6
Major Stardom: Movies, Radio, and a Touch of “Hope”
“We’re all put on earth for a purpose, and mine is to make people laugh.”1
Red Skelton
A popular axiom among writers is: “I became an author because books gave me such happiness.” One could extrapolate a comparable maxim from this for Red Skelton—he became an entertainer because comedy gave him amazing joy. Indeed, such an insight also provides another explanation/defense for Skelton’s mildly controversial habit of often laughing at his own material. Regardless, the comedian had been knocking on the door of major stardom since his breakout year of 1937.
During a late 1940 hometown visit to Vincennes, on the eve of another watershed entertainment year, there was an added confidence to his comments. Discussing his just completed supporting part in Flight Command (1940), Skelton told the Vincennes Sun-Commercial: “If light comedy is all you can do, well and good, but if you can show that your talents are more diversified and that you can play really serious roles, all the better. I am glad for the opportunity this picture has given me.”2 But before one could ask what became of our Hoosier humorist, Skelton, with amusing nonchalance, then stated to another hometown journalist, “Of course, I’m already the second-best comic … Who’s first? Well, the last time I counted up, there were 29 guys claiming that position.”3
In a third Vincennes article from this visit, the comedian’s writer wife, Edna Stillwell Skelton, provided a diverting interview about their new home and lifestyle in Tarzana, California. A bemused Stillwell confessed that Skelton and a “buddy” took three weeks to build a garage that a contractor claimed was a job of “two or three days.” But in fairness to her carpentry-challenged husband, she said the West Coast had not affected Skelton’s hometown citizenship: “Out there they swear that he’s hired by the Vincennes Chamber of Commerce. He even brags about Indiana weather—and that’s a capital offense in California.”4
Fittingly, for an entertainer later synonymous with patriotism, Skelton’s aforementioned Flight Command was a flag-waving affair about American military preparedness, while World War II already raged in Europe. For modern viewers, the picture now seems a fairly pedestrian affair about navy flyers, especially when one factors in a melodramatic subplot involving star Robert Taylor and his commander’s wife, played by Ruth Hussey. But unlike the poor reception accorded RKO’s Having Wonderful Time (1938), Flight Command was a critical and commercial hit. Film Daily called the movie “one of the best of the ‘Service’ yarns turned out of the Hollywood mill to date.”5 And the headline atop the Hollywood Reporter’s review told the same story: “MGM’s ‘Flight Command’ Clicks From All Angles.”6
Skelton acquitted himself admirably in Flight Command, but the modesty of the part did not always merit much attention in reviews. Given his status as a popular stage star in New York, Skelton’s best notices, though brief, appeared in New York newspapers. The New York Post’s comments were most reminiscent of the comedian’s earlier hometown remarks about not being just a comedian: “Skelton’s … skirmishes with the camera, while not allowing him an opportunity to perform the vaudeville acts that have made him a famous comic, reveal that he can act.”7 In contrast, the Brooklyn Eagle provided a more typical take on the comic: “What little comedy there is falls to Red Skelton as a wise-cracking lieutenant.”8 The New York Telegram assumed a patriotic posture as it democratically included him with the picture’s more prominent stars: “It’s nice to know, in the end … that the Naval Air Service is manned by such clean-cut, upstanding, clear-eyed fellows as Robert Taylor and Walter Pidgeon, and even Dick Purcell and Red Skelton, who came along for comic relief.”9
After the years of touring, landing a movie contract allowed the Skeltons to really put down roots at their Tarzana home in the San Fernando Valley. Combining their two first names, the couple comically christened their place “Redna Rancho.” It soon became a depository for the comedian’s many eclectic collections, which included photography equipment, electric trains, autograph books, police badges, and various real guns. And this says nothing about an ever-growing collection of live dogs. By 1942 Edna observed, “One more [dog] and we’ll be able to get a kennel license.”10
After Flight Command, Skelton’s next MGM assignment was another supporting role in the B movie The People vs. Dr. Kildare (1941). Though this was the most prestigious of all the Hollywood studios, famous for its tag line, “More stars than in the heavens,” MGM’s greatest regular source of income came from its popular B-movie series, such as the Doctor Kildare films. Though not quite in a league with the studio’s phenomenally profitable Andy Hardy series (with Mickey Rooney as the title character), the Kildare movies had a large loyal following. The basic formula for the Kildare series had an earnest young Lew Ayres as the title character, with veteran Lionel Barrymore as an entertainingly curmudgeon mentor. Consequently, giving Skelton a chance to play comic relief in The People vs. Dr. Kildare, however small his hospital intern part, was a great opportunity for a young screen comedian.
