by Wes Gehring
19. Marx, Red Skelton, 254.
20. Valentina Skelton Alonso, telephone interview with the author, March 5, 2007.
21. Steve Allen, “Jackie Gleason,” in The Funny Men (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956), 145.
22. Red Skelton, ed., A Red Skelton in Your Closet (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1965), 5.
23. Peter Evans, Peter Sellers: The Mask behind the Mask (1968; reprint, New York: Signet, 1980), 194.
24. Woody Allen: The Night-Club Years, 1964–1968 [long-playing records], United Artists, 9968, 1976.
25. Marx, Red Skelton, 258.
26. Hedda Hopper, “Under Hedda’s Hat,” New York Herald Tribune, March 1, 1964.
27. Gloria Greer, “Red Skelton: At Home on the Desert,” Palm Springs Life, April 1963, p. 35.
28. Georgia Skelton, “Do Comics Make Good Husbands?” Screenland (June 1952): 58.
29. Alonso telephone interview (March 5, 2007).
30. Ibid. (February 27, 2007).
31. “Red Skelton Turns to Art, Scores a Hit,” Chicago Tribune, August 23, 1964.
32. Ibid.
33. Alonso telephone interview (February 27, 2007).
34. Joan Acocella, quoted in Kathryn Harrison’s review, “Lives in the Arts,” New York Times, February 18, 2007.
35. Marx, Red Skelton, 270.
36. Dan Jenkins, “It Hasn’t All Been Laughs,” TV Guide, February 20, 1960, 19.
37. Marvin L. Skelton, telephone interview with the author, December 14, 2006.
38. Ibid. (December 12, 2006).
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid. (February 6, 2007).
41. Ibid. (December 12, 2006).
42. Red Skelton Bound Letters, box 8, Letters to Valentina & Friends, undated letter [1965] to Valentina, Red Skelton Collection, Vincennes University.
43. Alonso telephone interview (March 5, 2007).
44. Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 1946–Present (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979), 805–8.
45. Dwight Whitney, “The Weekly Ordeal of Red Skelton” (part one), TV Guide, April 20, 1963, p. 16.
46. Robert de Roos, “Television’s Greatest Clown,” TV Guide, October 14, 1961, 13.
47. Marx, Red Skelton, 278–79.
48. Roos, “Television’s Greatest Clown,” 13.
49. “The Unflappable Miss Morrison,” TV Guide, July 11, 1964, 26.
50. Wes D. Gehring, Joe E. Brown: Film Comedian and Baseball Buffoon (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2006).
51. Roos, “Television’s Greatest Clown,” 13.
52. Manohla Dargis, “The Imperfect Soul Who Helped Bring an End to the Slave Trade,” New York Times, February 23, 2007.
53. Marx, Red Skelton, 221.
54. Alonso telephone interview (February 27, 2007).
55. Ibid. (March 5, 2007).
56. Wade H. Mosby, “Blue Shows Make Red Redder,” Milwaukee Journal, March 2, 1969.
57. “Skelton Razzes Network Ban on Political Jokes,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 11, 1956.
58. Fred D. Cavinder, ed., The Indiana Book of Quotes (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2005), 14.
59. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 808.
60. Kay Gardella, “A Study of Comedy Styles Is Concert in Pantomime,” New York Daily News, February 4, 1965.
61. “Parts of ‘Red Skelton’ Magnificent, Sum Total of Show Sometimes Less,” Hollywood Reporter, February 4, 1965.
62. Larry Rhine, correspondence with the author, November 16, 1998.
63. Wesley Hyatt, A Critical History of Television’s “The Red Skelton Show,” 1951–1971 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2004), 112.
