Red Skelton

by Wes Gehring

  Ironically, part of the personal attractiveness of Skelton to both his wives was rooted in a component that also generated problems—his man-child nature. Davis’s positive spin on this duality might have been uttered by either woman: “He is a madcap clown, with an appealing helplessness and kindness that opens your heart.”47 Still, whether it was Stillwell having to orchestrate damage control over Skelton’s walkathon pranks, or Davis being upset about duplicate Christmas gifts, the comedian just did not always clearly think through his actions.

  While both women tried to protect Skelton from himself, late 1940s fans were most aware of Stillwell’s attempts to fix the comedian’s “kidadult” tendencies. The most glaring period example of this phenomenon also addressed another Skelton weakness—his proclivity for misrepresenting the facts and/or embellishing the truth. The case in point involves Skelton’s unhappiness with MGM’s handling of his film career. In 1947 there was a flurry of articles about the comedian’s claim that he would pay the studio $750,000 to release him from his contract.48 While armchair critics and pop-culture pundits debated Skelton’s deep-pocketed offer, the comedian was soon “red” in the face. A week after his Daddy Warbucks-like pitch, it was revealed that “Red Skelton, who knows more about jokes than high finance, said today he was all mixed up when he told everybody he’d offered MGM $750,000 to let him go. He hasn’t, he’s discovered, that kind of dough.”49

  How does this happen? Yet again, Stillwell had to come to the rescue. Sometimes an attempt at damage control only made things worse and that seemed to be the case here. Stillwell stated, “We’ve asked for our release—or an adjustment in salary. What I told Red was that he’d earn about $750,000 during his next four years there. Not—definitely not—that we’d pay them that for our release! But all he remembered from the conversation was the $750,000.”50 Moreover, this embarrassing situation was the catalyst, in the same article, for the comedian’s single most telling comment of his public life. A “snickering” Skelton said, “That’s my trouble. If you want a good story—talk to me. If you want the facts—talk to Edna.” This speaks volumes about Skelton’s creative approach to the facts of his life.

  Skelton might have been married to Davis in 1947, but crises like this more often linked him to Stillwell in the public’s eye. Her high-profile identity with Skelton was also underlined by the fact that she continued to perform spouselike duties for him: “She’s on twenty-four-hour call for anything pertaining to his [Skelton’s] career, oversees all business investments, and takes care of chores such as looking after his wardrobe and making sure that six suits are in the cleaners and six available to work with.”51 Indeed, when a journalist during this period asked the comedian to see a picture of his baby daughter Valentina, Skelton said, “Hey, Edna, show her a picture of Valentina.”52

  Despite all of the comedian’s postwar prophetic comments about the future of television, or his insightful observations about comedy and Chaplin, the late 1940s media often saw Skelton as an overgrown kid. Unlike Stillwell’s and Davis’s lovingly parental attempts to protect him, critics could be less than kind. For example, syndicated Hollywood columnist Graham was so put off by Skelton’s former wife handling everything, right down to his child’s baby picture, that she wrote, “One day I’m going to ask Edna to show me a picture of Red Skelton, because he’s like a baby, too. That’s the way Edna handles him.”53

  Events of the early 1950s put Skelton on a further metaphorical roller coaster with representatives of the fourth estate. A last hurrah to the comedian’s film career and a brilliant launching of his much-anticipated television career still made him a popular positive subject of the press. A disastrous second season on the small screen and a public meltdown with Davis, however, led to more questions about the comedian’s stability. Events such as these would no doubt trigger Skelton’s later frequently noted mantra, “I’m nuts and I know it but as long as I make them laugh they ain’t going to lock me up.”54

  Chapter 10 Notes

  1. “Look Out, Television; Here Comes Red Skelton!” Long Beach (CA) Press Telegram, February 13, 1946.

  2. Bob Thomas, “Red Skelton Will Give Up Films for Television,” Boston Evening Globe, November 19, 1947.

  3. Sheilah Graham, “Red Skelton Hopes Metro Will Ease Contract Terms,” Phoenix Gazette, February 3, 1948.

  4. Cobbett Steinberg, Reel Facts: The Movie Book of Records (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 344.

  5. “Fuller Brush Men Help Write Film,” Columbia News, April 23, 1948.

  6. “Red Skelton Finds He’s Flop as Fuller Brush Salesman,” Los Angeles Daily News, September 26, 1947.

  7. Ibid.

  8. “Red Skelton: Master of Ad-Lib,” Hollywood Lead Sheet, May 1948.