One could liken B movies to the upper echelons of baseball’s minor leagues—a place to get an actor ready for the majors. For example, at the same time MGM was grooming Skelton for better things, it was also promoting Skelton’s vaudeville comic friend, “Rags” Ragland, who soon costarred with the Hoosier in several films. What follows is the Hollywood Reporter’s period take on that preparation: “To familiarize him with work before the camera, MGM has assigned ‘Rags’ Ragland to a small role in ‘Ringside Maisie.’ After that brief bow, he goes into a top comedy role in MGM’s ‘Honky Tonk,’ Clark Gable-Lana Turner feature.”11 Shortly after Skelton’s supporting appearance in The People vs. Dr. Kildare, the Hollywood Reporter printed an abbreviated version of the Ragland slant for Skelton: “MGM spotlights Red Skelton in its newest ‘Dr. Kildare’ film as part of his star build-up there.”12
Despite being well into the series, The People was another affectionately received hit. The New York Daily News’s Wanda Hale said, “The Kildare pictures are like grandma’s pies. They never fail. It is gratifying that the latest [installment] on view at the Criterion Theatre keeps up the good work established in the beginning and sustained throughout the series.”13 Ironically, the Hollywood Reporter found Skelton and fellow comic Eddie Acuff too funny for a serious series: “[The screenwriters] give quite a bit of [comic] business to Red Skelton and Eddie Acuff as interns who replace the ambulance driver formerly played by Nat Pendleton. This is in addition to the laugh lines assigned … [series regulars]. It is a little too much fun for a well-managed hospital.”14 Once again, leave it to an East Coast critic to give Skelton unadulterated praise for The People. The Baltimore Evening Sun’s Gilbert Kanour, who had been a fan of Skelton’s many acclaimed stage appearances at nearby Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Theatre, stated, “Red Skelton again shows that he is one of the screen’s up-and-coming clowns.”15
The “up-and-coming” assessment reflected the thinking of MGM, too. But the young Hoosier, who was twenty-seven when he shot The People, also had a way of innocently exasperating studio chief Louis B. Mayer. Most incomprehensible to Mayer was Skelton’s refusal to talk on the phone. The comedian was somehow disoriented by a disembodied voice coming out of the receiver. Even after Mayer realized this new contract player had not suddenly “gone Hollywood” on him, something the MGM boss had frequently seen in his long studio tenure, the older man struggled with Skelton’s telephonophobia. Mayer, a bear for common sense, finally vented, “Well—but—God dammit—if you don’t answer the phone how do you get any business done?”
“That’s what Edna’s for,” Skelton answered.
Of course, debater-at-heart Mayer was not derailed by this goofy answer. Sensing a basic weakness in Skelton’s response, the Hollywood veteran asked, “Young man, just let me ask you one more question. Who answered the telephone before you met Edna?”
An embarrassed but innocently honest Skelton then paid his writer/wife the ultimate compliment: “Before I met Edna, no one ever called me.”16 For once, Mayer was speechless.
Another Skelton bugaboo for the MGM chief was a more normal problem—he wanted his new comedian to lose weight. Just as RKO had put Skelton on a diet prior to shooting Having Wonderful Time, during the heyday of his donut-dunking (and eating) period, Skelton had again gained thirty-plus pounds. While one could still blame the donut sketch, which Skelton had pulled out of retirement to perform as part of his act at the then mushrooming number of California military bases, a bigger culprit was simply Skelton’s poor eating habits. Growing up in southern Indiana’s Vincennes, close to the Kentucky border, meant Skelton relished such tasty, but rich, Southern dishes as fried chicken, fried potatoes, pork chops, grits, biscuits and gravy, and so on. Plus, what is more common than a formerly impoverished individual putting on weight once his metaphorical ship has come in?
Granted, the Skeltons had become very familiar with success before this second chance at Hollywood, however, in contrast to their former hectic “new vaudeville” multiple-shows-each-day schedule, the couple’s initial relocation to the film capital involved a great deal of free time. If this were not enough to contribute to a weight gain, the couple also did a great deal of socializing in the early 1940s. By the 1950s Skelton became almost reclusive, but in the comedian’s Hollywood beginnings there was lots of partying and nightclubbing.
An all-purpose film factory such as MGM had a simple answer for fat—the studio gym. Thus, Skelton lost some weight. But playing the “wise fool” in real life, Skelton had another easier way to seemingly drop pounds. The comedian bought pricey, slightly oversized clothing. Then, when the powers that be would ask about his dieting/exercising, Skelton quickly showed off the baggy pants and roomy sports jacket. It was an effective scam, because Skelton, the perennial huckster, later told me he was still getting away with this oversized clothing routine in the late 1940s.17 But the comedian never warmed to working out. Here is one of Skelton’s favorite jokes from late in life: “I get plenty of exercise carrying the coffins of my friends who exercise.”
