Word: skeltons
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Despite the tedious script (which fails to provide Comic Red Skelton with any comedy at all) and a pox of poor direction (e.g., composing a hit tune in about two minutes flat), the picture has some lively moments: the dead-pan vocalizing of frightened Virginia O'Brien, the up-from-the-jungle hoofing of the Berry Brothers, and the nostalgia of the old sweet Gershwin songs...
...laugh was Skelton's first screen test in 1932. Some bemused underling thought he was a romantic lead, gave him a dramatic test. The result was painful for all concerned. Son of an oldtime circus clown, Skelton had spent half his 19 years trying to make people laugh in medicine shows, on Mississippi river boats, in burlesque, vaudeville, the circus, Walkathons. He had already been thwarted in his life's ambition-lion taming-which dissolved one day when he saw Clyde Beatty clawed in the ring. The screen test over, he returned to vaudeville...
...nearby vaudeville house for an act which failed to show up. His routine consisted principally of falling into the orchestra pit and coming up with a bass drum wrapped around his neck. A pretty usherette thought the act was so bad that she complained to the manager. Skelton was fired. Few months later he married the usherette...
Under the competent guidance of Mrs. Edna Skelton the comic began to amount to something. She wrote routines, made him study with a tutor until he got a high-school diploma, worked his salary up to $300 a week. Daughter of an undertaker she had just completed a course in embalming prior to her marriage. Skelton has never forgotten his friends' warnings that if he married her she could easily slit him open while he slept, pump him full of embalming fluid. Says he: "To this day I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat. . . . I have...
...present Edna Skelton's husband (whose adopted coat of arms is a redheaded skull and crossbones) is handsomely repaying his wife's loving care. Solidly bolted to the M.G.M. payroll for $1,500 weekly, he has finished Lady Be Good, is now making another musical, Panama Hattie. Although his oldtime medicine-show manners (telling stories at the top of his voice, howling, gesturing violently) occasionally get him out of line, Edna tempers his healthy conceit. Seldom without an unlighted cigar in his mouth or hand, he neither smokes nor drinks. He makes a rule of never answering...