruel faces.38 N
icknaming him “Kadiddle,” possibly playing upon the slang definition of “diddle” (idling away one’s time) and combining it with Carl (Carl-diddle equals Kadiddle), Skelton always included him in any childhood activities. Given Skelton’s clowning nature, even as a boy, he occasionally did an affectionately spoofing impersonation of his friend. But Carl was never bothered by this parody. In fact, he was proud to generate such attention from his friend.

  What makes this story fascinating today, besides Skelton’s compassion for a handicapped child, is how Carl was probably the catalyst for Skelton’s pivitol early comedy character—Clem Kadiddlehopper.39 While Skelton never officially acknowledged the connection, the Hopper family remains proud of the obvious parallels between the two figures. Here are the common links: unschooled mumbling rural rubes, inordinately happy, derailers of the language, high-pitched voices, fans of their own jokes, and wearers of signature hats (a trait that applies to most of the comedian’s characters). When one considers these obvious ties, plus the similar names, it is hard to deny Carl as an inspiration for Clem.

  Like the evolution of Skelton’s classic donut dunking routine chronicled in the prologue, with the initial catalyst an anonymous coffee shop diner, drawing from reality takes nothing from his comic gift. As noted earlier, Skelton’s style is anchored in exaggerating the everyday. And during Red’s aforementioned Indiana concert dates, he repeatedly referred to Kadiddlehopper as his most “Hoosier-inspired” character. While no reference was ever made to Carl, the comedian implied it went back to observations he had first made as a child. I am reminded of how Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy fame also used to reminisce about drawing from people he had watched as a boy in his mother’s boardinghouse.40 Most entertainers, particularly comedians, have similar tales to tell. Indeed, Chaplin and W. C. Fields both learned this practical side to voyeurism firsthand from mimicking mothers.41