by Wes Gehring
Bob Hope’s “how-to” approach in The Road to Morocco (1942) probably influenced Skelton’s bookish take in 1948’s A Southern Yankee (see frontispiece). (Wes D. Gehring Stills Collection)
Skelton’s notices for Dixie were a series of raves. The Hollywood Reporter’s banner headline proclaimed: “MGM ‘Whistling in Dixie’ Full of Audience Howls: Skelton Picks Up Note of First Hit.”4 Variety stated: “While Skelton gained stature in recent pictures, this is his first comedy entirely dependent on him to score a laugh hit. He comes through in fine fashion and … ‘Dixie’ is headed for sturdy box office returns.”5 Variety proved psychic; Dixie made a profit of $542,000—an amazing amount given that the average ticket price then was twenty-seven cents.6 (The original Whistling picture had been considered a major commercial hit with a profit of $219,000.7)
Though it is now popular to bemoan a lack of creativity in the film capital with punning axioms such as “Hollywood, where all films are created sequel,” Tinsel Town has always returned to popular profitable series pictures. But surprisingly, even before Dixie proved to be such a hit, MGM bought the original story rights to a second Whistling sequel—Whistling in Brooklyn.8 In fact, the Dixie production had only recently wrapped, suggesting that MGM was confident of both its box-office potential, and a continued interest in the Whistling series, well before Dixie’s release.
A guillotine almost gives Skelton darkly comic problems in Whistling in Dixie as Rutherford (right) and Diana Lewis look on. (Museum of Modern Art)
The third Whistling installment for Skelton’s radio sleuth Benton takes him to the wilds of Brooklyn, what the New York Times comically referred to as “A Hollywood Safari into Darkest Flatbush.”9 The film opens with a scary seascape and a dead body—yet another murder victim revealed to the authorities by way of a series of letters to a Brooklyn newspaper and always signed “Constant Reader.” Once this ripe-for-spoofing setting is established, the story returns to a familiarly funny Whistling local—Benton broadcasting in a radio studio.
This particular program has Skelton’s character playing both his whodunit wizard and a comic Nazi with a Hitler mustache. The mustache is obviously for the movie audience, which brings up the irony of visual-orientated Skelton being a real-life radio star—the Hoosier comedian had an underappreciated verbal gift, too. As radio historian Arthur Frank Wertheim has noted, Skelton “was an exceptional voice imitator who made the character sound funny.”10
The comedy catalyst for much of what follows Skelton’s radio Nazi is provided by Skelton’s screen sidekick Ragland, returning this time as Benton’s chauffeur and wannabe press agent. Ragland tells a reporter that Skelton is the “constant reader.” When this news bulletin turns up on the radio, the delightfully dopey Ragland takes it as a publicist’s coup and proudly appropriates Skelton’s tag line—“I dood it!” But a less happy Skelton soon finds himself pursued by both the police and the gangsters responsible for the murders.
In the earlier Whistling installments, Benton struggled to stay on the airways. In this Brooklyn chapter, he is more of an established radio personality, with Benton’s lines sounding like something the real Skelton might say. For example, when Benton is surrounded by what he takes to be autograph hounds, the comic observes, “If Bob Hope and Jack Benny could see me now.” At another point, Benton makes a casual reference to Skelton’s Willie Lump-Lump character. When Benton dresses down Ragland for making people think he is the “constant reader,” Benton adds the further advice, “Next time you get a publicity idea, give it to [Jack Benny nemesis] Fred Allen.”
The Whistling in Brooklyn entertainment factor escalates proportionately when the proceedings relocate to New York’s most bonkers borough, a verdict seconded by the New York Times: “By far the funniest moments in this broadly slapstick excursion are when Red, hiding behind a flowing beard from a gang of killers, somehow or other gets into [Brooklyn’s] Ebbets Field, into the uniform of the Battling Beavers and is pushed onto the pitchers mound against the Dodgers.”11 Skelton’s visit to the ballpark, home to “dem bums” (as the Dodgers were then affectionately nicknamed), was to prevent a murder. Providentially, since Skelton needed a disguise, the Dodgers were playing an exhibition game against a Jewish all-star squad from that era, whose players wore full beards.
