Red Skelton
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Resuming a Film Career: The Buster Keaton Factor
“Buster and Red were very fond of each other, and Red would take almost any suggestion Buster made.”1
Eleanor Norris, Keaton’s widow
Returning home from World War II, Red Skelton had a double cushion with which to resume his film career. First, while his home studio (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) had not always utilized Skelton to his full potential prior to his military service, the comedian had still achieved major star status during the war. Second, though Skelton was returning from sixteen months in the army, Hollywood’s movie production glut during the war guaranteed that Skelton was still highly visible in America’s theaters. That is, with Bathing Beauty (1944) continuing to play in many 1945 markets, and the Ziegfeld Follies (shot 1944, released 1946) having not yet opened, it was as if Skelton had never been away. Moreover, the comedian did not just show up in these two pictures; he performed some truly classic material. Bathing Beauty showcased two seminal sketches addressed in the previous chapter: the Buster Keaton-orchestrated ballet bit, and the Edna Stillwell-penned routine about a woman getting ready in the morning.
In the true variety show format that was the Ziegfeld Follies, Skelton’s screen time was limited to a single sketch. But it was the proverbial doozie. Here is the Hollywood Reporter’s sneak preview (1945) take on the routine: “Red Skelton does his celebrated amusing television [‘Guzzler’s Gin’] sketch.”2 Once the movie went into its all-important East Coast release (March 1946), the bit was being called a Follies’ high point. For example, the New York Times stated, “The film’s best numbers” are Skelton’s sketch and Fanny Brice’s “A Sweepstake Ticket” routine.3 This was quite the accolade, as critics were describing the Ziegfeld Follies as a “gorgeous, massive, spectacular revue.”4
Given this platform, MGM was less than imaginative with Skelton’s first postwar assignments: The Show-Off (1946) and Merton of the Movies (1947). Both properties were hoary with age. The former film was based upon George Kelly’s durable 1924 play, which had been adapted to the screen three previous times: 1926 (with Ford Sterling), 1930 (with Charles Sellon and renamed Men Are Like That), and in 1934 (with Spencer Tracy). Merton was drawn from the hit 1922 George Kaufman and Marc Connelly play, embellished from Harry Leon Wilson’s Saturday Evening Post story. Prior to Skelton’s screen version of Merton, the property had appeared in film form in 1924 (with Glenn Hunter) and 1932 (with Erwin Stuart and renamed Make Me a Star).
In The Show-Off Skelton plays a boastful railroad clerk seemingly obsessed with both the sound of his voice and a pretty neighbor (Marilyn Maxwell). As with his blabbermouth character in Maisie Gets Her Man (1942), Skelton’s Show-Off braggart eventually reveals a good heart. The character’s ability to be irritating, especially early in the picture, seems entirely alien to the basic Skelton screen persona, be it the goofy radio personality of his Whistling trilogy, or the sweetly silly spy of A Southern Yankee. To Skelton’s credit, he single-handedly manages to make the old material work, after a fashion. And period critics were quick to give the comedian his due. For instance, New York Herald Tribune reviewer Joe Pihodna observed, “It is only because of the expert comedy of Red Skelton that situations and [the narrative] line of the old plot achieve some fire.”5
Though Skelton dodged the bullet with The Show-Off, such was not the case with Merton. This tale of a star-struck rustic attempting to make it in the silent screen days of 1915 was, in the words of the Hollywood Reporter, “dated quite a bit.”6 The New York Times bluntly added, “[Merton] didn’t work out anywhere nearly as swell as anticipated.”7 The Washington (DC) News (normally the most critically supportive of cities for Skelton), complained, “if he doesn’t get brighter material than he has in ‘Merton of the Movies,’ people in large numbers will begin to think he’s no comedian.”8
Thanks, however, to what Variety called Skelton’s “master clowning,” some notices for the picture were positive.9 Thus, the Los Angeles Times credited Skelton with having “developed into one of the genuine comedians of the screen,” and the New York Daily News stated, “Maybe the current ‘Merton’ is not as funny as it was years and years ago, but Skelton fans are consistently amused by it.”10 Still, such cinema salve from reviewers could not bolster the box office. Merton became the comedian’s first starring feature to lose money ($367,000—a sizable amount in 1947 dollars).11
