page_title: Red Skelton
section_title: Film work
hierarchical_section_title: Red Skelton / Biography / Film work
caption_attribution_description: English: L. to R.&#160;: Ben Blue, Red Skelton, Ann Sothern &amp; Rags Ragland in Panama Hattie (1942 film) - publicity still (cropped)
context_page_description: Richard Red Skelton was an American comedy entertainer. He was best known for his national radio and television shows between 1937 and 1971, especially as host of the television program The Red Skelton Show. He has stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in radio and television, and also appeared in burlesque, vaudeville, films, nightclubs, and casinos, all while he pursued an entirely separate career as an artist.
  Skelton began developing his comedic and pantomime skills from the age of 10, when he became part of a traveling medicine show. He then spent time on a showboat, worked the burlesque circuit, and then entered into vaudeville in 1934. The "Doughnut Dunkers" pantomime sketch, which he wrote together with his wife, launched a career for him in vaudeville, radio, and films. His radio career began in 1937 with a guest appearance on The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour, which led to his becoming the host of Avalon Time in 1938. He became the host of The Raleigh Cigarette Program in 1941, on which many of his comedy characters were created, and he had a regularly scheduled radio program until 1957.
context_section_description: Skelton's first contact with Hollywood came in the form of a failed 1932 screen test. In 1938 he made his film debut for RKO Pictures in the supporting role of a camp counselor in Having Wonderful Time. He appeared in two short subjects for Vitaphone in 1939: Seeing Red and The Broadway Buckaroo. Actor Mickey Rooney contacted Skelton, urging him to try for work in films after seeing him perform his "Doughnut Dunkers" act at President Roosevelt's 1940 birthday party.  For his Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer screen test, Skelton performed many of his more popular skits, such as "Guzzler's Gin", but added some impromptu pantomimes as the cameras were rolling.  "Imitation of Movie Heroes Dying" were Skelton's impressions of the cinema deaths of stars like George Raft, Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney.
  Skelton appeared in numerous films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer throughout the 1940s. In 1940 he provided comic relief as a lieutenant in Frank Borzage's war drama Flight Command, opposite Robert Taylor, Ruth Hussey and Walter Pidgeon. In 1941 he also provided comic relief in Harold S. Bucquet's Dr. Kildare medical dramas, Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day and The People vs. Dr. Kildare. Skelton was soon starring in comedy features as inept radio detective "The Fox", the first of which was Whistling in the Dark (1941) in which he began working with director S. Sylvan Simon, who would become his favorite director. He reprised the same role opposite Ann Rutherford in Simon's other pictures, including Whistling in Dixie (1942) and Whistling in Brooklyn (1943). In 1941, Skelton began appearing in musical comedies, starring opposite Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern and Robert Young in Norman Z. McLeod's Lady Be Good. In 1942 Skelton again starred opposite Eleanor Powell in Edward Buzzell's Ship Ahoy, and alongside Ann Sothern in McLeod's Panama Hattie.
  In 1943, after a memorable role as a nightclub hatcheck attendant who becomes King Louis XV of France in a dream opposite Lucille Ball and Gene Kelly in Roy Del Ruth's Du Barry Was a Lady, Skelton starred as Joseph Rivington Reynolds, a hotel valet besotted with Broadway starlet Constance Shaw (Powell) in Vincente Minnelli's romantic musical comedy, I Dood It. The film was largely a remake of Buster Keaton's Spite Marriage; Keaton, who had become a comedy consultant to MGM after his film career had diminished, began coaching Skelton on set during the filming. Keaton worked in this capacity on several of Skelton's films, and his 1926 film The General was also later rewritten to become Skelton's A Southern Yankee (1948), under directors S. Sylvan Simon and Edward Sedgwick. Keaton was convinced enough of Skelton's comedic talent that he approached MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer with a request to create a small company within MGM for himself and Skelton, where the two could work on film projects.  Keaton offered to forgo his salary if the films made by the company were not box office hits; Mayer chose to decline the request. In 1944, Skelton starred opposite Esther Williams in George Sidney's musical comedy Bathing Beauty, playing a songwriter with romantic difficulties. He next had a relatively minor role as a "TV announcer who, in the course of demonstrating a brand of gin, progresses from mild inebriation through messy drunkenness to full-blown stupor" in the "When Television Comes" segment of Ziegfeld Follies, which featured William Powell and Judy Garland in the main roles. In 1946, Skelton played boastful clerk J. Aubrey Piper opposite Marilyn Maxwell and Marjorie Main in Harry Beaumont's comedy picture The Show-Off.
  Skelton's contract called for MGM's approval prior to his radio shows and other appearances. When he renegotiated his long-term contract with MGM, he wanted a clause that permitted him to remain working in radio and to be able to work on television, which was then largely experimental.  At the time, the major work in the medium was centered in New York; Skelton had worked there for some time and was able to determine that he would find success with his physical comedy through the medium. By 1947,
caption: Skelton (center left) in Panama Hattie (1942)
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