14
The Last Act
Decades before another Hoosier comedian, David Letterman, announced his casual comedy style as, “it ain’t brain surgery,” Red Skelton had embraced a similar philosophy, “even if we fluff a few [comic lines], who cares? We aren’t the United Nations in a debating session. We’re just having fun.”1
Even if this nonchalant manner used to bug that other golden age of television redhead (Lucille Ball), Red Skelton was still the consummate professional. Moreover, Skelton’s twenty consecutive years in nighttime television were unprecedented in comedy (only to later be broken by one of his protégées, Johnny Carson). Thus, Skelton was shocked by CBS’s 1970 cancellation of his show. Despite Skelton’s high ratings, the network felt his demographics were too small town/rural and old. CBS was out to attract a younger, urban-based audience. The comedian, however, did receive a year reprieve, as the NBC network picked up Skelton’s program for the 1970–71 season. Nevertheless, in the network moving the program from its longtime Tuesday night slot to Sunday evening and cutting its length from sixty minutes to a half hour, Skelton lost a good portion of his old audience, which still skewered as less than ideal for youth-orientated Madison Avenue. Skelton was canceled yet again.
While anyone would be upset at this professional rejection, Skelton maintained a bitter attitude toward CBS for the remainder of his life. Part of the comedian’s ire was grounded in a statement he had made several years before: “I only come to life when there are people watching [me entertain].”2 Performing was everything to Skelton, and the network took away his greatest stage—television. A second component in Skelton’s anger towards CBS was about respect. This was a pivotal word with Skelton. The term came up all the time with the comedian, from conversations to correspondence, such as the letter to his daughter cited in the previous chapter.3 But maybe his most telling respect reference occurred in a syndicated 1969 article the year before CBS dropped him when he said, “You only get respect in this world through your own creative ability.”4 With regard to the network, he had given CBS years of “creative ability” through quality popular programming, and it had unceremoniously fired him. For Skelton, this translated as no respect.
In a Las Vegas curtain call the following year, Skelton said, “My heart has been broken [by the cancellation of the television show].”5 The first high-profile display of his lingering bitterness, however, occurred in an exclusive 1974 interview he with the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer: “I was thrown off TV because I didn’t think rape and abortion and murder were funny. My producers insisted I deal with ‘adult material’ but I just wanted to be Red Skelton.”6 Yet, this is a misleading indictment of television. Here are the top five programs during Skelton’s last season: Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969–1976), The Flip Wilson Show (1970–74), Here’s Lucy (1962–74), Ironside (1967–75), and Gunsmoke (1955–1975).7 Other than Wilson, these were shows with a direct link to the 1950s. Indeed, Gunsmoke and Here’s Lucy were 1950s programs, with the latter show just pared down to the title character of I Love Lucy (1951–57). Former Father Knows Best (1954–60) star Robert Young transferred his crackerbarrel wisdom to another fatherly title character in Marcus Welby, M.D. Along similar recycled lines, Perry Mason (1957–66) star Raymond Burr continued to fight crime in Ironside, a title drawn from his character being confined to a wheelchair.
Granted, Wilson broke new ground as the first black entertainer to achieve major success as the host of a primetime variety series. But even here, once the race card was played, Wilson was very much in the tradition of so many multitalented 1950s comedians, excelling at playing a host of comedy characters such as Geraldine Jones and Reverend LeRoy. In fact, sassy Geraldine’s signature crack, “The devil made me do it,” is reminiscent of Skelton’s Junior character proudly flaunting being naughty, “I dood it!” Indeed, a young Wilson had had the most practical Skelton-related epiphany about his career, noting, “the comedians who have done characters have had the longevity. Gleason, Skelton had characters to help them carry the weight on TV.”8
Skelton’s rant in National Enquirer was more about a television comedy phenomenon that started the year after his series was canceled—a sitcom called All in the Family (1971–79). This controversi
al comedy changed television history, embracing reality like no series had ever done before. While Skelton liked to think the networks were forcing this type of provocative material on the American public, Family reigned as the number-one rated program for five consecutive seasons from 1971 to 1976.9 Ironically, for all the provocative topics showcased by Family, even here there was a connection with one of Skelton’s favorite 1950s rivals, Jackie Gleason’s seminal 1950s character Ralph Kramden. Both Kramden and Family’s Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) were reactionary loudmouths who were capable of a metamorphosis into a vulnerable everyman, considerably broadening their audiences.
Regardless, Skelton never let go of his CBS-directed anger. For example, when the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences gave him the Governor’s Award for lifetime achievement at the 1986 Emmy Awards, he told the audience, after a standing ovation, “I want to thank you for sitting down. I thought you were pulling a CBS and walking out on me.” Why belabor Skelton’s acrimony? Sadly, it was the catalyst for a decision that essentially negated Skelton’s great television legacy. The comedian owned the rights to his programs and never allowed them to be rebroadcast in syndication.
