Red Skelton: Old Jokes Never Die

By Frank Lovece
WO SEAGLILLS, Gertrude and Heatheliff. "They're down on the beach," Red Skelton begins, mussing up his silver wisps of hair and miming a pair of stubby wittgs. "And she says, 'You been drinkin' that beer again.' "He says, 'No, I haven't.' "She says, 'Well, you're drunk now.' "He says, 'I'm not drunk, you're dnrnk.'

he might pull off p4 will laugh - orsociologist David Marc, artistic coup," suggests author of "Corhic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture." Unlike fellow TV comedy-variet! icon Milton Berle,. "who appealed to urban audiences and had Yiddishpeople

isms and drag and all that stuff," says Marc, "Skelton's a real heartland product, doing

midwestern carnival humor that was very

"She says, 'I am not.' 'TIe says, 'You see a lot of red, blue, pink pelicans running around on the beach?'

much appreciated by the first wave of TV audiences ouiside the major cities." Indeed, "The Red Skelton Show," was a blockbuster the year it began, 1951, pulling in week (rare even in those days offew channels). The series then remained solid, if unspectacular, until 1958, when it began a l2-year reign
as a major ratings hit.

more than half the total TV audience each

"She says,'No.'
beach is lousy

'TIe says, 'I told you you was drunk with 'em'!"

the

An enchanted crowd of reporters as - some old that joke laughed appreciatively. They couldn't not. Because at the congenial, practically huggable press conference last week announcing Skelton's Carnegie Hall concert tonight, it was clear that in the venerability stakes, the comedian and Carnegie run neck
and neck.

The 77-year-old clown of vaudeville, radio, television, burlesque, the circus and minstrel and medicine shows still performs about 75 concerts a.year. Many of his jokes seem as quaint as a country quilt, and his pantomime isn't exactly Mummenshanz, and, other performers with this material wouldn't even get booked these days at county fairs. But SkelErous, an(I anJrway, f,ms

ing in the authoritative "Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows 1946-Present," it is the second most popular series of all time (after "Gunsmoke"), based on audience
size and longevity. "He missed the boat age-wise on the cinema count, in that he-was very much like Chaplin, a

was cbnceled after 20 years the - but longest run of any variety show Ed Sullivan's, and the longest for any TV performer-host. According to the statistical rank-

NUSUALLY FINISHING in the season's Top 10, twice reaching No. 2, it suddenly slumped in 1971 and

mime who mixed slapstick with pathos," says Television actually becarne an opportunity for hiin to go back to the vaudeville trunk." Carnegie Hall seems a similar opportumty, if the routines he did off-the-cuff for reporters is
Pleaqe see SKELTON on Page 11

ts tt(l DKeltron, wnose

television image accompanied the wonder years of every journalist in the room. And as Skelton put it himself, "I've never seen a birth certificate on ajoke."

"He might just be a nostalgia act just put- knowing ting on his Clem Kadiddlehopper hat

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SKELTONfTom PageS

"Since

There was guns there, let's put it that wa. . I met my wife through her b_q_o_t-her, He says to me, 'Would you li&$lto meet one of my sisters? I've gut two, one's named Hortense, the ot.re,r's named Lassie.' I said, 'Lass-

any indication. Clem Kadiddlehopper: I saw you folks last, I got married. Had a military wedding . . .

the pain from her own caneer any longer. So she took her life at the very hour that he passed away. And she left a note:.'The reason I chose
this day wari so you wouldn't feel bad
twice in one year."'
some ways, that story well illustrates Skelton's secret as a performer: his effortless ability to slide from gen-

In

tle

comedy to gentle tragedy. The tragic has always colored and informed his performances,.from the pathos of his mime routine "The Same Couple on their Honeymoon

and 50 Years Later" to his awareni:ss long before it beeame a popular ishearing-impaired in his sue - of the audience; Skelton for years has been accompanied on-stage by a signer for the deaf. And gone now is the tramp-

' ,fh"

Mop'n'Glo!"

journalists guffawed. Skelton's filet two names, long unused, are Richard Bernard, but tliis wasn't the kind of gathering where anyone
would press the point, especially since

Skelton is remarkably candid. He drew a,.stunned, respectfirl silence f,rou presumably tough journalists when.he recounted the tragic circumstances that led him to marry his third and current wife, Lothian, 25 years his junior, in 1973. His future father-in-law was his friend Gregg'Toland, the cinemato.ggphec of "Citizen l(ane." "I used to 4,:Se::qiL.gtrd visit with him," Skelton eat. His style of humor may be old but iecaUs, "'and Lothian at the time was not.par,ticularly oJd-fashioned, when push a tiny little thirag I used tp her around in her -stroller.'::"'Decadeg you consider the hundreds of yrgars ', Skelton's wife of 28 years, modern clowns have been around, - ,rla*er, Ciieorgia, learoed she was dying of and that the slapstick routines of can@r. "And she said to Lothian, 'If such bankable stars as Chevy Chase
him better than anyone.'And then on the day th+t,our son died froq leukemia," he - stid softly, "my wife couldn't stand
. -i;:,l

clown Freddy the Freeloader, who may not be so amusing in these days of homelessness (though Skelton says he dropped the mimed character only because'of the 15-minute makeup .a not entirely convincing regimen - a neason for lifelong clown, and the son of the clown). When Skelton plays Carnegie Hall tonight audiences will get a ballot to let them choose which routinee they most want to see. Mixed with those forever comwill be new bits -.he's ing up with them, evin when merely substituting corn for donuts in a mime about the different ways people

simply.
fore,

it's new."

"If

you've never heard

/ll

it

be.

Frank Louece is a freelance writer.