As a footnote to why Skelton eventually veered from being a party person to a recluse, beyond a later marriage and children, was that Skelton soon tired of the always “on” one-upmanship practiced by entertainers. Moreover, Skelton felt this lack of sincerity was especially strong among comedians. Eventually, he divorced himself from hanging out with fellow funnymen. Interestingly, a period joke on the subject survives from another midwestern family-orientated comedian such as Skelton, Joe E. Brown. What further connects the joke’s heartland humanism to Skelton and Indiana is that Brown chose to tell it to an Indianapolis audience while on tour with the play Harvey. His setup for the story involved four film comedians who met regularly, but their conversation was simply an excuse to try to top each other. Brown then stated: “Mostly, they didn’t listen to what anyone [else] was saying, for they were so intent on what they were going to say next. Anyway, one day one of them finished a story, there was automatic laughter and another said, ‘You may wonder why I’m so quiet, but today I had news that has just about knocked me out. My father and I were very close. We corresponded regularly until I came out here and then I sort of drifted away. Today I heard—he died last night.’ The man paused for a second, and immediately another comic burst in with, ‘If you think that’s funny, listen to this.’”18
While Skelton’s shrinking from comedians was still a few years off in the early 1940s, the huge success of what is sometimes listed as his next vehicle, a star turn in Whistling in the Dark (1941), made him the envy of screen clowns everywhere. To clarify, the film industry then was still many years away from a movie opening simultaneously across the country. Regardless of when a 1940s picture premiered on the East or West Coast, it routinely took months to reach small-town markets. Consequently, filmographies from this era are often dated from when a movie opened in the country’s most important market—New York City. (The Hollywood Reporter even regularly ran capsule reviews from the then many New York daily newspapers.)
In 1941 Skelton appeared in three pictures: Lady Be Good, Dr. Kildare’s Wedding Day, and Whistling, which was also the order in which they were shot.19 Lady was an A production musical comedy orchestrated by the legendary lyricist/producer Arthur Freed (including Singing in the Rain, 1952), with Skelton in support. Wedding was yet another installment of the Kildare series, and this time Skelton’s comic relief intern had more to do. But long before either Lady or Day was ready for release, MGM was so impressed with the young comedian that it decided to star him in Whistling—what might be labeled a B+ feature. The studio was not shy about this epiphany moment, either. The story made the front page of the Hollywood Reporter, under the headline “Skelton ‘Whistling’ First MGM Break.”20 Then, with the impressive slam-dunk completion of Whistling, the studio leapfrogged the movie past Lady and Day to open first in pivotal New York.
So what is this pivotal picture all about? Whistling is a comedy thriller, inspired by two like-minded Bob Hope hits for Paramount (The Cat and the Canary, 1939, and The Ghost Breakers, 1940), and had Skelton playing a radio murder mystery expert kidnapped by real killers. The leader of a fake religious cult (Conrad Veidt, the eerie somnambulist from the German Expressionistic classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1919) needs a perfect scenario for a murder his organization is about to commit. Naturally, Skelton’s underdog character is elected for the job.
The headquarters for the cult is a spooky old mansion with sliding panels, secret passageways, and a creepy housekeeper—the same haunted-house scenario used in the aforementioned Hope pictures. This means that the formula upon which both Hope and Skelton rose to film stardom was clown comedy meets parody, spoofing a mystery thriller setting. Initially, this might not seem so earth shattering. After all, personality comedians and parody were not, even then, a new movie mix. Be it cross-eyed comic Ben Turpin spoofing sexy Latin-lover Rudolph Valentino in the pun-titled The Shriek of Araby (1923), or Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy having trouble Way Out West (1937), clowns and parody were an established happy equation. But what made the Hope and Skelton variations something different was their new type of hyphenated hero, one who could fluctuate between the most cowardly incompetent of comic antiheroes and cool, egotistical wise guy. Or, to comically paraphrase, they can talk the talk but they almost always trip on the walk.
Bob Hope and an unwanted guest in Ghost Breakers (1940). (Wes D. Gehring Stills Collection)
If this dual personae sounds familiar, Woody Allen, the greatest film comedy auteur of the modern era (post-1960), has also affectionately highjacked the Hope dual personality persona. Allen freely admitted this in his cinematic tribute to Hope, My Favorite Comedian (1979): “There are certain moments in his older movies when I think he’s the best thing I have ever seen … [But] it’s hard to tell when I do [him], because I’m so unlike him physically and in tone of voice, but once you know I do it, it’s absolutely unmistakable.”21 Along similar lines, Skelton was also a huge Hope fan. As late as 1948, Photoplay critic Maxine Arnold stated, “[Skelton] laughs so loud at Bob Hope’s pictures that those around him suspect him of faking it.”22
Unlike the undersized goofy-looking glasses character to which Allen alludes, both Skelton and Hope had the typical good looks of a leading man—that is, when they were not comically contorting said features. This fact actually assists the duality of the antihero/smart-aleck persona. The viewer more readily accepts the witty repartee of what appears to be a handsome hero. Conversely, when the Hope or Skelton character then suddenly metamorphoses into a cowardly antihero, the comedy payoff is again greater, because one expects the typical leading man to stoically soldier through whatever movie misfortune occurs.
