"A mime whose greatest success was on the radio. A folk humorist in the years when American entertainment was becoming urban. A vulgar knockabout at a time when American comedy was becoming sophisticated and verbal. A naïve ne'er-do-well in the age of the self-conscious schlemiel. Red Skelton's career is a study in how to miss every trend that comes down the pike." This assessment of the legendary comedic clown by writer Ross Wetzsteon is excerpted by Leonard Maltin in his chapter on Red from his indispensable reference The Great Movie Comedians, and it’s one that’s stayed with me for many years—particularly the first sentence.
See, I am a huge fan of Red Skelton’s work…but I sincerely
believe his shtick—what I have referred to many times in the past as his “Gallery
of Grotesques”—worked better in an aural medium despite Skelton’s undeniable
talent for pantomime and physical comedy.
I’ve had the marvelous pleasure to have worked on any
number of collections of his radio broadcasts during my tenure at Radio
Spirits—many of these shows have been previously uncirculated among old-time
radio hobbyists, and have recently resurfaced with the stamp of approval from
the Skelton estate.
That estate has not neglected the comedian’s television
legacy, either. You’ll find a myriad of DVD
collections available from Skelton’s twenty-year boob tube reign as “the clown
master,” and in casual conversations with those who share my obsession with
nostalgia, I gleaned an impression that Red’s TV work is what they remember
best. (I don’t think my parents ever
watched his show, so that’s why most of my memories are from radio.) Time-Life added a magnificent set to the mix on
January 3 of this year with The Red Skelton Hour in Color, a
3-DVD set featuring twelve episodes from Skelton’s mega-successful variety hour
that convulsed audiences over CBS-TV on Tuesday nights from 1962 to 1970. (Skelton made the leap into TV in 1951, but
his weekly show was a half-hour for the first 11 years he was on the small
screen.)
My favorite show on the collection is a September 24, 1968
outing featuring Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
idols Vincent Price and Boris Karloff as a pair of mad scientists who are
convinced that Skelton’s Clem Kadiddlehopper is their robot creation come to
life. (Price, Karloff, and Skelton also
do a hilarious musical number in the same telecast.) Clem is also the focus of a September 20,
1966 telecast with guest stars Rooney (who does a first-rate job alongside Skelton…and
I say this as an individual who accepts all things Mick with the enthusiasm of
a proctology exam) and Simon & Garfunkel, and a Diller outing from January
23, 1968 that also features Lou Rawls (performing “On a Clear Day You Can See
Forever”). Skelton does “Deadeye” in two
telecasts on the Color set: a December 13, 1966 episode featuring Robert Goulet
and a hilarious show from October 15, 1968 with “The Big Mouth” herself, Martha
Raye.
Merv Griffin guest stars in a March 18, 1969 show that’s
sort of unusual in that Red does one of his radio characters that didn’t
receive the prominence that favorites like Clem and Deadeye would later achieve
on TV: obnoxious Brooklynite Bolivar Shagnasty (“T’ink nothin’ of it!”). The Griffin telecast also lets Skelton do my
two favorites in his repertoire: Cauliflower McPugg and Willie Lump-Lump (“You
don’t look right, boy…you just don’t look
right!”) Some of Red’s radio creations
never really made a smooth transition to the small screen; the comedian did “Junior,
the Mean Widdle Kid” on many occasions but the visual medium spoiled the effect—he
looked like an adult with a severe case of arrested development. To offset this, Skelton introduced new
characters like Freddie the Freeloader, who’s the focus of an October 31, 1967
show that features not only Tim Conway but Jackie Coogan and Nancy “That Was
the Week That Was” Ames. (“There’s
nothing like a well-rehearsed show,” Skelton ad-libs to Conway when a comedy
prop doesn’t work as planned. “And this
is nothing like a well-rehearsed
show.”)
With a January 14, 1969 telecast guest starring Audrey
Meadows, Red frolics as another of his boob tube creations, George Appleby (he
has a funny ad-lib for one of Audrey’s zingers: “No wonder Ralph Kramden divorced you!”). (This show also features one of Red’s most
beloved routines: his interpretation of The Pledge of Allegiance.) Two of the telecasts on this collection casts
Skelton as Forsooth Fromkiss, a simpleton who’s apprentice to the scion (played
by Milton Berle) of a torture device salesman in a January 4, 1966 outing, and
sidekick to Christopher Columbus (guest star “Lonesome” George Gobel) from February
14, 1967. The Berle and Gobel shows are
a lot of fun to watch, because Skelton seems to have a great deal of fun
matching wits with his fellow comics.