Of course, in poker parlance, connecting Brooklyn and “dem bums” to a comedy is what would be called “lay down” material—an automatic winning hand. Unlike the longtime winning tradition of New York City’s two other major league franchises during this era, the “Bronx Bombers” (New York Yankees) and Manhattan’s New York Giants, the Brooklyn Dodgers had forever represented an exercise in comic futility. For example, later the same year that Brooklyn opened, director Frank Capra established a madcap tone to another Brooklyn-based comedy thriller, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), by beginning the picture with a slapstick melee at Ebbets Field. A questionable call had the Dodgers (also known as the “Daffiness Boys”) going into a comic attack made against their rivals and the umpire.
In Skelton’s Brooklyn one gets that same sort of instant comedy association with the Dodgers. Ragland observes, “I wanna git there [Ebbets Field] before they throw out the first umpire.” At the same time, Skelton’s character is explaining the murder he and Rags will attempt to thwart, adding that a riot will then be initiated among the Dodger fans to cover the murderer’s escape. When someone questions the difficulty of starting such a riot, Skelton responds, “not in Brooklyn. All you have to do is just say boo.”
The film provided the added bonus of featuring several Dodger stars in cameos, starting with manager Leo Durocher, a future Hall of Famer synonymous with the line, “Nice guys finish last.” Consistent with his nickname, “Leo the Lip,” Durocher’s best quip in the picture occurs after first seeing Skelton’s bearded mug: “I never forget a face but this time I’ll make an exception.” During the production, Durocher and Skelton played comedy one-upmanship, starting with the manager giving the comedian a joke book, the cover of which featured a picture of Skelton’s rival, Hope.
Consistent with the fact that Skelton’s character is forced to pitch, the comedian proceeds to hit the first three batters—future Hall of Famers Billy Herman, Arky “Arkansas” Vaughan, and Joe “Ducky” Medwick. Naturally, the beanings produces a threat from Durocher, that era’s most entertainingly angry high-profile manager: “Don’t worry. You’ll be up to [the] plate. We’ll take care good care of you.” Skelton’s responding comic pun moves from antihero to wise guy in two lines, “I didn’t mean to hit him. ‘Dodger,’ [the] guy [Billy Herman] can’t even duck.”
The extra attention accorded Skelton’s leadoff batter (Billy Herman) during Brooklyn was probably a result of Herman’s Hoosier connection. The star player was from New Albany, Indiana. The comedian was an ongoing booster for all things Hoosier and people from the nineteenth state. Consistent with this philosophy, Herman is also more prominently featured than any other ballplayer in Brooklyn press kit and lobby-card material.12
Skelton (seated) will not be moved as he and Brooklyn Dodger opponent Billy Herman, a fellow Hoosier and future member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, act in a scene from Whistling in Brooklyn. (Wes D. Gehring Stills Collection)
Given that Brooklyn was obviously geared, in part, toward attracting baseball fans to the film, a series of diamond trades after the shoot but prior to the picture’s release, had MGM nervous: “What to do about it has the [studio] boys stumped … [concerned as they are by] the inevitable howls of the baseball fans, especially the Flatbush contingent.”13 But given that this was a comedy, and numerous journeyman Dodgers were already doubling as Skelton’s Battling Beavers teammates, the fact that a few Brooklyn stars had moved on (such as Medwick becoming a New York Giant) was eventually deemed no problem by MGM.
Back in a time when there was no question that baseball was the national game, Brooklyn’s diamond fans also included most critics, with some reviewers even going back to the film’s enterta
iningly chronicled shoot from the previous year. For example, the New York Herald Tribune’s positive critique included Skelton’s tongue-in-cheek telegram to MGM, when on-location shooting at Ebbets Field produced freezing weather and spitting snow: “Local newspapers are all dated April. Please confirm time of year and if correct, send long underwear.”14 Variety said the “Baseball sequence, with Skelton as a bearded player, … is surefire.”15 The Los Angeles Examiner, under the headline “Red Skelton Comedy Corn, but Hilarious,” raved about the “wild sequence with the genuine Brooklyn Dodgers.”16
As with the earlier Whistling installments, Brooklyn was a commercial hit. The profit margin, however, was greatly reduced, compared to the first two pictures, because of Brooklyn’s location work and the expanded baseball player cast. The production cost, at $856,000, was more than three times the Whistling original, and greater than twice the amount spent on the Dixie sequel.17 MGM’s sometimes over-production of Skelton’s films frequently became a detriment to his comedy. Thankfully that was not the case here. (Tentative plans for a fourth movie in the series, Whistling in Hollywood, were made but not realized.)
