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Red Skelton

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Red Skelton

Bernard Richard "Red" Skelton (July 18, 1913 – September 17, 1997) was an American comedian born in Vincennes, Indiana who started in vaudeville as a teenager, worked his way up to Broadway shows, secondary roles in MGM movies, radio performances and finally popularity in the early days of TV. His eponymous variety show ran alternately on the television networks CBS and NBC from 1951 through 1971. (See: The Red Skelton Show.)

During World War II, Skelton helped sell war bonds, and served as a private in an entertainment unit. He had also become a popular radio presence and a capable film addition, but it was when he moved to television in 1951---the same year in which CBS introduced Lucille Ball to American television viewers---that Skelton found his true audience. Arguably, Skelton may be remembered best in the persona of a circus clown, in traditional makeup — he may have come by this by nature, being the son of a Hagenback-Wallace Circus clown who died before Skelton was born. His best-known clown persona was Freddy the Freeloader, who wore traditional tramp clown makeup comparable to Emmett Kelly, Jr. (Jazz legend Miles Davis may or may not have named "Freddie Freeloader," a key composition on his groundbreaking Kind of Blue album, after Skelton's character.)

His best-remembered character of any kind, however, may have been goofy Clem Kadiddlehopper, a country bumpkin with a big heart, a slow wit, and an accidental knack for upstaging high society slickers---even if he couldn't upstage his cynical father. ("When the stork brought you, Clem, I shoulda had him shot on sight!") In fact, Bullwinkle J. Moose---the witless foil of Rocky the Flying Squirrel---was said to be so similar-sounding to Clem Kadiddlehopper that Skelton's representatives were said to have hinted at legal action against The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show creator Jay Ward. Ward, who rarely missed a trick with his satirical cartoon, hit back with a segment in which Bullwinkle addressed the Skelton complaint---in a deliberate mimicry of Clem Kadiddlehopper.

Skelton would be inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame in 1989, but as Kadiddlehopper showed he was far more than an interpretive clown. One of his best-loved routines was "The Pledge of Allegiance," in which he explained the pledge word by word. One of his last known on-camera interviews with Red Skelton was conducted by Steven F. Zambo. A small portion of this interview can be seen in the 2005 PBS special The Pioneers of Primetime.

Skelton kept his high television ratings into 1970 but he ran into two problems with CBS: demographics showed he no longer appealed to younger viewers, and his contracted annual salary raises grew disproportionately thanks to the inflation of the time and, as a CBS historian phrased it, "priced the cantankerous comedian right out of the market." Since CBS had earlier decided to keep another longtime favourite whose appeal was now strictly to elder audiences, Gunsmoke, it's possible that without Skelton's inflationary contract raises he might have been kept on the air a few more years. He moved to NBC in 1971 for one season, then ended his long television career.

But in time Skelton became appreciated by the very generations---formerly thought too "hip" to appreciate him---whom CBS feared wouldn't sustain him. The best of his work is considered landmark broadcasting in terms of deepening the sensibilities of the classic, traditional clown, and if he wasn't quite the depth of humourist that such contemporaries as Fred Allen, Jackie Gleason, Lucille Ball, and Jack Benny had been, Skelton nevertheless carved a broadcasting niche almost entirely his own.

Near the end of his life, Skelton said his daily routine included writing a short story a day (he collected the best ones in self-published chapbooks) and composing a piece of music a day (which he would then sell to providers of background music such as Muzak). He was also an accomplished painter, mostly painting clowns as his subjects. His original paintings of clowns now sell for thousands of dollars.

Red Skelton died in a hospital in Palm Springs, California from an undisclosed illness on September 17, 1997. At the time of his death, he lived in Anza, California. He is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California.

Filmography

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