by Wes Gehring
The court was not convinced: “Myrna Oliver of the Los Angeles Times reported that one former writer, Jack Ritchard, submitted a sworn statement that he had heard Skelton say, ‘I have in my will that when I die, all my tapes will be burned.… I figure if I wasn’t important enough during my lifetime for the networks to do something with the reruns, there’s no reason to leave these things for anyone else to profit from.’”51 In September 1980 Skelton agreed to preserve roughly eight seasons of his small-screen show.
Television historian Wesley Hyatt strongly suggests that this bizarre case, coming so soon after Arthur Marx’s provocative 1979 Skelton biography, “no doubt formed a prejudice within the industry about using Red for any [future] television work. His eccentricities now were public knowledge and damaging to him. Who needed to work with someone so crazy that he would try to destroy his own hard work as well as that of hundreds of other people?”52 Interestingly, Skelton’s sanity question was not helped by its similarity to silent screen legend Mary Pickford’s earlier expressed desire to have her films burned upon her death for fear young viewers would now find them to be laughable museum pieces. Thankfully, people within the industry convinced her otherwise. But the crackpot nature of such a scheme, largely blamed upon the infirmities of Pickford’s old age, were now deposited upon Skelton’s doorstop.
In 1984 Skelton attempted to end the estrangement with his daughter by helping her open an art gallery that featured reproductions of his work. (Valentina’s 1969 marriage had ended after three years, but it did produce a daughter, Sabrina Alonso.) Though Valentina appreciated the gesture, she had no experience in the field and felt overwhelmed by the gallery. Inexplicably, she was given little access to her father and had to work through his secretary. Because Valentina was not allowed to handle her father’s original paintings, she had to scramble to maintain the gallery by featuring local artists. After a year she had had enough and retired from the operation. According to Valentina, her father, who had been “totally self-absorbed” up until this point, then “had a fit and shunned her.” This distancing continued “until the last three years of his life, other than meeting at a restaurant once a year for Thanksgiving.”53
At one of these subsequent Thanksgivings, probably in 1990, Valentina said, “Dad and Lothy [Toland] had been upset at how casually [the now grown] Sabrina was dressed, despite the long drive she had made to be there. How you dressed was a big thing with Dad. Even if your outfit was just a little different, he would really kid you.” (Years before, Davis had said of her husband, “He has a clothes complex—won’t wear old ones because they bring back the memories of when he was so poor.”54)
For whatever reason, maybe the teasing, this was also the Thanksgiving in which Sabrina came out to Skelton and Toland. According to Valentina, while the homophobic Skelton “was kind to Sabrina’s face, he verbally stabbed her behind her back. Dad was just down on homosexuals. He made fun of them.” Valentina is fiercely proud of Sabrina, who went on to graduate from UCLA and is now a documentary filmmaker in San Francisco.
Sabrina’s take on this Thanksgiving is slightly different from her mother’s, remembering that her gay background came out just before she arrived. Moreover, Sabrina has a balanced biographer-like take on Skelton: “My grandfather was a very conservative man. Things had been strained [between us] but I think we did have closure at the end. He had just grown up in a different era. It was what it was. But I really don’t think he was homophobic. [Gay comedian] Rip Taylor was one of his good friends. I think Lothian was the homophobic one.”55
Unfortunately, the voluminous Skelton holdings at Vincennes University contain little concerning the relationship of Skelton and Sabrina, although two drafts of letters he wrote to her suggest it was a work in progress. The first is undated, though it sounded like it might have been composed after the volatile Thanksgiving: “I am sorry about our relationship and the attitudes of all concerned. When you were a child I looked forward to the name Grandfather. But it seemed it was all one-sided, no real affection.… I know nothing about your lifestyle, for you have never confided in me or Lothian.… I never received word on a very expensive camera [presumably a gift from photography hobbyist Skelton] which I had used only 3 times.… I am proud of the fact you’re willing to work—I wish you all the success that comes.”56
The second letter is in response to correspondence Skelton had received from Sabrina in 1991. Skelton’s granddaughter was in Scotland as part of a college program abroad, and she had appeared in a production of Gogal’s The Overcoat. Skelton’s correspondence is much more chatty than his previous letter, with pertinent insights, such as telling her Marcel Marceau had appeared in a staging of this story, too. Skelton then affectionately added, “I wish I could see you on stage. I remember how good you were when we saw you while in school here. There is an old saying ‘Play to the Gallery’—face them with confidence.”57 Other fleeting references to Sabrina in the Vincennes holdings suggest that Skelton and his granddaughter had moved on to an affectionately positive relationship.