  9. “Red Skelton Makes Survey of Air Show,” Dallas News, June 22, 1948.

  10. Jay Carmody, “Skelton Is His Old Zany Self in Disguise of Brush Man,” Washington (DC) Star, June 11, 1948.

  11. “Skelton Runs Wild in Brilliant Farce,” Hollywood Reporter, May 7, 1948.

  12. “‘The Fuller Brush Man’ Gives Skelton a Workout,” New York Post, May 16, 1948.

  13. Lew Sheaffer, “Skelton Fans Will Like Red in State’s ‘Fuller Brush Man,’” Brooklyn Eagle, May 15, 1948.

  14. Loyal Meek, “Red Skelton’s New Comedy Is Hilarious,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, June 15, 1948.

  15. The Fuller Brush Man review, Time, May 31, 1948, 86.

  16. Sheilah Graham, “Hollywood,” Phoenix Gazette, March 19, 1948.

  17. Bob Thomas, “Life in Hollywood,” San Mateo (CA) Times and Leader, February 24, 1948.

  18. Arthur Marx, Red Skelton (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979), 139.

  19. Kay Proctor, “Skelton Film Super-Comedy,” Los Angeles Examiner, June 23, 1948.

  20. Sheilah Graham, “Red and Edna Write Life Story,” Hollywood Citizen News, March 27, 1947.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Hedda Hopper, “Looking at Hollywood,” Sacramento Union, January 27, 1946.

  23. Harold Heffernan, “Film Folk and Studio Gossip,” Seattle Times, January 1948, Red Skelton Scrapbook Number 9, January to August 1946, Red Skelton Collection, Vincennes University, Vincennes, Indiana.

  24. Red Skelton’s Writing, Skelton Collection.

  25. Sheilah Graham, “Skelton to Play Own Clown Role,” Hollywood Citizen News, February 12, 1948.

  26. Sid Ross, “Red Skelton … His Plane Was in Trouble,” Parade magazine, September 23, 1951, p. 9.

  27. Hedda Hopper, “Helter Skelton!” Chicago Tribune, June 17, 1951.

  28. Red Skelton photo showcase with text, Look magazine, May 14, 1946, 39.

  29. See “10,000,000 TV Pact for Procter and Gamble and Red Skelton,” Long Beach Press Telegram, May 3, 1951.

  30. “Red Skelton Signs Fabulous Contract,” Texarkana Gazette [May 1951], Skelton Scrapbook Number 11, January to December 1951, Skelton Collection.

  31. “Rubber Face on TV,” Life, October 28, 1951, p. 71.

  32. Jack Quigg, “Fantastic Capers by Red Skelton Are a Prelude to His TV Show,” Kansas City Star, May 13, 1951.

  33. Ross, “Red Skelton … His Plane Was in Trouble.”

  34. Larry Wolters, “Red Skelton TV Comedy Hit of the Year,” Chicago Tribune, December 2, 1951.

  35. Harriet Van Horne, “Skelton Has Chaplin Tragic-Comic Touch,” New York World Telegram, February 18, 1952.

  36. Hal Humphrey, “Skelton Taunts His ‘Lazy’ Rivals,” New York World Telegram and Sun, December 8, 1951.

  37. See Wes D. Gehring, Charlie Chaplin: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983).

  38. James Curtis, W. C. Fields: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 488.

  39. Georgia Skelton, “Do Comics Make Good Husbands?” Screenland (June 1952): 58.

  40. Cobina Wright, “Red Skelton Rates as ‘Comedian with a Heart’,” Los Angeles Examiner, May 13, 1951.

  41. Hedda Hopper, “Looking At Hollywood,” Oregon Journal, June 17, 1951.


  42. “We Point with Pride to Red Skelton,” Silver Screen (October 1947): 58.

