Skelton, Richard Bernard

▪ 1998

      American comic actor (b. July 18, 1913, Vincennes, Ind.—d. Sept. 17, 1997, Rancho Mirage, Calif.), was a favourite clown of many generations of Americans. A rubber-faced master of the pratfall, he used his talents as a mime to create such memorable characters as Clem Kaddiddlehopper, Freddie the Freeloader, the cross-eyed seagulls Gertrude and Heathcliffe, and the Mean Widdle Kid, whose catchphrase "I dood it" was soon heard all over the country and was later (1943) the title of one of his films. Because his family was destitute, Skelton went to work when he was seven, both delivering newspapers and entertaining on the street. At 10 he joined a traveling medicine show. It was at auditions for that show, when he accidentally fell off the stage, that he discovered his talent for making people laugh by means of physical comedy. After performing on showboats, in burlesque houses, and on the vaudeville circuit, Skelton appeared (1937) on Broadway, thanks to a doughnut-dunking-and-eating pantomime routine he had developed. Radio appearances and a role in the film Having Wonderful Time (1938) followed and led to such other films as Whistling in the Dark (1941), Bathing Beauty (1944), The Fuller Brush Man (1948), Neptune's Daughter (1949), and Three Little Words (1950) and the popular radio program "Red Skelton's Scrapbook of Satire." A notable later motion picture appearance came at the beginning of Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), his last film, in which he portrayed a Neanderthal attempting to fly. Television proved to be Skelton's best medium, however. For some 20 years in the 1950s and '60s, "The Red Skelton Hour" showcased his stable of hilarious characters and made him one of the country's most well-known and well-liked entertainers. In 1970, though, despite the fact that the show was consistently in the top 20 in the ratings, CBS canceled it, considering it irrelevant to younger audience members. It aired for one more year on NBC. Skelton then returned to performing live and made 75 or more appearances a year. He also took up the painting of clowns, earning an estimated $2.5 million a year from the sale of his creations, and wrote children's books, short stories, and symphonies. Skelton was given the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences at the 1986 Emmy awards ceremony and in 1989 was inducted into the academy's Hall of Fame.

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