Of course, potential patrons might have been scared off by bad Merton press long before the picture’s autumn 1947 release on the East Coast. In February the New York Times reported that Merton was one of several shelved movie productions awaiting revisions “because studio executives were dissatisfied with the initial results.”12 In May syndicated Hollywood columnist Bob Thomas said, “All is not peaches and cream between Red Skelton and MGM. The comic is still unhappy over ‘Merton of the Movies,’ which already has undergone considerable re-shooting. He complains the studio is not publicizing him, and is even talking of playing [taking] his film talents elsewhere. ‘I’ve got them licked,’ [Skelton claims], pointing to a radio microphone, ‘as long as I’ve got this.’”13
“This,” for Skelton, meant his radio career, a medium that gave him both more creative control and more money. (Raleigh Cigarettes, his radio sponsor, paid him $1,000 a week throughout his army tour just to ensure his postwar services.14) MGM soon realized this was not a bluff on Skelton’s part and others within the film industry were supportive of Skelton’s need for better scripts. Celebrated funnyman Joe E. Brown included Skelton in his all-time top ten list of screen comedians during the summer of 1947, and “he [Brown] thinks Skelton could be the greatest of them all, if given different material.”15
Skelton’s lobbying for stronger movies, whether directly or via friends (Brown’s list just happened to surface in the syndicated column of Skelton crony Bob Thomas), ultimately paid off. In late August 1947 famed Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons wrote, under the headline “Skelton Gets Break He Has Earned,” that MGM was teaming the comedian with producer Paul Jones and the writing duo of Norman Panama and Melvin Frank.16 For 1940s film comedy, this trio represented the gold standard. Jones had produced such Preston Sturges classics as The Great McGinty (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan’s Travels, and The Palm Beach Story (both 1942). He had also been in charge of the best two Bob Hope and Bing Crosby “Road Pictures”: The Road to Morocco (1942) and The Road to Utopia (1946). Jones had also produced such imaginative Hope solo outings as My Favorite Blonde (1942) and Monsieur Beaucaire (1946). Continuing this Hope connection, writers Panama and Frank started out collaborating on radio scripts for the ski-nosed comedian in 1938. By the time their names were first linked with Skelton in 1947, their most notable successes were the Hope-Jones pictures My Favorite Blonde (story), Road to Utopia (script), and Monsieur Beaucaire (script).
Fittingly, the film on which this comedy trio joined forces with Skelton, A Southern Yankee, ultimately proved to be the comedian’s best movie. But ironically, a person never mentioned in either Yankee press clippings, or even the credits for the picture itself, proved to be the most significant contributor—silent film comedy legend Buster Keaton. And his first connection to Skelton begins several years before with Skelton’s favorite film, I Dood It (1943).17
A publicity poster for Skelton’s favorite film with his favorite costar, Eleanor Powell—I Dood It (1943). (Wes D. Gehring Stills Collection)
Ever since critic James Agee’s watershed Life magazine 1949 essay, “Comedy’s Greatest Era,” silent comedy’s pantheon four have been Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon.18 Strong cases can also be made for countless others, from the well-known antiheroic exploits of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy to the more obscure pioneering work of John Bunny in the early 1910s.19 But for the serious student of laughter, Chaplin and Keaton are miles ahead of the comedy pack. The duo also represent a basic comic dichotomy. Chaplin’s alter ego, the Tramp, is a socially conscious underdog whose plight moves us wit
h old-fashioned emotion, as when his “little fellow” pantomimes the story of David and Goliath in The Pilgrim (1923); this is a footnote to the sources of all Tramp stories. In contrast, the unchanging Keaton visage, “the Great Stone Face,” is a modern minimalist defense against the absurdities of today’s world. Consequently, one is moved intellectually by his stoic deadpan in the final scene of Daydreams (1922), where Keaton is caught in the whirling boat paddlewheel and climbs ever faster to avoid becoming a comic victim in this metaphor for the treadmill nature of life.
Ultimately, Keaton and Chaplin dazzle us with their sorties into the opposing worlds of the mind and heart by contrasting applications of technology. Chaplin is a student of realism and lets his art unfold in long take and long shot. While this is not uncommon for Keaton, he also flirts with formalism, where special effects and camera angles complement the comedy.
