When Red Skelton does a nightclub or television show, a man with a towel stands by at all times in case Red's stomach suffers one of its frequent reactions to the strain. Throughout the performance, whether he is Clem Kaddiddlehopper or Cauliflower McPugg, his characters have at least one thing in common: they are all but afloat in nervous perspiration. Red trembles and his eyes are alight with tears as, in the end, he inhales his grand ration of applause; and the people who swarm backstage for his autograph find an obliging man, usually dressed in an old kimono, whose lips quiver and whose hands shake.
One such experience would be enough to tire the average light-heavyweight longshoreman, but Skelton does it—and needs it—night after night in clubs, week after week on television. While that feared acetylene torch called overexposure has singed, seared or crisped one comedian after another, Red Skelton's popularity has never really stopped growing. At 47 he is the only comedian left on TV who has, year in and year out, sustained a live weekly program, and this week The Red Skelton Show (CBS) begins its seventh season, during which he will also do two specials.
The shuffling, pratfalling, rubber-faced, cross-eyed Skelton characters are as familiar to audiences as their own neighborhood eccentrics, but Richard Bernard Skelton himself is more eccentric than any of them. In an age of canned biographies and prefabricated flamboyance, he is one Hollywood character that no pressagent yet born could possibly have invented.
Stories & Games. All the lights in his 27-room Bel Air mansion can be turned on from a single switch, and they are generally left on from sunset to sunrise, for Red is admittedly afraid of the dark. He has the gates of his estate bugged so that he can hear in his bedroom anyone who might be prowling about, and another electronic device tells him when people have entered his property. He once discouraged a visit from CBS's Person to Person show, which he describes as "kinda nosy." He prefers to keep the place to himself, his wife Georgia, his 13-year-old daughter Valentina, and three servants. Also on the premises: a stuffed gorilla, five dogs, a macaw, and a parrot that occupies a refrigerator during spells of warm weather.
Deep into the night, every night, Red sits up and writes a short story. He has them bound in red morocco leather, with the words "By Red Skelton" lettered on each volume in gold. None has been published or even read by any but his closest friends. The late Gene Fowler ("my only father"), who was to have been Skelton's biographer, once reported that every Skelton story was about a redhead—redheaded boys, redheaded men, even redheaded old ladies. He likes to paint, too, committing to canvas an endless series of clowns.