Red Skelton
Page 24
Undoubtedly, one could attribute this to the ego-factor synonymous with most prominent people. I had encountered this firsthand with Skelton, after once prefacing a question to him with some obvious parallels between his Freddie the Freeloader character and Chaplin’s Tramp. Skelton had taken this as an apparent affront to his creativity, and it nearly derailed an informal interview/conversation. As the comedian’s nephew Marvin L. Skelton told me much later, as a blanket explanation of unusual behavior by his uncle or the famous in general, “They simply live different lives.”58
The most ironic aspect of Skelton’s denial of Keaton, beyond all the previously cited documentation, involves Skelton’s appearance on a This Is Your Life television tribute to Keaton. Telecast April 3, 1957, the younger comedian praised Keaton for being a major influence on those pictures in which they collaborated. In addition, Skelton claimed to be most bowled over by the modesty of the iconic comedian, who had attempted to make onlookers think these inspired suggestions had originated with Skelton! In light of the later Baytos interview, it seems that Skelton ultimately bought into this falsity, too.
Beyond this paradox, however, one must add that Skelton had a tendency to eliminate from his personal history people who had once creatively influenced him. Thus, Keaton had simply gone the disappearing route that Skelton had by then already applied to Stillwell. Skelton’s denial of Chaplin ties was a more tangential phenomenon. While the silent-cinema clown had never directly mentored Skelton, he so revered Chaplin, such as constantly using him as a model for his early goals on television, that Skelton’s later protestation of parallels is ultimately his most ludicrous.
Regardless, the Keaton-related Skelton pictures were invariably Skelton at his best. Had some sort of ongoing collaboration between the two been allowed by MGM, Skelton’s greatest comedy legacy might just have been in movies instead of television. As it was, Keaton would go on to make valuable contributions to the later Skelton films Watch the Birdie (1950) and Excuse My Dust (1951). Moreover, Watch the Birdie (a loose updating of Keaton’s 1928 The Cameraman), was invariably superior to the other MGM material being offered to Skelton. While one can never say what might have been, it remains historically significant to reestablish here that Keaton’s impact on Skelton was considerable.
Chapter 9 Notes
1. Eleanor Norris Keaton, letter to the author, late 1980s.
2. “‘Ziegfeld Follies’ Gorgeous, Massive, Spectacular Revue,” Hollywood Reporter, August 14, 1945.
3. Ziegfeld Follies review, New York Times, March 23, 1946.
4. “‘Ziegfeld Follies’ Gorgeous, Massive, Spectacular Revue.”
5. Joe Pihodna, The Show-Off review, New York Herald Tribune, March 20, 1947.
6. “‘Merton’ Parades Skelton,” Hollywood Reporter, July 18, 1947.
7. Bosley Crowther, Merton of the Movies review, New York Times, November 7, 1947.
8. Tom Donnelly, “Letting Down to an Awful Build-Up,” Washington (DC) News, October 4, 1947.
9. Merton of the Movies review, Variety, July 23, 1947.
10. Philip K. Scheuer, “Red Skelton Tickles Ribs as Merton,” Los Angeles Times, October 4, 1947; Wanda Hale, Merton of the Movies review, New York Daily News, November 7, 1947.
11. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Legal Department Records, 1946–47, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California.
12. Thomas F. Brady, “Hollywood Agenda,” New York Times, February 9, 1947.
13. Bob Thomas, “Hollywood,” Burlingame Advance, May 26, 1947.
14. “Radio Notes,” Newsweek, September 24, 1945, 26.
15. Bob Thomas, “Ten Best Film Comic Picked by Joe E. Brown,” Long Beach (CA) Press Telegram, August 20, 1947.
16. Louella Parsons (syndicated), “Skelton Gets Picture Break He Has Earned,” San Diego Union, August 22, 1947.
17. Red Skelton, “The Role I Liked Best … ,” Saturday Evening Post, February 28, 1948, 91.
18. James Agee, “Comedy’s Greatest Era,” Life, September 3, 1949, anthologized in Agee on Film, vol. 1 (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1969).
19. See Wes D. Gehring, Personality Comedians As Genre: Selected Players (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997).