Ultimately, Sabrina said of Skelton, “I loved my grandfather. I think of him all the time.… His TV show, especially the early black and white programs are great. I’m glad a scholarly press is interested [in his work]. His influence in comedy is not being addressed. Grandfather is a good subject.” Sabrina’s complaint was more with the “controlling” Toland. For example, in the same interview, Sabrina told me, “Her [Toland’s] treatment of me near the time of grandfather’s death was appalling. I could not really see him [in the hospital]. But thanks to a sympathetic nurse, who saw what was going on, I got in to see him [when Toland briefly left] and grandfather was able to acknowledge that he loved me.”58 In Skelton’s last years, he and Valentina reached an understanding of sorts, too. But as she told me towards the end of a three-hour interview, “While Dad was open and warm with fans, there was always a lot of secrecy going on with the family.”59
As with the comedian’s first two wives, Stillwell and Davis, Toland had to wear many hats but mainly her role boiled down to being a motherly cheerleader. For example, here is her note on an undated birthday card to her husband: “My dreams and hopes are for you to realize all your dreams and hopes, that you shall be the writer, author, painter, composer and homemaker you have at some time dreamed of. I’ll be yours and proudly so.”60
Also like Skelton’s previous wives, Toland demonstrates almost a savage loyalty to her husband. As sometimes happens in an interview, one of my questions actually came back in testimonial form. But in its own way, it speaks volumes about the zealousness Skelton could inspire: “I would’ve defended him to the death, and I would do the same thing for him after [his] death. I’m fiercely loyal. He’s the finest person I ever knew.”61 One can imagine Stillwell or Davis saying the same thing, which is another tribute in itself.
Skelton had been in poor health for several years when he died of pneumonia on September 17, 1997. (His condition had been made worse by legs battered from years of slapstick. Thus, Skelton was susceptible to blood clots and accompanying infections.) Toland decided to keep the funeral small, and according to Valentina, only a trio of celebrities made it a point to be there: Bob Hope, Milton Berle, and Steve Allen. Each of these three had long been on record as champions of Skelton. Indeed, Allen’s chapter on Skelton in The Funny Men (1956) remains the best word-for-word analysis of Skelton yet written.62 But my favorite tribute on Skelton comes by way of Hope, and it has a Hoosier footnote. Years ago Hope played Ball State, and in asking management what other comedians had appeared at the university, Skelton’s name kept coming up. Hope then said, “He’s a great performer. I had him on my show [the comedian’s periodic television specials] one time but never again. He’s too funny. He stole the show. I’m not going to have someone on my show who steals it, and he did.”63 Not a bad compliment, given Hope’s status as arguably the twentieth century’s most influential performer.
Ultimately, Skelton was an inspired comedian
despite a myriad of personal problems with the most imaginative biography this side of Dizzy Dean. He was a self-made man who was not as well-made as he might have been. While most of us traffic in small self-deceptions to help us survive, Skelton needed an industrial-strength variety to soldier his way through life. Still, he persevered his way to comedy greatness. The miracle is that so much laughter could be born of so much personal torment. One can only hope that this modern-day Grimaldi was able to recognize even part of the joy he gave others. Regardless, to paraphrase author Ruth Prigozy, Skelton remained faithful to his comedy dream, and we are the “fortunate beneficiaries of his enduring legacy.”64
Chapter 14 Notes
1. “Right Up There: Red Skelton’s Back on Top and Here Are [the] Reasons Why,” TV Guide, April 28, 1956, p. 6.
2. Noel F. Busch, “Red Skelton—Television’s Clown Prince,” Reader’s Digest (March 1965): 145–48.
3. Red Skelton Bound Letters, box 8, Letters to Valentina and Friends, undated letter [1965] to Valentina, Red Skelton Collection, Vincennes University, Vincennes, Indiana.
4. Wade H. Mosby, “Blue Shows Made Red Redder,” Milwaukee Journal, March 2, 1969.
5. “Red Skelton,” Variety, January 26, 1972, p. 54.