Credit for this unique evolution of a still very modern comedy character (such as Owen Wilson’s cowardly cowboy in Shanghai Noon, 2000) clearly belongs to Hope. But with Skelton’s persona already predisposed towards being an antihero/smart aleck anyway, and because MGM placed him in the Hope-like Whistling in the Dark so closely after the ski-slope nosed comedian’s screen ascendancy, Skelton’s movie future as a star was all but assured. The studio irony here is that during Hollywood’s golden age (the 1930s and 1940s), MGM was hardly the best place to be a comedian. Indeed, the studio was actually better at derailing the careers of funnymen. For example, when MGM took away Buster Keaton’s creative autonomy at the start of the sound era (the late 1920s), the studio’s actions contributed to self-destructive tendencies in the legendary comedian’s personal life. Paradoxically, MGM is credited with resurrecting the Marx Brothers’ screen fortunes in the mid-1930s. But it was at a cost—the studio homogenized the team, taking away their iconoclastic edge. Comedy connoisseurs prefer the chaos-producing purity of their earlier Paramount pictures.23
Fittingly, the Hope movies from which MGM drew their Whistling in the Dark model were from Paramount, too. The latter studio is where that era’s pantheon comedians W. C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Mae West, and Hope—with and without his “road picture” teammate Bing Crosby—made their best films.24 In the case of Skelton, MGM deserves credit for successfully launching the career of a major comedy talent. Later in the decade there were questions as to whether the studio was fully utilizing the Hoosier’s talents, but there is no doubt MGM’s plan for Skelton was brilliant.
The link to Hope, moreover, is not some analogy spun by Monday morning academics. MGM’s Hope plan for Skelton was common knowledge in the film industry. This awareness even leaked into early Whistling reviews. For example, here are the opening comments from the New York Morning Telegram critic: “The talk is that the MGM studios fondly believe they’ve discovered another Bob Hope in the personality of a lad named Red Skelton … it would appear that this belief is not altogether unjustified.”25
If MGM had had any second thoughts about the strategy of opening Whistling on the East Coast, ahead of two previously completed Skelton movies (in supporting roles), an early sneak preview critique from the Hollywood Reporter alleviated any anxiety. This film capital insider publication served notice that a special talent was emerging. Under the review headline, “Comic Hailed as Bright New Star,” the Reporter also predicted happy days for the studio: “Obviously, MGM had only one purpose … [here:] showcase in a modest package the comedy talents of Red Skelton. So well is this objective achieved that one look at the film should bring ‘radiant’ smiles to the faces of MGM executives and all their [theater] exhibitors, ‘Whistling in the Dark’ brings to light … a really comic trouper named Skelton who needs merely a couple of good pictures to zoom right up to the top. He’s dynamite with an audience.”26
When the New York reviews for Whistling validated the picture, MGM turned loose an advertising blitz that resulted in some amusingly supportive coverage from the Hollywood Reporter: “Large [New York] ads in the gazettes [newspapers] have been proclaiming Red Skelton as the new comedy sensation and ‘Whistling in the Dark’ as a riot. Sometimes, such advertisements turn out to be slightly fanciful. This is not one of those sometimes. Skelton IS the new comedy sensation; the flicker [movie] IS a riot, and the reviews were NOT written by Metro’s [MGM] press department—although they might well have been.”27
New York World Telegram reviewer, William Boehnel, an earlier fan of Skelton’s vaudeville work, waxed the most poetic about Skelton. Under the headline, “Red Skelton Terrific in Funny Picture,” Boehnel wrote: “Meet a new star.… He’s terrific, as those of you who have seen him in stage shows probably know, because it’s been a long time now since the screen provided such a fresh, unaffected, bubbling clown.”28 New York Mirror critic Edith Werner was amusingly complimentary about everyone involved in the production. But by zeroing in on Skelton and his director, S. Sylvan Simon, Werner was anticipating a collaboration that produced some of the comedian’s greatest pictures (including 1948’s The Fuller Brush Man): “Anyone who has anything to do with ‘Whistling in the Dark’ can pat himself on the back. Director Simon and star Skelton can take two pats and a pinch on the cheek, too. For they have concocted a gusty dish with laughs and thrills galore.”29 The New York Times’s Bosley Crowther added, “To the cheerfully swelling list of bright new film comedians you may add the rosy name of … Skelton. For Metro [MGM] has really turned up an impressive young Bob Hopeful in the person of this jaunty chap.”30 As Crowther’s comic reference to Hope might suggest, several newspapers played punningly with Skelton’s ties to the ski-nosed funnyman, such as PM’s inventive title for its Whistling review: “Meet Red Skelton, Hope of the B’s.”31 But credit the Brooklyn Daily Eagle with quickly moving past the seemingly obligatory pun (calling Skelton “Metro’s great white Hope”) to a spirited differential defense of the Hoosier: “Red Skelton isn’t aping [Hope]. He had a Hope-like style long before it was profitable to be like Hope. He [Skelton] is just coming into his own, and he came the hard way.”32
Though these complimentary and often comic Whistling reviews were cognizant of a comedy star being born, they were short on specific examples of content. Consequently, what follows is a Whistling illustration of Skelton’s dual-focus personae, which fluctuates quickly from smart aleck to coward. One of the cult thugs growls at Skelton’s character (Wally), “Quit stalling … You get in my hair!”