20. Frank Quinn, “Skelton and Eleanor Powell Whoop It Up In ‘I Dood It,’” New York Daily Mirror, November 11, 1943.
21. I Dood It review, Time, November 29, 1943, p. 92.
22. Skelton, “Role I Liked Best,” 91.
23. Vincente Minnelli, with Hector Arce, I Remember It Well (New York: Samuel French, 1974), 128.
24. Harold Heffernan, “Red Skelton Is Funny as a Double Dealing Spy,” Long Island (NY) Star-Journal, January 29, 1948.
25. Archer Winsten, “‘I Dood It’ Is Opened at Paramount Theatre,” New York Post, November 11, 1943.
26. Red Skelton, interview with author, September 18, 1986, Muncie, Indiana, and Skelton, “Role I Liked Best,” 91.
27. Anita Mykowsky, phone conversation with author, 2000.
28. Larry Edwards, Buster: A Legend in Laughter (Bradenton, FL: McGuinn and McGuire, 1995), 143.
29. Rudi Blesh, Keaton (1966; reprint, New York: Collier Books, 1971), 354.
30. Frank Miller, Leading Men: The 50 Most Unforgettable Actors of the Studio Era (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006), 115.
31. Buster Keaton, with Charles Samuels, My Wonderful World of Slapstick (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1960), 261.
32. Eleanor Norris Keaton, conversation with author, Piqua, Kansas (Buster Keaton birthplace), late 1980s.
33. Telescope: Deadpan (Buster Keaton), CBS Canada, broadcast April 14, 1966, video collection of the Museum of Television and Radio, Beverly Hills, California.
34. Norman Panama and Melvin Frank, The Spy, August 12, 1947, A Southern Yankee script material folder number 1, University of Southern California Cinema-Television Library, Los Angeles, California (hereafter cited as USC Cinema-Television Library).
35. See Wes D. Gehring, Parody as Film Genre: “Never Give a Saga an Even Break” (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999).
36. Kathleen Gable, Clark Gable: A Personal Portrait (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1961), 79
37. Keaton, My Wonderful World of Slapstick, 264
38. Marion Meade, Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase (New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 1995), 239.
39. Harry Tugend, A Southern Yankee script material, filed July 19, 1948, Yankee script material folder number 1, USC Cinema-Television Library.
40. Buster Keaton and Edward Sedgwick, A Southern Yankee “retakes,” April 20, 1948, Yankee script material folder number 4, USC Cinema-Television Library.
41. Heffernan, “Red Skelton Is Funny as a Double Dealing Spy.”
42. Keaton, My Wonderful World of Slapstick, 264.
43. Henri Bergson, “Laughter,” in Comedy, Wylie Sypher, ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1956), 105.
44. Buster Keaton and Edward Sedgwick, A Southern Yankee “retakes,” April 27, 1948, Yankee script material folder number 4, USC Cinema-Television Library.
45. Keaton, My Wonderful World of Slapstick, 264.
46. A Southern Yankee review, Variety, August 11, 1948, p. 8.
47. “Top Notch Comedy Won’t Miss at B0,” Hollywood Reporter, August 6, 1948.
48. Darr Smith, A Southern Yankee review, Los Angeles Daily News, in the A Southern Yankee file, Herrick Library.
49. A Southern Yankee review, Cue, November 27, 1948.
50. William R. Weaver, A Southern Yankee review, Motion Picture Daily, August 6, 1948.
51. Arthur Marx, Red Skelton (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979), 140.
52. A Southern Yankee review, New York Times, November 25, 1948, 47.
53. “‘Yankee’ Verdict Is Generally Negative Among N. Y. Critics,” Hollywood Reporter, December 1, 1948.
54. Leo Mishkin, A Southern Yankee review, New York Morning Telegraph, November 25, 1948.
55. Fred Hift, A
Southern Yankee review, Motion Picture Herald, August 7, 1948.
56. Weaver, A Southern Yankee review.
57. Betsy Baytos, “Interview with Red Skelton,” Dance Collection Oral History, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, New York, New York, February 20, 1996, p. 59.
58. Marvin L. Skelton, phone interview with author, December 14, 2006.
10
A Small-Screen Chaplin Wannabe and the Two Mrs. Skeltons
“Look Out, Television; Here Comes Red Skelton!”1
1946 newspaper headline
As one sorts through the post-World War II Red Skelton literature leading up to the comedian’s first season on television (1951–52), one realizes what Skelton’s movie mentor, Buster Keaton, was up against, when he voiced frustration about Skelton’s obsession with radio at a time when they were jointly involved in a film production. Indeed, Skelton is quoted in 1947 as saying, “Movies are not my friend. Radio and television are.”2 In 1948 Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham even reported that Skelton would have liked to limit his Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer filmmaking to one picture a year, in order “to take his [weekly] radio show around the country.”3
Having noted all this, however, had Skelton been able to work exclusively with his favorite director, S. Sylvan Simon, maybe the comedian would have changed his mind. Simon directed Skelton in his career-making film Whistling in the Dark (1941), as well as the picture’s two sequels (1942 and 1944). When MGM struggled with Skelton’s post-World War II film assignments and a loan out to Columbia was arranged, Skelton made certain Simon was part of the production package.