In addition to Skelton’s Whistling trilogy, the comedian’s other best war-era pictures were Ship Ahoy (1942) and I Dood It (1943). The latter film was Skelton’s first remake of a Buster Keaton movie (Spite Marriage, 1929), and will be addressed in the next chapter, which explores the influence of this silent comedy giant upon Skelton. I Dood It appropriates Skelton’s defining line from his radio character “Junior” as the title (for no particular reason, besides marketing). In a film that mixes personality comedy with the then hot topic of war-related espionage, MGM maintained the Skelton thriller-spoofing connection established with Whistling in the Dark by making his Ship Ahoy character a mystery writer.
The picaresque, or on-the-road quality, is also utilized in Ship Ahoy to maximize new settings and characters for comedy. Skelton meets his costar, dancer Eleanor Powell, on an ocean liner bound for Puerto Rico. The movie originally had a different destination and title, I’ll Take Manila. But in the early days of World War II Japan had similar designs on the city, and the destination of Skelton’s picture was changed from the Philippines to Puerto Rico.
Powell’s character has been hoodwinked by enemy agents to sneak a magnetic mine prototype out of the United States, believing she is actually working for the Allies. Naturally, Skelton and Powell eventually put two and two together, with time out for comedy, dancing, and romance, before the enemy is thwarted. Powell became a frequent costar for Skelton during the war years, as well as arguably representing cinema’s greatest woman dancer. Skelton also shared screen time here with several veteran performers, including the incomparable Bert Lahr (the Hollywood Reporter calling Lahr’s performance “the funniest he has been since he portrayed the Cowardly Lion [in The Wizard of Oz, 1939].”18) Lahr plays Skelton’s man Friday, who, between his patented double-talk shtick and the inspired belief that he is God’s gift to women, threatens to steal every scene he is in.
For comedy contrast, the demonstrative Lahr is romantically teamed with pretty character actress Virginia O’Brien, whose comic specialty was deadpan patter and songs, earning her the nickname “Miss Red Hot Frozen Face.” If this begins to sound like a variety show—and I have not yet mentioned Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra (with Frank Sinatra, and Buddy Rich on drums)—one should note New York Journal American critic Rose Pelswick’s description of Ship Ahoy: “a large scale musical that indicates the return of vaudeville to the screen.”19
Skelton clowns with Eleanor Powell and Tommy Dorsey for a publicity still from the film Ship Ahoy (1942). (Wes D. Gehring Stills Collection)
This was Skelton’s first picture to appear after the United States’s 1941 entry into World War II. And Pelswick’s “return of vaudeville” observation was a prophetic description of much of the Hollywood product that occurred during the war years. Unfortunately, as this chapter will soon demonstrate, Skelton sometimes became lost in MGM’s full embrace of this variety-show mentality. But it is not a problem on Ship Ahoy. As Daily Variety stated, “Skelton has a wide latitude to extend himself in new routines and socko gags.”20 Moreover, he has great rapport with Lahr, whether they are coping with Skelton’s story-related hypochondria (“a medical student could walk around me just once and get a medical degree”), or getting drunk in the wine cellar hold of this nautical nightclub.
As if maximizing his respite from a hit radio program, Skelton’s Ship Ahoy character is at his best with the visual comedy: Skelton’s signature slapstick falls, the rubbery facial expressions, an amusing wrestling match with a deck chair (he loses), and his drawn-out attempts to lift the magnetic mine (hidden in a suitcase) after it comes in contact with the metal deck. This satchel gag was Skelton’s most praised bit in the film’s reviews, from the New York Post calling it “hilarious,” to Showman Trade Review labeling the routine a “scream.”21 Nevertheless, for the Skelton aficionado, the pivotal scene is the comedian demonstrating the dying star material he and Edna Stillwell improvised for his MGM screen test in 1940 that inspired the article, “Skelton Out of the Closet: Red Skelton’s Film Masterpiece Has Never Grossed a Dollar.”22 This Ship Ahoy variation on the MGM test includes Skelton doubling as dying gangster Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar (1930), talking away as if he has not been mortally wounded, and comically croaking as tough guy George Raft, slowly tossing his iconic coin, à la Scarface (1932).