6. Alan Markfield, “Red Skelton: Why I Was Thrown Off TV,” National Enquirer, December 10, 1974.
7. Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 1946–Present, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979), 808.
8. John A. Williams and Dennis A. Williams, If I Stop I’ll Die: The Comedy and Tragedy of Richard Pryor (1991; reprint, New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006), 45.
9. Brooks and Marsh, Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 808–10.
10. Valentina Skelton Alonso, telephone interview with the author, February 27, 2007.
11. Arthur Marx, Red Skelton (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979), 292.
12. Alonso telephone interview. (All subsequent Valentina quotes in this chapter, are from this session.)
13. Robert de Roos, “Television’s Greatest Clown” (part 1), TV Guide, October 14, 1961, pp. 13–14.
14. Ibid., 14.
15. Georgia Davis [Skelton], “My Autobiography,” 1934, Biography of Red and Georgia folder, Red Skelton Private Papers box, Skelton Collection.
16. Alonso telephone interview.
17. Ibid.
18. See Wes D. Gehring, The Marx Brothers: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987) and Groucho and W. C. Fields: Huckster Comedians (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994).
19. Steve Allen, The Funny Men (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956), 145.
20. Red Skelton Bound Letters, box 8, Letters to Georgia and Some to Valentina, undated letter [probably 1969], to Georgia, Skelton Collection.
21. April 2, 1967, letter to Georgia, ibid.
22. August 2, 1969, letter to Georgia, ibid.
23. Red Skelton Bound Letters, box 8, Letters to Georgia & Some to Valentina, August 21, 1968 letter to Georgia, ibid.
24. Marvin L. Skelton, telephone interviews with the author, December 14, 2006, February 6, 2007.
25. Alonso telephone interview.
26. Ibid.
27. Marx, Red Skelton, 298, 299.
28. Alonso telephone interview.
29. Undated [1971] letter to Skelton, Letters to Big Red from Little Red (1971), Bound separate volume, Skelton Collection.
30. May 19, 1971, letter to Skelton, ibid.
31. October 5, 1971, letter to Skelton, ibid.
32. Alonso telephone interview.
33. Various sources. For example, see Martin Burden, “Stories of a Funnyman’s Romantic Life,” New York Post, September 10, 1990.
34. Virginia MacPherson, “Mischievous Red Skelton Tangled Up in Red Tape,” Alameda (CA) Times Star, November 28, 1947.
35. Various sources. For example, see “Red Skelton’s Former Wife, 54, Takes Own Life,” Los Angeles Times, May 12, 1976, and Alonso telephone interview.
36. Sabrina Alonso, telephone interview with the author, March 7, 2007. (All subsequent Sabrina comments are from this interview.)
37. Various sources. For example, see Frank Lovece, “Red Skelton: Old Jokes Never Die,” Newsday, September 12, 1990.
38. See, James Curtis, James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1998), and Christopher Bram, Father of Frankenstein (1995; reprint, New York: Plume, 1996).
39. Jeffrey Meyers, Hemingway: Life into Art (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000), 134.
40. Memories by Red folder, Red Skelton Private Papers box, Skelton Collection.
41. See Wes Gehring, W. C. Fields: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1984) and Groucho and W. C. Fields.
42. Meyers, Hemingway: Life into Art, 152.
43. Danielle Trussoni, “Poolside,” New York Times, March 4, 2007.
44. Richard R. Shepard, “Red Skelton: Gee, He Looks Good,” New York Times, March 14, 1977.
45. Randall Poe, “Clown Comes to Carnegie,” New York Daily News, March 14, 1977.
46. Ibid.
47. Charles Ryweck, “Red Skelton,” Hollywood Reporter, March 16, 1977.
48. Poe, “Clown Comes to Carnegie.”
49. Hal Glatzer, “Red Skelton Isn’t Clowning Around When It Comes to His Paintings—They Fetch $40,000 Per,” People (April 28, 1980): 95.
50. Mel Shields, “The Red Tapes Not for Burning,” Variety, July 30, 1980, pp. 47, 68.
51. Wesley Hyatt, A Critical History of Television’s “The Red Skelton Show,” 1951–1971 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2004), 151.