The comedian was not disappointed. The Fuller Brush Man (1948) was Skelton’s greatest commercial hit as a screen headliner.4 Moreover, the movie was one of the top grossing pictures of 1948, even besting Skelton’s most inspired film, A Southern Yankee (also 1948). Skelton later appeared in two movies with higher box-office returns, Neptune’s Daughter (1949) and Around the World in 80 Days (1956). But the former film had Esther Williams as the top-billed title character, while the latter vehicle was an all-star affair with much of Hollywood surfacing in cameos.
Fuller Brush Man had Skelton mixing the door-to-door salesman trade with a murder mystery—shades of the Whistling series. Thanks to Simon, much of the comedy was grounded in the real world of Fuller Brush sales. The director’s slice-of-life accent resulted in the company sending out ten thousand questionnaires to its men, “asking them to tell the most humorous incident which has happened to them.”5 Simon ultimately used several documented items in the film, such as Skelton the hairbrush salesman being met at the door by a bald homeowner.
Ironically, Skelton’s screen frustrations as a door-to-door salesman also seem to have been drawn from reality. First, Simon had the comedian attend an official Fuller Brush class. Though history has not recorded how this went, phase two of his tutorial (actually going door to door) was a comic bust. The Los Angeles Daily News’s article on the subject was titled, “Red Skelton Finds He’s [a] Flop as [a] Fuller Brush Salesman.”6 A subdued Skelton had frequently gone unrecognized by potential customers. One housewife later confessed to him, “You’re such a bad salesman; you know, I was only going to buy your brushes because I thought that other man [Skelton’s photographer] was a supervisor breaking you in.”7
Pity factor or not, Skelton loved Simon’s research-orientated approach to comedy, with its foundation in meeting real people. Plus, the comedian appreciated the director encouraging him to ad-lib, or as Simon later described it, “[I] let Skelton have full rein and Skelton took advantage of every opportunity.”8 For example, at one point the script had Skelton innocuously asking an investigating detective lieutenant if he wanted cream in his coffee. Instead, Skelton ad-libbed, and Simon retained it in the final print, “How do you like your cream, Lieutenant, with one or two cups of coffee?” Being part of the creative process meant the world to Skelton. This was at the heart of why he preferred his radio program over filmmaking—greater artistic control. Even months after the release of Fuller Brush Man, Skelton told a reporter he was “eternally grateful” to Simon, with the journalist adding, “[Skelton] hasn’t yet recovered from the shock of meeting such an understanding director.”9
A “wigged-out” moment for the enthusiastic novice salesman Skelton in The Fuller Brush Man (1948) with Don McGuire. (Wes D. Gehring Stills Collection)
The picture’s superlative reviews often hinted at the naturalness of Skelton’s performance. The Washington (DC) Star complimented Columbia studio’s “good idea” of “letting the comedian be himself instead of asking him to play a character dreamed up by one of those so-called writers.”10 Along similar lines, the Hollywood Reporter said Skelton was “allowed to run completely wild, perhaps for the first time, and is, as a result, a wonderfully funny comedian.”11 Fittingly, Skelton’s favorite director was often singled out for praise in the reviews, such as the New York Post’s comment, “S. Sylvan Simon, producer and director of the film, here shows himself [a] master of the slapstick finale.”12
Some critics, such as the Brooklyn Eagle’s Lew Sheaffer, entertainingly documented the demonstratively positive response of a Fuller Brush Man audience: “The [theater] house must have been full of Red Skelton fans yesterday … because the laughter was loud, frequent and almost continuous. They obviously thought him a very funny chap.”13 Heartland audiences and critics were equally taken with the film, as documented by this review excerpt from Iowa’s Cedar Rapids Gazette: “Red Skelton is currently Hollywood’s top comedian. The large, howling audiences viewing his hilarious ‘Fuller Brush Man’ are getting proof of that.”14