Paradoxically, one is more apt to link Skelton and Chaplin, both because Skelton was often prone to personally reference the “little fellow” creator, and Skelton patterned the pathos of his pivotal television character (Freddie the Freeloader) on Chaplin’s Tramp. The cinema Skelton, however, thanks to MGM, had much more to do with Keaton. That is, Keaton was sometimes assigned to Skelton’s films as an uncredited gag writer. (Keaton’s fall from comedy grace was to Skelton’s benefit.) Plus, several of Skelton’s best pictures were loose remakes of Keaton movies. Thus, even when Keaton was creating new material for Skelton, the younger comedian’s most memorable movie moments were often recycled Keaton bits. This was certainly the case with I Dood It, an updating of Keaton’s Spite Marriage (1929).
Both pictures revolve around a lowly pants presser who is infatuated by a beautiful stage actress. Each movie boasts two inventive set pieces that Skelton replicated closely from the Keaton original. Skelton’s I Dood It leading lady (Eleanor Powell) is the subject of his obsession. But with her heart initially belonging to another, she uses Skelton’s character in a revengeful “spite marriage.” Having second thoughts about this misuse of Skelton, she decides to slip him a “mickey,” a doctored (knockout) drink, on their wedding night. Naturally, she accidentally downs the concoction and is soon comatose.
Despite Powell’s inventively minimalist “performance” as so much dead weight, the sketch that evolves from her sudden Sleeping Beauty status is a slapstick showcase for a gentlemanly Skelton—a seemingly simple attempt to put her to bed. Skelton’s one-way wrestling match with Powell includes everything from the comic frustrations of just trying to pick up and carry this stately prop, to the trials and tribulations of planting her on a bed and keeping her there. When Skelton then attempts to go the kindly comic extra mile by getting Powell out of an uncomfortable gown for a more restful night, the naïve antihero is ultimately baffled and finally opts to merely cover her with a bedspread.
The wonderful critical response to Skelton’s rendition of this Keaton sketch might have encouraged the older comedian to revisit the routine during his acclaimed comeback performance at Paris’s Cirque Medrano in 1947. Keaton was rebooked for this famous French circus and other European venues during the next several years. Keaton’s return to the putting-the-bride-to-bed bit might also have been an authorship issue. That is, when Skelton’s I Dood It version was praised, such as the New York Daily Mirror’s comment that it was a “howling [comic] sequence,” the routine was often called “Chaplinesque”!20
The second classic Keaton set piece recycled by Skelton in I Dood It involved the attempt to fashion a beard for the comic by cutting and pasting on what might be described, with tongue firmly in cheek, as the fuzzy remnants from the nursery rhyme about an “old grey mare.” Skelton is replacing an actor playing a Civil War soldier in a play within the film, and Skelton’s scissor-happy preparation scene has him accidentally cutting his ear, his real hair (he glues in fake hair), and the left strap of his undershirt, which he corrects by pasting the garment to his chest. Skelton loses his mouth under all the pretend whiskers, and has to go exploring for the opening with a brush. The glue often does not take, so the comic is also amusingly over generous with its application. Moreover, as a comic topper, Skelton periodically pauses during his exercise in self-barbering to admire in the mirror all his less-than-admirable facial hair. Time magazine said of this bit, “Skelton’s broad and cheerful silliness—notably in one stretch of pantomime, upholstering himself in a false beard—comes so thick and fast that the effect is like being held down and tickled.”21 Skelton later claimed, “no one will ever say anything nicer about me.”22
In spite of Skelton’s effectiveness with these Keaton sketches, as well as the centerpiece for both Spite Marriage and I Dood It, a melodramatic Civil War play, Skelton remained insecure throughout the production. His director, Vincente Minnelli, later wrote, “he was unsure of his effectiveness in comedy of the situation. ‘I’m not funny,’ he complained to [his manager and ex-wife] Edna [Stillwell] … ‘You’re crazy,’ she told him. ‘You’ve never been funnier.’ Red proceeded to agonize over all his previous performances. It was a wonder to him that he’d ever gotten this far.”23
For all the assistance Stillwell gave Skelton through the years, from writing signature sketches to bailing him out of walkathon comedy pranks that turned expensively destructive, her most important ongoing gift to the comedian was being his number one fan. Even on what would prove to be his greatest picture, A Southern Yankee, he needed Stillwell as a cheerleader. Skelton asked her to be a special guest on this set, and in an article written at that time she confessed, “That man kills me. No matter what he does it’s funny to me. I’ve been laughing at him for [over] a dozen years. I’ll never stop.”24
Of the Skelton films that rework a Keaton original, I Dood It follows the older comedian’s work most closely. Interestingly enough, certain sequences, such as the spoof of the Civil War melodrama within the film, probably played even more effectively for Skelton’s audience, given the then recent huge critical and commercial success of Gone with the Wind (1939). This box office juggernaut played in many smaller markets, after its initial road-show engagements, well into the 1940s.