Wally’s quick response is equally gruff, “Yeah, well, I’ll tell you something!”
The mobster’s comeback is an even tougher, “What?”
An abruptly meek Wally submissively replies, “You could use a shampoo.”
More frequently, however, Skelton’s Whistling transformation, from wise guy to antihero, occurs in the single reading of a line. That is, he starts out bravely but dovetails into a confession of cowardice. When a woman member of the cast asks him if he is a man or a mouse, Skelton replies, “I’m a man … but tell me if you see a cat coming.” On another occasion, he seemingly comforts a female costar by observing, “To show you it’s perfectly safe, I’ll let you go in first.” And after some broad slapstick (a comic fall down a short staircase), he breezingly notes, “Don’t worry about me … because that’s what I’m doing.” Like a junior psychiatrist, Skelton’s smart aleck/coward even coins a comedy credo grounded in amusing logic. The catalyst for this insight is a complaint from a costar about always making with the smart remarks. He replies, “If I don’t crack wise, I’ll crack up.”
A poster advertising Skelton’s star-making film Whistling in the Dark (1941). (Wes D. Gehring Stills Collection)
Beyond the delivery of witty lines, Skelton’s breakout performance in Whistling is also bolstered by his propensity for physical and/or visual comedy, especially the plasticity of his clown face. Handsome in repose, a sudden metamorphosis creates numerous comedy countenances, a humor take upon a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde scenario. This is best illustrated by Whistling borrowing from Skelton’s “Guzzler’s Gin” vaudeville routine, where he plays a television announcer getting progressively more drunk while he samples the sales product during each live commercial break. In Whistling, the heavies pose as potential sponsors for Skelton’s in-film radio program. Their product is a liquid vitamin drink that is heavily laced with alcohol. The response of Skelton’s character exactly mirrors his reactions with “Guzzler’s Gin”—involuntary comic contortions of his face and upper body, wheezing, accompanied by an eye-popping countenance, and the transformation of his voice to a throaty whisper.
This creative incorporation of bits from Skelton’s stage act into Whistling’s story seems to have played well with the comedian’s vaudeville fans. For example, in critic Wanda Hale’s rave review of Whistling in the New York Daily News, she observed, “Skelton doesn’t have to be introduced to New Yorkers who get around.”33 But Skelton was in such an inspired comedy zone throughout Whistling that newcomers to the comedian seemed equally impressed, too. The critic for New York’s liberal period newspaper PM amusingly stated: “[Skelton] recoils from reality with the matchless horror of a man trapped in a subway ladies’ room. He is strictly a find, and finding him in Whistling in the Dark was a pleasure.”34
Bear in mind, the entertainment excitement generated by Whistling in New York was being replicated throughout the nation. This might best be demonstrated by the review from the Washington Post, which Stillwell included in one of her husband’s scrapbooks: “Conceding something to the enthusiasm of Washington audiences over their ‘adopted son’ in any of his merry manifestations, the rambunctious Red would be a hit in any man’s theatre in ‘Whistling in the Dark’ … Here in the National Capitol, where he launched his ‘big time’ [stage] career, a crowd that overflowed the most capacious picture theatre in town almost tore down the house.”35
What was Skelton’s response to all this New York praise? Skelton’s statement managed to be comic, as well as utilize one of the city’s landmarks: “Hope my head fits when I try to get back to New York through the Holland Tunnel.”36 More importantly for the comedian was MGM’s response to all that hoopla over Whistling. By October 1941 the studio had signed Skelton to a new long-term contract, with a promise to star him in the big-budget musical comedy DuBarry Was a Lady, which had recently been a Broadway smash.37 (The DuBarry adaptation occurred in 1943, with Skelton co-starring with another redhead, Lucille Ball.)