As the review snippets suggest, Ship Ahoy was a critical success, which undoubtedly helped fuel the picture’s strong box office. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle’s critique headline might have been a summary for several of these notices: “‘Ship Ahoy’ at Capitol a Fast, Funny Show.”23 Along similar lines, the New York Daily News’ title promised an “Abundance of Fun, Rhythm at Capitol.”24 The Hollywood Reporter, as it was frequently wont to do, published an article capsulizing many of these positive notices, including a Record statement that called Skelton “‘a real find’ and saw him [as] a potential rival to Bob Hope … [the film is] ‘Fast, Fresh and Funny.”25
Even the rare Ship Ahoy pan, such as Lee Mortimer’s New York Daily Mirror review, was downright apologetic about being out of step with the masses—the radio masses: “As far as I’m concerned, he didn’t dood it. I mean the sensational Red Skelton. And the rest of the film is about on par with his futile attempts at humor. But don’t get me wrong. I know I’m in a minority. Millions of people are hysterical over [radio’s] Red Skelton. ‘Ship Ahoy’ will undoubtedly make money … plenty [of fans already] went to see the naughty boy Skelton.”26 Several Ship Ahoy reviews also referred to Skelton as the airway’s “I-dood-it man.”
As suggested earlier, Skelton’s other war-period pictures, Maisie Gets Her Man, Panama Hattie, Du Barry Was a Lady, Thousands Cheer, and Bathing Beauty, failed to fully capitalize on the comedian’s multifaceted skills. The Maisie movie casts Skelton in comedy support of Ann Sothern’s title character, a popular figure in a series of B films. Sothern’s Maisie was consistently out of work at the onset of each installment of the series, yet as modern critic Robert Bianco suggests, “there was a lively, buoyant spirit to her film persona that was always hugely enjoyable.”27 In fact, period critics were frequently after MGM to upgrade the Maisie series to an A category, as the studio had done with Mickey Rooney’s Andy Hardy pictures.28 Be that as it may, Maisie Gets Her Man did not, as insightfully noted by the Hollywood Reporter, “stack up with its excellent predecessors.”29 Worse yet, Skelton was miscast as an abrasive wannabe performer who was subject to stage fright. Still, Skelton was riding such a wave of popularity that he often garnered good notices despite weak material. The New York Daily Mirror’s Edith Werner observed, “every bit of [Skelton] mugging was greeted with [movie audience] chuckles. Red hasn’t much to do.… But whatever it is, he ‘doods it’ slick and with a twinkle.”30
Skelton’s follow-up film, Panama Hattie, has an upscale Maisie aura to it, as Skelton is again teamed with Sothe
rn. Critics frequently drew parallels with the Maisie movies, from the New York Post’s Archer Winsten stating, “You can’t help thinking of Maisie as soon as the attractive Ann Sothern goes into her Maisie act,” to the Brooklyn Citizen’s Edgar Price noting the film “might have been called ‘Maisie in Panama.’”31 But unlike the Maisie series, Panama Hattie was a big budget A picture, with a then sizable $130,000 having been spent on just the screen rights for this former Broadway hit.
While the Hollywood Reporter predicted major box-office numbers for Panama Hattie, most other publications expressed a biting letdown over the film adaptation.32 For example, The New Yorker review included the darkly comic riff, “the picture needs a certain something. Possibly burial.”33 Such criticism, and disappointing revenues, were hardly unexpected, since the picture had been finished and shelved for nearly a year, as MGM attempted to fix the film. Not surprisingly, this too became grist for comic criticism cracks. The New York Times observed, “‘Panama Hattie’ was finished last fall. At several sneak previews, it cast a great pall. Metro [MGM] revised it, with scissors and pen, but it couldn’t put ‘Panama Hattie’ together again.”34
More than one publication suggested the adaptation was a victim of censorship: “‘Hattie’ isn’t even a shadow of her former [provocative Broadway] self.… Blame it on the Hays [motion picture censorship office] … all the racy dialogue has been eliminated.”35 And given its already thin story (title character Sothern entertains in a Canal Zone nightclub), the studio was forced, in the words of Variety’s review, to turn Panama Hattie into “glorified vaudeville.”36 A variety show format was also indirectly encouraged by Sothern, who initially battled the assignment, and then fought illness during the production.