Buster Keaton (right) near the close of his starring career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he was briefly teamed with Jimmy Durante. Keaton’s face mirrors the many problems that derailed his life in the 1930s. (Wes D. Gehring Stills Collection)
For all this Keaton influence, there are other common Skelton threads that run through I Dood It, such as Skelton’s antihero/wise guy, first associated with Hope’s screen persona. The casually breezy parallels between Skelton and Hope were also the catalyst for I Dood It’s best verbal gag. Near the picture’s opening, Skelton strolls past an elaborate department store window advertisement for the picture’s feature musicians, Jimmy Dorsey and his orchestra. Skelton casually observes to a seemingly random sidewalk passer, “Boy that Jimmy Dorsey’s really got a band!” But this mildly amusing Skelton aside is merely a setup for an in-joke. The passerby turns out to be the bandleader’s bigger name musician brother, Tommy Dorsey, whose orchestra was featured in the comedian’s Ship Ahoy (1942) and Du Barry Was a Lady (1943). This surprise laugh is then topped by Skelton’s response to yet another passing person, who asks the comic if he has ever heard Tommy’s orchestra. With this brother right there, Skelton observes, “Oh sure, too many fiddles, though.”
Comedy routines often follow a rule of three, which is what then transpires here. Tommy Dorsey deadpans the following topper, “I like Bob Hope, too.” Director Minnelli then milks this inspired comedy clinic by closing on Skelton’s almost poignant expression of surprise. Dorsey’s comeback has succeeded on several levels, beyond the entertaining back and forth setups. For example, it presupposes that the viewer is aware that Skelton’s shtick is often Hope-like, so there is an “aha factor” going on—a cerebral in-joke, if you will. Plus, by allowing himself to be the butt of this elaborate three-part gag, it makes Skelton’s already congenial character even more sympathetic.
Unfortunate
ly, another non-Keaton common component to Skelton pictures was also present in I Dood It—the variety show format that distracted from Skelton. The added time for other acts was made possible, in part, by dropping a Keaton subplot aboard a yacht. However, if anything made this phenomenon more acceptable in I Dood It, it was the fact that much of the time was filled by the sexy, long-legged dancing brilliance of Powell. Several period critics, such as the New York Post’s Archer Winsten, were all but undone by the dancer’s provocative allure: “Eleanor Powell, her magnificently sculptured legs showing practically to her lower ribs, can tap in the [perfect] manner to which everyone is accustomed.”25 This attraction carried over to Skelton himself, who later told me she was his favorite costar, which is also implied in a Skelton authored article, “The Role I Liked Best.”26 Years later, after his death, the subject came up in a phone conversation with his private secretary, Anita Mykowsky, and this was her bemused response: “He really liked Eleanor Powell!”27
Though the many parallels between Spite Marriage and I Dood It make this Skelton film arguably his most Keatonesque, the two comedians first worked together on the later Bathing Beauty. MGM called Keaton in as a gag writer and story consultant, when the Skelton and Esther Williams portions of the script seemed to be going in opposite directions. Keaton did as much bridging as possible, as well as creating such memorable Skelton bits as the ballet sketch. “Those who were present on the day when Buster met Red Skelton have all commented that there appeared to be immediate rapture between the two men,” according to a Keaton biographer. “Buster took to Red the way he did because, as Buster put it many times, ‘he reminded me of me at a younger age.’ The initial relationship between these two men was like that of a teacher and his star pupil”28