Ironically, according to MGM’s Legal Department Records, the comedian’s salary was only raised from $1,250 to $1,500 a week.38 Moreover, this was substantially less than his RKO pay for Having Wonderful Time (1938)—$2,000 a week. Still, $1,500 a week was a fortune in 1941. In addition, there was the prestige of working for MGM—the Cadillac of Hollywood studios. Skelton was rubbing shoulders with such box-office stars as Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, and Skelton promoter Rooney. Plus, there was simple job security. As early as 1938, the comedian had seen that even the “new vaudeville” (stage shows in support of movie palace screenings) was ending. “If you are going to stay in show business, you have to go out there [Hollywood],” Skelton observed.39 Coupled with this practical side was the fact that Skelton had been flirting with film for some time now. Besides Having Wonderful Time, there had been periodic short subjects, often shot in New York. Occasionally promising, such as the Warner Brothers’s short Seeing Red (1939), nothing had come of these attempted forays into film. The comedian was feeling a certain quiet desperation about the movies. But most importantly, the Skeltons were ready to settle down after years of being on the road.
The comedian’s two movies whose East Coast releases had been delayed, Lady Be Good and Dr. Kildare’s Wedding Day, only further bolstered Skelton’s stock with MGM. Skelton’s supporting player reviews were so strong they might have been lifted from his Whistling notices, a movie often alluded to in these critiques. This was the New York Daily News’s take on Skelton in Wedding: “Skelton, recently catapulted to stardom [by Whistling], does some of his funny vaudeville tricks [such as a slapstick routine involving a phone booth and numerous parcels], which caused his studio to sit up and take notice.”40 And the New York Times’s review of Lady stated, “Red Skelton keeps popping up at random moments to remind the audience that he is a very, very funny fellow.”41
Skelton’s gift for physical comedy is showcased in a box-and-baggage routine in Doctor Kildare’s Wedding Day (1941). (Wes D. Gehring Stills Collection)
True to form, Skelton remained self-deprecatingly comic about his sudden emergence as a film star. Late in 1941 he confessed, “That must be somebody else, I thought, and I still think so, for, as I’ve often said, Edna and I came to Hollywood solely because she had a pair of slacks she wanted to wear under a mink coat.”42 Surprisingly enough, Skelton’s abrupt 1941 stardom would not be limited to the movies. In October of that year he also found comparable success on radio with his own coast-to-coast NBC comedy program. The following passage from Jim Knipfel’s much later comic memoir, Slackjaw (1999), might have been penned with the young workaholic Skelton in mind: “[His life had] become one long slapstick routine—like living a Marx Brothers movie, except without quite so many musical numbers.”43
Skelton relished all the activity, and if truth be told, the comedian preferred radio over the movies, because he and Stillwell controlled the program. At MGM, he was merely a hired hand, albeit a well-paid one. He had, however, managed to get something by MGM. His studio contract allowed him to have a radio program or a television show. The former clause was standard studio fare for the time. In fact, because so many major screen clowns from this era had programs, they are now often referred to as the “radio comedians,” even when discussing their movie work. But the television clause was something new. The small screen was years away from being considered a threat to the film industry. Skelton’s contract loophole, however, became controversial by 1951, when his television show made its debut on NBC. By then Hollywood was in an outright war with the new medium over viewers. Studios routinely barred major stars from appearing on the small screen, let alone hosting their own show.
Why was Skelton so sage about the small screen? In sifting through a mountain of material on the comedian, there is no pat answer. One might assume it was partly an outgrowth of his high-profile New York stage work at the end of the 1930s. The city was then a hotbed of interest in the new technology, and this was further fueled by New York playing host to the 1939 World’s Fair. As a further addendum, the comedian took part in an early pioneering TV broadcast during this period. Fittingly, his celebrated “Guzzler’s Gin” routine, about a television pitchman, dates from 1940.
One can sense Skelton’s well-informed enthusiasm about television from an early 1946 interview/article with the comedian for the Long Beach Press Telegram. Noting that “television is here, and I’m trying to learn all I can about it,” he insightfully added, “Television will produce an entirely new line of talent, just as [motion picture] talkies revised the list of silent stars.”44 This was Skelton’s wish for a future television show, “I’d like to appear in one scene as Clem, then go through a door and come out as Willie Lump-Lump.”45
Of course, Skelton’s affinity for television might simply be a product of that comic axiom, “No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary.”46 Translation: the simplest explanation is usually correct. Maybe Skelton the vaudevillian plainly saw the appropriateness of television as a showcase for the variety program format that spawned him. After all, during the early 1950s, television was sometimes jokingly referred to as “vaudeville in a box.” Regardless, MGM’s new cinema sensation was about to become a radio star, too.