In contrast, the two most celebrated figures from early television history are now considered to be Ball and Gleason. But this lofty status is not based upon comedy brilliance alone. I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners have remained on the small screen in nearly continuous reruns since the 1950s. This mix of high-quality comedy and familiarity has cemented the unique pop culture status of Lucy and Kramden. (Repeated television broadcasts have also worked the same magic on The Wizard of Oz, 1939, and It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946.) Skelton merits equal pantheon status with Ball and Gleason. But by bitterly keeping his television shows out of circulation, he denied himself that special recognition. That was not the worst of it, by sitting on these programs and minimizing his cooperation (not providing clips) for documentary producers chronicling the early years of television, Skelton inadvertently erased himself from video history.
This, however, is getting ahead of Skelton’s story. On the eve of the comedian’s exit from prime-time television he was still living the good life in Palm Springs. There were cracks in the façade, however, as best demonstrated by the events that transpired on the night of July 20, 1966. Skelton was entertaining at Las Vegas’s Sands Hotel. Skelton had been accompanied by his wife Davis, daughter Valentina, and her college boyfriend, Art Coleman. During Skelton’s midnight show, Davis “accidentally” shot herself with a .38-caliber handgun in the bedroom of the entertainer’s suite. Valentina and Coleman were the first on the scene, though Coleman would not let Valentina enter the bedroom. They had been preparing something to eat in the suite’s kitchen when they heard Davis moaning in the bedroom. Coleman investigated and had Valentina call the hotel doctor.
Alhough treated as an accident by the authorities, the family knew it was a suicide attempt. In an interview, Valentina shared some insights about that night and her parent’s “screwy marriage”—insights that reveal a lot about living with a workaholic artist.10 Valentina said her mother was suffering from depression and feels today Georgia would have been diagnosed as having a bipolar disorder.
On the night in question, Valentina said there were two possible catalysts for her mother’s suicide attempt. First, Skelton had insisted upon introducing Davis onstage during an earlier show. Davis was unhappy about this, feeling she had gained weight and did not look her best. Not only had Skelton insisted, but he also proceeded to make a comic crack about her appearance. Second, Valentina had also heard that her mother was having an affair with the president of the Sands Hotel, and that relationship had taken some melodramatic turn.
Valentina’s first take on the possible cause of the suicide attempt is closest to previous accounts of the incident. In Arthur Marx’s biography, Skelton is upset about a low-cut gown Davis wore that evening. Marx quoted writer/producer Bob Schiller as saying, “Red didn’t like the dress, and he bawled the hell out of her [privately] for wearing it. He really was furious, like only Red can be.”11 Of course, both items probably fueled the shooting. As was established in the previous chapter, Davis’s promiscuity often triggered a mean streak in Skelton’s humor.