  43. Marva Peterson, “The Two Mrs. Skeltons,” Movieland (April 1948): 56–57, 88.

  44. Marvin L. Skelton, phone interview with the author, December 14, 2006.

  45. Leo Rosten, “How to See Red—Skelton That Is” (part 2), Look, November 6, 1951, 80.

  46. Georgia Skelton, “Do Comics Make Good Husbands?” 58.

  47. Ibid., 22.

  48. For example, see “Skelton Offers $750,000 for MGM Contract,” Boston Traveler, October 27, 1947.

  49. Virginia MacPherson, “Mischievous Red Skelton Tangled Up in Red Tape,” Alameda (CA) Times Star, November 28, 1947.

  50. Ibid.

  51. Maxine Arnold, “Clown in Civies,” Photoplay (February 1948): 89.

  52. Sheilah Graham (syndicated), “Grandma’s ‘Lickle’ Boy Sad with MGM,” Tacoma (WA) News Tribune, January 4, 1948.

  53. Ibid.

  54. Bill Davidson, “‘I’m Nuts and I Know It’,” Saturday Evening Post, June 17, 1967, 69. The author also heard Skelton utter this mantra on several later visits to the Ball State University campus in Muncie, Indiana.

  11

  Racking up the Pressure

  “Red is a perpetual worrier. When he got out of the Army he bit his nails and couldn’t ever relax. He still has trouble being quiet more than a minute but he isn’t as insecure inside as he was.”1

  Georgia Davis Skelton, 1952

  Sadly, the above quote was overly optimistic. Later that same year, the calamitous opening of Red Skelton’s second television season, and the unnerving ongoing pressure to simply create fresh material for this all-consuming “glass furnace,” put his health and marriage at risk. Not since Skelton suffered what was sometimes described as a nervous breakdown during his World War II tour of duty in the army had he been brought so low by overwork and day-to-day anxiety. But for the student of Skelton, it is surprising that there had not been more psychological meltdowns in the interim, given his crowded work schedule.

  After the war Skelton had continued to headline a popular radio program that had finally decisively beaten Bob Hope—the comedian that had influenced him through the years—in the ratings for the 1949–50 season.2 Moreover, while the hectic demands of television eventually put the kibosh to Skelton’s screen career, he did not wind down gradually. Here is Skelton’s filmography following his masterpiece movie A Southern Yankee (1948): Neptune’s Daughter (1949); The Yellow Cab Man, Three Little Words, Duchess of Idaho (cameo), and Watch the Birdie (1950); Excuse My Dust and Texas Carnival (1951); Lovely to Look At (1952); and The Clown, Half a Hero, and The Great Diamond Robbery (1953). But other than one additional starring vehicle (Public Pigeon No. 1, 1957), and a handful of cameos (most memorably in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours and 11 Minutes, 1965), Skelton’s movie career abruptly ended.

  An inspired cameo by Skelton in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965). (David Smith Collection)

  Before exploring the notable rise and fall of those first two television seasons, it is important to closely examine the movies that led up to Skelton’s small-screen debut. Ironically, they reveal that MGM was finally getting a better handle on how best to use Skelton. The even greater paradox is that if Skelton had stayed with film and not jumped to television, he would probably now be acclaimed as one of the pantheon screen comedians, instead of a promising movie clown who aborted his big-screen career much too early.

  This MGM epiphany concerning Skelton did not, however, happen immediately. After Skelton’s major personality comedian hits in 1948—The Fuller Brush Man (produced by rival Columbia studio) and A Southern Yankee—Skelton’s only screen appearance the following year was in support of Esther Williams’s title character in MGM’s Neptune’s Daughter. This was a regression to the “cinema vaudeville” of World War II, where Skelton is limited to some entertaining turns in a variety show setting. Plus, unlike his earlier teaming with Williams in Bathing Beauty (1944), Skelton is not her love interest. That honor went to Ricardo Montalban, who, with the casting of Xavier Cugat and his orchestra, also reflected another aspect of Hollywood’s war mentality—feature Latin American talent in order to pick up new foreign markets and compensate for lost audiences in Nazi Germany-controlled Europe.

  Skelton plays a country club masseur who is confused with Montalban’s South American polo player. This is an effective catalyst for several Skelton scenes, such as his attempts to mount a polo pony, or a routine in which he pretends to speak Spanish, with the help of a record. Skelton is also funny in a musical duet with underrated comedy character actress Betty Garrett, when they share warbling duties of the Oscar-winning song “Baby It’s Cold Outside” with Williams and Montalban.

  One might query, “What’s the problem?” Skelton had the potential to be one of the premier pantomime-orientated screen clowns of history—a verdict first put forward by no less a legendary film comedian than Buster Keaton. Consequently, why would the studio put someone with such a colossal comedy capacity in a wordy supporting role? Distressingly, this is reminiscent of MGM’s misuse/underuse of Keaton himself in the early sound picture Free and Easy (1930). As the critic and later filmmaker Pare Lorentz said of Keaton’s performance in that movie, “[He] not only talks; he sings and dances. He does them all well but … there are thousands who can do his tricks just as well.… He is no longer the enigmatic [silent] personality.”3 Lorentz might have been speaking of Skelton in Neptune’s Daughter.