The Duke himself, John Wayne, appears on the remaining shows
on The
Red Skelton Hour in Color. The
earliest telecast is dated March 1, 1966, and allows Red to reprise many of the
routines requested by TV viewers (including his legendary “donut dunking”
routine, which cemented his fame in vaudeville). (This type of telecast was apparently a Red
Skelton Hour tradition, known as “The Skelton Scrapbook”—a kind of
callback to his radio days, when many of the broadcasts were identified as “The
Skelton Scrapbook of Satire.”) An
October 28, 1969 show pays tribute to Wayne’s forty years in the movies, and
features a hilarious routine where Red plays a variety of autograph hounds
encountering The Duke on the street. In
the set-up to the bit, Red suggests that Wayne “pretend you’re a movie star—you’ve
been doing that for years, see…”
This produces a hearty guffaw from The Duke, prompting
Skelton to observe: “That’s what I like—a guy who can laugh at himself!” “You’ve been doing that for years!” Wayne retorts, to loud audience laughter and
applause. Another great thing about the Skelton
Hour shows is seeing familiar character faces; I spotted Henry Corden
in two programs, not to mention Peggy Rea, Elaine Joyce (in a see-through dress
that you have to see to believe), Grady Sutton, David Sharpe (Grady and Dave are
Boy Friends alumni!), Bern Hoffman, Stanley Adams, and Robert “I was kicked in
the haid by a mule” Easton.
4 comments:
Red's was the first show we watched on our new colour set. It used to tick my dad off when Red would laugh at his own jokes, but we were still laughing as well, so it was okay.
The last time I saw Red was on a Canadian talk show hosted by Dini Petty (I think there are clips on YouTube). I was almost afraid to watch, thinking he would just be a rambling old guy. I'm so glad I watched because he was magnificent with his wonderful stories and had the audience right in the palm of his hand.
Our Lady of Great Caftan reminisced:
Red's was the first show we watched on our new colour set. It used to tick my dad off when Red would laugh at his own jokes, but we were still laughing as well, so it was okay.
"You're some comedian, laughing at your own jokes," my father would always scold me as a kid. One day, I pointed out that Red Skelton laughed at his own jokes ("Why should the comedian be the only one not allowed to laugh?" he once asked) Dad came back with "Yeah, but you're no Red Skelton." (He really knows how to hurt a guy.)
Dad was digging through a strongbox filled with important family documents and he came across a receipt for our first color TV...purchased in 1976. (I guess we were waiting to see if it caught on.)
I've always found Red Skelton vaguely repulsive, and I never stopped to wonder why - until now. It was the clowns, I think. The clownish costumes, the clown-like make-up and pantomime, the clown paintings which always seemed like something you'd find in John Wayne Gacy's garage. The whole aptly named "gallery of grotesques" just haunted and unnerved me as a child.
Ironically, I probably saw many of the episodes on this set, since my parents and grandparents were devoted to the show so there was no escaping it, save for leaving the room with the TV in it, and that, of course, was simply unthinkable. Like I Love Lucy, which I watched for years through hot, salty tears of hatred, I would rather be tortured by television that entertained by a book.
The odd thing is, while I hated Red's TV shtick, I rather liked his moves when I later discovered them, leading to my Rainbow Rule for Red Skelton: Red in Black and White: Good. Red in Color: Bad.
Scott opined:
I've always found Red Skelton vaguely repulsive, and I never stopped to wonder why - until now. It was the clowns, I think. The clownish costumes, the clown-like make-up and pantomime, the clown paintings which always seemed like something you'd find in John Wayne Gacy's garage.
No more calls -- we have a winner. (The irony is that those garage paintings have fetched truly astronomical and obscene amounts of money at auctions and the like.)
I've tried to reconcile why listening to Skelton on an old-time radio broadcast never fails to reduce me to hysterics...and yet I just don't warm up to his TV show like others do. Some of these shows -- particularly during his "Silent Spots" -- had me glancing at the watch I no longer wear on my wrist.
Red doesn't get the credit for his movies like he should, even though a lot of them were splashy MGM affairs, a studio not generally known for its comedy expertise.
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