A final wild card that night in Vegas was that Georgia was on Valium and assorted prescription pills. And though she was an alcoholic, it is unclear whether Davis had also been drinking. Naturally, this further clouds the issue as to just what pushed her over the line. Also, in any big-picture overview of her parents’ “screwy marriage,” Valentina is adamant about her father’s controlling nature: “He really messed her [Davis] up. Dad wanted her attention 24-7. She had no life of her own. He would even wake her up [with attention needs, such as his writing]. She couldn’t sleep—so that got her into more pills. I think mother had spunk when they first met but he was so very demanding that he broke her spirit. I would tell her, ‘You’ve lost your identity doing everything for Dad.’”12
Paradoxically, while there is an abundance of evidence to support Valentina’s claims about her father being controlling, the original citations are couched in language that grants Skelton a childlike innocence, without suggesting the debilitating long-term impact on Davis. Thus, a 1961 TV Guide reported, “Before a show he is a frightened man who desperately needs comfort and clings to Mrs. Skelton. ‘It’s fear of not being liked, I guess,’ Red says. ‘The fear of not being good.’”13 One is reminded of earlier references to how Skelton’s first wife and writer, Edna Stillwell, always had to be visible in the theater wings when he performed. The need for a comforting presence was not limited to show time, as the TV Guide article went on to note, “Skelton is a lonely man, sentimental, brooding, sensitive. ‘When I go out to the hairdresser or shopping, that is a big minus for Red,’ says Mrs. Skelton [Davis]. ‘He wants me around all the time.’”14
Valentina’s poignant comment about her mother’s original “spunk” is well taken. Among Skelton’s private papers is a folder containing a childhood memoir Davis composed in 1934 when she was twelve years old. While the comments one makes when the world is young often resonate with proverbial “piss and vinegar,” Davis sounds like quite a feisty handful: “My father … is always telling me what to do and I fly into him like a fox after a chicken, then the fight is on. All of a sudden my mother appears … and I pity my dad. That’s the way it goes. I boss [my younger sister] Maxine and daddy around and mother bosses us all. Maxine and I have grand fights together and sometimes she gets a bloody nose.… It seems like one of us ought to be a prize fighter.”15
The young, spirited Davis also demonstrated a wonderful sense of comic irony in this memoir, as well as linking her passion to the red hair she shared with an equally animated mom: “My mother came from a family that was pretty well off and from the way she still buys things I guess she thinks she still is. You don’t want to even be around when the bills come in ’cause she and daddy just raise old ned [à la “raise Cain,” cause a disturbance]. She has red hair like mine and hazel eyes.”
There is even a passage in the autobiography that hints at the flirtatious young woman Skelton fell in love with a decade later: “I like to be noticed like other children, so I am always trying to attract someone, often … by making wisecracks but I don’t get very far with it.” Combine this lively nature to Davis’s eventual drop-dead beauty as a 1940s starlet (likened to “a young Rita Hayworth,” according to Valentina), and one can understand the attraction for Skelton.16 Therefore, it is gut-wrenching to move from Davis’s bubbly autobiography to the next item in the folder—a newspaper article about her 1976 suicide. Where had that little “prize fighter” gone?
Valentina believes that if there had been something like the Betty Ford Clinic back in the 1960s, maybe her mother’s life could have turned out differently. Davis did see a psychiatrist once or twice after her 1966 suicide attempt. “Dad decided she didn’t need any more sessions, saying ‘She’ll just fool them anyway,’” Valentina recalled.17 A
s noted earlier in the text, Skelton felt his innate sense of discipline was something of which anyone should be capable. Persons of great accomplishments often have this blind spot, even when it involves loved ones. I am reminded of similar comments made about Bing Crosby by his son Gary, when the latter was promoting his Mommie Dearest-like book, Going My Own Way (1983). Even Skelton was not completely oblivious to his martinet tendencies as a husband/father, because late in life he asked Valentina if she, too, planned a Mommie Dearest type tome about him.
While the pop-culture stereotype of the clown has long implied a sad private life, the often equally somber plight of their spouses is a neglected subject. But being married to a comedian is frequently less than amusing, for example, in writing two books on the Marx Brothers, I was amazed that each of Groucho’s three wives became an alcoholic.18 Just as a reference was made earlier to the Steve Allen comment about rare is the nonneurotic comic, the vast majority of my many comedian biographies document failed relationships.19 Moreover, Davis not only found herself in a suffocating marriage, but there was also a precedent in her family for taking an early exit from life. Two of her uncles had already committed suicide, and studies suggest that once a family antecedent exits, follow-ups are more likely.
Despite all these sad musings on the marital front, it would be unfair to neglect some of the comedian’s positive daily letters to his second wife. In an undated note from the late 1960s, he equates love with that all-important “r” word (respect): “Now that Valentina’s birthday has passed, I feel I should thank you for all you have given me. I love you and Valentina … there is nothing about us unblessed. Love and respect was so noticeable last night it was almost noisy.”20
In a comic letter from 1967, Skelton sounds like a self-deprecating “New Age” Shirley MacLaine: “We console ourselves that, if we come back in the next life, we’ll come back as a dog or a cat or a ghost and haunt some bastard. Not me. I was royalty in my last life. I come back [this time] as one of two things: a love bug or a jackass ’cause I am happy and won’t carry more than my load too long.”21