  Moving on to Skelton’s high visibility 1950, his first feature outing was more in line with what a major personality comedian should be doing. Skelton was the title character of The Yellow Cab Man—a loopy inventor who becomes a cabbie in an attempt to sell his nonbreakable “elastiglass” to the company. Cab is an entertaining mix of both old-school clown comedy and some new parody twists. The former trait is best characterized by the picture’s parallels with the comedy world of W. C. Fields.4 Despite Fields’s ever-so distinctive voice, a flowery drawl of honey-toned hucksterisms, his work is often visual in nature, especially when he plays an inventor.

  Coincidentally, one of Fields’s zany screen visionaries, from the silent So’s Your Old Man (1926), also creates an unbreakable windshield. Indeed, a pivotal scene in both this movie and Cab involved the special glass being switched just prior to an all-important sales demonstration, with each comedian’s character then being comically mortified when his unbreakable glass shatters. Interestingly enough, another Fields film might also have contributed to Skelton’s Cab. When Fields remade So’s Your Old Man in the sound era as You’re Telling Me (1934), the invention changed from unbreakable glass to a puncture-proof tire. When Fields tests his tires by firing a pistol at them, he also wears a baseball glove with which to catch the ricocheting bullets; and this is precisely how Skelton checks his unique glass in Cab.

  These Skelton links to Fields might have been an outgrowth of Skelton’s close friendship with writer Gene Fowler, one of the late Fields’s favorite drinking companions. Skelton was also enough of a Fields fan to have acquired, through Fowler’s assistance, several of the older entertainer’s comedy props. These included some oddly shaped cues and irons from signature Fields sketches involving a pool table and golf. Along related lines, early in Skelton’s tenure in television he added a Fields-like figure to his cast of comedy characters. Going by the name of San Fernando Red, this smooth-talking con artist was very much in the tradition of Fields’s huckster persona, including selling a “talking dog” to a sucker in Poppy (1936).

  Cab was not, however, just a retro personality comedy. The picture also applied parody to the period’s most up-to-date developments, such as that new genre of the 1940s, film noir. A more user friendly phrase would be “pulp fiction’s tough-guy detectives,” forever synonymous with such hardboiled detectives as Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. The film-n
oir hero, or antihero, might be tough but because he frequently is victimized by hard blunt objects and/or knockout drugs, he often finds himself in a surrealistic dream/nightmare state. For example, in Edward Dmytryk’s screen adaptation of Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely (Murder, My Sweet, 1944), Dick Powell (as Marlowe) blacks out so frequently it becomes a darkly comic component of the picture.

  The film-noir element in Skelton’s Cab, complete with mind games, is anchored in Walter Slezak’s portrayal of a mobster out to get Skelton’s secret formula for elastiglass. By doubling as a psychiatrist, Slezak can get at the inner inventor by simply hypnotizing the comedian into a trancelike state. Since Slezak’s shrink has Freudian overtones, given his psychological attempts to take Skelton back to childhood, this noir dreamlike state segues naturally into broad comedy, such as a brief sketch with Skelton playing both himself as a child and a battling twin. But sometimes the movie’s sense of the surreal has more to do with Skelton’s character being a goofy inventor. For example, his multifaceted alarm system has so many moving parts and assorted noisemakers that the Motion Picture Herald described it as “Rube Goldbergish,” which merely means a contraption that performs a simple task with a maximum amount of energy/action being spent.5

  Skelton being victimized by Walter Slezak (right) and J. C. Flippen in The Yellow Cab Man (1950). (Wes D. Gehring Stills Collection)

  Of course, the greatest drawing card for any personality comedy picture is the highlighted clown himself. This is a genre driven by a beloved characterization, a cinema friend with whom one is so minutely familiar that the fan simply wants to reconnect through laughter. Iconic clowns got that way by tapping into the universal in the particular, such as Chaplin using the victimization of his Tramp character by the neighborhood cop as yet another metaphor about the plight of the individual in modern society. Overt change to the personality comedian is not popular. Audiences simply want variations upon the same comedy shtick. Thus, when Chaplin abandoned the vulnerable Tramp for a murderous French Bluebeard in the brilliant Monsieur Verdoux (1947, a title character that assumes society’s victimizing role), audiences stayed away.