For all the brilliance of this Simon-Skelton collaboration, the movie was also greatly assisted by the writing of Frank Tashlin, who coscripted Fuller Brush Man with Devery Freeman. Tashlin’s later comedy writing and directing for Bob Hope, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and a solo Jerry Lewis made him the critical darling of the influential French film journal Cahier du Cinema. Given that Tashlin’s background included being a syndicated newspaper comic-strip artist, as well as later stints with Walt Disney and Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes animation department, his live-action work with various personality comedians often assumed a frantically surrealistic nature. Fuller Brush Man’s best example of this is the movie’s universally praised closing chase that showcases Skelton and costar Janet Blair fighting off gangsters in a military surplus warehouse. Drawing from Tashlin’s inventive script, Simon creates a cartoonish world full of comically inflating dinghies, camouflage netting that doubles as a trampoline, distress flare explosions, and a falling prefab barrack wall. Time magazine described the exaggerated scene as “full of the ingenious low-comedy ideas which practically nobody seems to be able to think up these days.”15
Moving beyond Tashlin’s gift for exaggerated physical comedy in live-action settings, Fuller Brush Man’s warehouse close also anticipated Tashlin’s satirical skills at lampooning big business, fashion, and advertising in The Girl Can’t Help It (1956, screenwriter/director/producer) and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957, screenwriter/director/producer). The Skelton teaser for the shape of satirical Tashlin things to come occurs when the comedian and Blair are trying to get help via a warehouse stockpile of walkie-talkies, with their transmissions comically disrupting local radio and television broadcasts. Consequently, after a radio announcer begins a meat commercial with the following pitch, “And this is what a satisfied user of ‘Simon Sausage’ has to say about ‘Simon Sausage,’” Skelton’s plea cuts in with “Help, they’re killing me,” with Blair adding, “We can’t hold out much longer.”
The warehouse conclusion also inadvertently provides satirical cracks when Skelton and Blair are simply attempting to share tactical ideas over the walkie-talkies. For example, Skelton’s suggestion to Blair on how to stop the pursuit of the bad guys involves pulling the inflatable dinghy cords. But this “battle” directive breaks in on a radio program covering current clothing fashions. Just as the broadcast
er states, “And now the celebrated [French] fashion designer Jean Louis will give us his opinion of the new longer dresses,” Skelton seamlessly interrupts, “Blow ’em up!”
An informal moment on the set of The Fuller Brush Man, as Skelton addresses the subject of a door-to-door salesman meeting a sexy customer, Adele Jergens. (Wes D. Gehring Stills Collection)
Interestingly, Tashlin’s work on Fuller Brush Man actually predated the writer’s collaborations with Hope. This reversed the normal sequence of events where Skelton, if he was lucky, worked with talent that had originally risen to prominence with Hope. For example, the original story idea for A Southern Yankee came from Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, who started out as Hope radio writers. Following Fuller Brush Man, Tashlin was an integral part of such Hope hits as The Paleface (1948, co-screenwriter), The Lemon Drop Kid (1951, co-screenwriter/uncredited codirector), and Son of Paleface (1952, co-screenwriter/director).
Paradoxically, as noted earlier in the book, Skelton was not a fan of Tashlin’s less-than-realistic style, despite the praise for the cartoonish conclusion of Fuller Brush Man. Skelton preferred the one-foot-in-reality approach to comedy that was more the hallmark of Simon. Consequently, while it is hardly surprising that Skelton and Tashlin did not work together again, the fact that Skelton and Simon never again collaborated is a surprise, although this was not for a lack of trying. Syndicated Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham reported in early 1948, prior to the release of Fuller Brush Man: “Red Skelton is interested in director Sylvan Simon’s [film biography] project to star him as [Harry] Houdini, the magician.”16
Skelton and Simon remained close, with the director being a special guest on Skelton’s radio program in February 1948. Syndicated filmland columnist Bob Thomas kiddingly wrote of the visit, “Perhaps this is Skelton’s revenge,” given that the comedian was in charge of his broadcasts, versus Simon’s control of the movie set.17 Still, the director was the Skelton’s biggest fan, calling him “probably the greatest living comic. The funniest sequences in all the pictures we’ve done together have come as a result of his split-second inspirations. He’s the only comic I know who can get laughs and heart-tugs from the same audience.”18 Reciprocally, Skelton both appreciated being appreciated and Simon’s gift for believable buffoonery. Skelton’s allegiance to the director is matter-of-factly articulated in the Los Angeles Examiner’s glowing review of Fuller Brush Man: “Speaking of gratitude, it’s not amiss to mention that Skelton and the rest of us owe a great debt to Sylvan Simon.”19