What gives Skelton’s triumph on radio a certain consistency with his emergence as a movie personality was the presence again of a Hope factor. Just as MGM saw the wisdom of applying Paramount’s parody mix of the comedy thriller and Hope’s antihero/smart-aleck persona to Skelton’s Whistling in the Dark, NBC Radio had even more reason to accent the two comedians’ connection, as the network produced both programs starring the comedians. Moreover, to maximize the link, NBC put the comedy shows back-to-back on Tuesday nights, with Hope providing the lead-in for Skelton. Besides the legitimate parallels between both comics, it was simply good business for NBC to promote the connection, given that Radio Daily’s annual poll shortly crowned Hope the number one comedian of the airwaves.47
Interestingly, the Radio Daily poll offered another indirect tie to the Hope-Skelton link. While Hope had won the “best comedian” title, funnyman Jack Benny had received the “best airshow” award. A popular component of Benny’s program was gifted black comedian Eddie “Rochester” Anderson. Though Rochester played the valet and general man Friday, Benny was the comic antihero. Hope was a fan of their teaming, and tried to obtain Anderson to play his sidekick in The Ghost Breakers, the year before Skelton’s radio program came to NBC. When Anderson proved unavailable, Hope used popular black comedian Willie Best in the film. Flash forward to the initial cast of Skelton’s new airshow, and one finds the young black comedian “Wonderful” Smith. As with Benny playing antihero to Rochester, Smith’s specialty was comically hassling Skelton, a character type handled years before by Stillwell. Radio historian John Dunning stated that Smith’s spot on Skelton’s program helped make him 1941’s “Negro comedy find of the year.”48 Granted, Skelton’s mentorship by Vincennes’s Clarence Stout probably predisposed Skelton to work with black talent. But the Benny-Hope influence here seems hard to deny.
The radio reviews for Skelton’s new program were very positive. Variety’s comments were typical: “Much more costly entertainments would have been pleased this season to have done relatively as well on their inaugural program as did Red Skelton.… It was a very enjoyable bit of comedy and music that, if able to maintain the level, should find lots of listeners.”49 Skelton managed to more than “maintain the level.” The comedian’s Hooper radio ratings for a typical week that season (1941–42) clobbered the competing numbers of such show business legends as Bing Crosby, Burns and Allen, Eddie Cantor, Fred Allen, Rudy Vallee, and Kate Smith.50 The handful of stars, besides Hope, that bested Skelton are among the most notable in this golden age (1930s and 1940s) of radio: Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Fibber McGee and Molly, Jack Benny, and Frank Morgan and Fannie Brice. Plus, Skelton was almost in a dead heat with the latter duo—the incomparable character actor Morgan (the title figure from The Wizard of Oz, 1939), and the multitalented Brice, whose signature character, Baby Snooks, undoubtedly influenced Skelton’s Junior figure.
While the basic components of Skelton’s radio program are fully fleshed out in the following chapter, suffice it to say this medium allowed him more creative control. Though there were many parallels with the Hope persona, radio (more than the movies) gave Skelton a better platform on which to differentiate himself from Hope. Most specifically, there was the growing number of Skelton characters, starting with an early variation of his seminal silly figure, Clem Kadiddlehopper. This was an area in which Hope did not even attempt to compete.
Along related lines, the senescent Skelton liked to imply that having a densely packed psyche (all those comedy characters) probably made him a little crazy, but as long as he was making money, he was safe from the people with nets! Skelton would have undoubtedly enjoyed the following story from the modern screwball classic, America’s Sweethearts (2001). In the picture, an actor (John Cusack) on a press junket is upset that he did not receive a large luxurious suite in the hotel. Instead, Cusack simply has a small bungalow on the grounds. But when he reminds the publicist that his ex-wife costar (Catherine Zeta-Jones) has one of these grand suites, he is told she has an entourage. Cusack’s Skelton-related rebuttal: “I am a paranoid schizophrenic. I am my own entourage.”
Whether, however, one sees Skelton as a comedy entourage or a single multifaceted clown, the twin triumphs of 1941, MGM’s Whistling and the NBC radio program, put him on the entertainment map. And as is still typical of American society, when major success elevates the individual to a new chapter of his life, the public is interested in his past. Consequently, a five-part autobiographical series by Skelton ran in the Milwaukee Journal, segments of which were picked up by newspapers across the United States.51 While Skelton’s memoir musings can sometimes become apocryphal, as has been noted earlier in the text, the main thrust of the Journal story was a fundamental truth: “in his most fantastic moments before the cameras, he never portrayed a story more amazing than his own.”52 Skelton’s public fame soon reconfigured his private life.
Chapter 6 Notes
1. Fred D. Cavinder, The Indiana Book of Quotes (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2005), 215.
2. “Skelton, Back Home from Hollywood, Reveals He Has Gone Serious in New Film,” Vincennes Sun-Commercial, October 14, 1940.
3. Paul Harrison, “Red Skelton’s Screen Test Which Won Him Film Role, So Funny It May Be Made a Short,” Vincennes Sun-Commercial, October 18, 1940.
4. “Swings Hammer,” Vincennes Post, October 15, 1940.
5. Flight Command review, Film Daily, December 23, 1940.
6. “MGM’s ‘Flight Command’ Clicks from All Angles,” Hollywood Reporter, December 17, 1940.