52. Ibid., 152.
53. Valentina Alonso telephone interview.
54. Georgia Skelton, “Do Comics Make Good Husbands?” Screenland (June 1952): 58.
55. Sabrina Alonso telephone interview.
56. Undated Skelton letter to Sabrina, Box for Valentina, Letters to Valentina and Sabrina folder, Skelton Collection.
57. September 6, 1991, Skelton letter to Sabrina, ibid.
58. Sabrina Alonso telephone interview.
59. Valentina Alonso telephone interview.
60. Undated birthday card from Lothian Skelton to Red Skelton, Valentina’s Personal Items Box, Skelton Collection.
61. Lothian Skelton, telephone interview with the author, December 9, 1998.
62. Steve Allen, “Red Skelton,” in The Funny Men (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956), 265-75.
63. Earl Williams, interview with the author, September 24, 1997.
64. Ruth Prigozy, F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Overlook Press, 2001), 138.
Filmography
Features
1938 Having Wonderful Time (71 minutes).
Director: Alfred Santell. Screenplay: Arthur Kober, from his play. Stars: Ginger Rogers, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Peggy Conklin, Lucille Ball, Lee Bowman, Eve Arden, Dorothea Kent, Richard (Red) Skelton.
1940 Flight Command (116 minutes).
Director: Frank Borzage. Screenplay: Wells Root, Commander Harvey Haislip. Stars: Robert Taylor, Ruth Hussey, Walter Pidgeon, Paul Kelley, Nat Pendleton, Shepperd Strudwick, Red Skelton.
1941 People vs. Dr. Kildare (78 minutes).
Director: Harold S. Bucquet. Screenplay: Willis Goldbeck, Harry Ruskin. Stars: Lew Ayres, Lionel Barrymore, Laraine Day, Bonita Granville, Alma Kruger, Red Skelton.
1941 Whistling in the Dark (77 minutes).
Director: S. Sylvan Simon. Screenplay: Robert MacGunigle, Harry Clark, Albert Mannheimer, based upon a play by Lawrence Gross and Edward Childs Carpenter. Stars: Red Skelton, Conrad Veidt, Ann Rutherford, Virginia Grey, “Rags” Ragland, Henry O’Neill, Eve Arden.
1941 Lady Be Good (111 minutes).
Director: Norman Z. McLeod. Screenplay: Jack McGowan, Kay Van Riper, John McClain. Songs: George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, Roger Edens, Arthur Freed. Stars: Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern, Robert Young, Lionel Barrymore, John Carr
oll, Red Skelton, Virginia O’Brien.
1942 Ship Ahoy (95 minutes).
Director: Edward Buzzell. Screenplay: Harry Clark. Stars: Eleanor Powell, Red Skelton, Bert Lahr, Virginia O’Brien, Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra.
1942 Maisie Gets Her Man (85 minutes).
Director: Roy Del Ruth. Screenplay: Betty Reinhardt, Mary C. McCall Jr. Stars: Ann Sothern, Red Skelton, Allen Jenkins, Donald Meek, Walter Catlett, Fritz Feld, Ben Weldon, “Rags” Ragland.
1942 Panama Hattie (79 minutes).
Director: Norman Z. McLeod. Screenplay: Jack McGowan, Wilkie Mahoney, based upon a play by Herbert Fields and B. G. DeSylva. Songs: Cole Porter. Stars: Red Skelton, Ann Sothern, “Rags” Ragland, Ben Blue, Marsha Hunt, Virginia O’Brien.
1942 Whistling in Dixie (74 minutes).
Director: S. Sylvan Simon. Screenplay: Nat Perrin, additional dialogue by Wilkie Mahoney. Stars: Red Skelton, Ann Rutherford, George Bancroft, Guy Kibbee, Diana Lewis, Peter Whitney, “Rags” Ragland.
1943 DuBarry Was a Lady (101 minutes).
Director: Roy Del Ruth. Screenplay: Irving Brecher, adaptation Nancy Hamilton, additional dialogue Wilkie Mahoney, based upon the play by Herbert Fields, B. G. DeSylva. Songs: Cole Porter. Stars: Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly, “Rags” Ragland, Zero Mostel, Donald Meck, Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra.
1943 Thousands Cheer (126 minutes).
Director: George Sidney. Screenplay: Paul Jarrico, Richard Collins. Stars: Kathryn Grayson, Gene Kelly, and all-star appearances that include: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Red Skelton, Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern, Lucille Ball, Virginia O’Brien, Frank Morgan, Lena Horne, Marsha Hunt, Donna Reed, Margaret O’Brien.