7. Archer Winsten, “‘Flight Command’ Zooms into Capitol Theatre,” New York Post, January 17, 1941.
8. Robert Francis, “‘Flight Command’ at the Capitol,” Brooklyn Eagle, January 17, 1941.
9. Leo Mishkin, Flight Command review, New York Telegram, January 17, 1941.
10. Edna Stillwell Skelton (as told to James Reid), “I Married a Screwball,” Silver Screen (June 1942): 62.
11. “Ragland Gets Workout,” Hollywood Reporter, June 2, 1941.
12. “Skelton Sees ‘Dr.,’ ibid., June 5, 1941.
13. Wanda Hale, “Dr. Kildare Is Back, Showing at Criterion,” New York Daily News, May 8, 1941.
14. “Slight Dip in High Average for Series,” Hollywood Reporter, April 30, 1941.
15. Gilbert Kanour, “‘The People vs. Dr. Kildare’ Now Showing at New Theater,” Baltimore Evening Sun, May 9, 1941.
16. Arthur Marx, Red Skelton (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979), 77.
17. Red Skelton, interview with author, Muncie, Indiana, September 18, 1986.
18. “Harvey Makes ‘Sage’ Out of Joe E. Brown,” Indianapolis News, February 16, 1948.
19. At this time, the daily Hollywood Reporter would list, once a week, which films were in production. The movies in question first appeared in this section during the following weeks in 1941: Lady Be Good (March 14), Dr. Kildare’s Wedding (June 6, listed as “untitled”), and Whistling in the Dark (June 27).
20. “Skelton ‘Whistling’ First MGM Break,” Hollywood Reporter, June 12, 1941.
21. Eric Lax, Woody Allen: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 25.
22. Maxine Arnold, “Clown in Civies,” Photoplay (February 1948): 89.
23. Wes 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).
24. Gehring, W. C. Fields: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984) and Film Clowns of the Depression: 12 Memorable Movies (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007).
25. “Red Skelton Scores in First Starring Role,” New York Morning Telegram, August 28, 1941.
26. “Comic Hailed as Bright New Star,” Hollywood Reporter, July 30, 1941.
27. Irving Hoffman, “Red Skelton Hailed as New MGM Star,” Hollywood Reporter, September 2, 1941.
28. William Boehnel, “Red Skelton Terrific in Funny Picture,” New York World Telegram, August 28, 1941.
29. Edith Werner, “Skelton’s ‘Whistling in Dark’ Clicks as Laugh-Thriller,” New York Mirror, August 28, 1941.
30. Bosley Crowther, Whistling in the Dark review, New York Times, August 28, 1941, 23.
31. “Meet Red Skelton, Hope of the B’s,” PM, August 28, 1941.
32. Herbert Cohn, “Red Skelton Arrives as a Comedy Star,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 28, 1941.
33. Wanda Hale, “Red Skelton Clicks in First Big Role, New York Daily News, August 28, 1941.
34. “Meet Red Skelton, Hope of the B’s.”
35. “‘Whistling in the Dark’ Bowls ’Em Over at Capitol,” Washington Post, undated [1941], Red Skelton Scrapbook Number Two, 1941–42, Red Skelton Collection, Vincennes University, Vincennes, Indiana.
36. Whistling in the Dark picture caption, New York World Telegram, August 28, 1941.
37. “Skelton Wins New Deal and ‘DuBarry,’” Hollywood Reporter, October 30, 1941.
38. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Legal Department Records, Special Collection File, 1941–43, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California.
39. Eileen Creelman, “Red Skelton of ‘Having Wonderful Time,’ Discusses His Hollywood Debut,” New York Sun, July 6, 1938.
40. Wanda Hale, “New Kildare Movie May Be Last of Series,” New York Daily News, September 18, 1941.
41. Lady Be Good review, New York Times, September 19, 1941.
42. Red Skelton, “I’ll Tell All” (part 5), Milwaukee Journal, December 12, 1941.
43. Jim Knipfel, Slackjaw (1999; reprint, New York: Berkley Books, 2000), 180.
44. “Look Out, Television; Here Comes Red Skelton!” Long Beach (CA) Press Telegram, February 13, 1946.
45. Ibid.
46. Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 90.
47. “Benny’s Wit Called Best By 300 Editors in Poll,” Hollywood Reporter, December 23, 1941.
48. John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 593.
49. “Red Skelton,” Variety, October 15, 1941, p. 26.
50. All Hooper radio rating numbers were drawn from Harrison B. Summers, ed., A Thirty-Year History of Programs Carried on National Radio Networks in the United States, 1926–1956 (New York: Arno Press, 1971), 99.
51. Red Skelton, “I’ll Tell All” (5 parts), Milwaukee Journal, December 8–12, 1941.
52. Ibid. (part 1), December 8, 1941.