100 Years Ago Today Red Skelton Was Born

I suspect that unless they happen to be fans of Old Time Radio, classic television, or old movies, most young people have never heard of Red Skelton. Despite this, there was a time when it would have been hard to find anyone who had not heard of Red Skelton. Mr. Skelton had a very long career. His radio show debuted in 1938 and his television show ended in 1971. He also starred in films and played venues from nightclubs to casinos. Quite simply, Red Skelton was a comedian who mastered multiple media. He was born 100 years ago today, on 18 July 1913.

Red Skelton was born Richard Skelton in Vincennes, Indiana. His father, who had once been a clown with the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, died two months before he was born, and as a result Mr. Skelton had to begin work when he was very young. He was only seven years old when he started selling newspapers. It was in 1923 while selling newspapers that he met the legendary Ed Wynn. Mr. Wynn not only bought every newspaper that Red Skelton had, but gave him a ticket to see his show. At the show Ed Wynn took young Red backstage. It was at that point that Mr. Skelton realised he wanted to be an entertainer. It was while he was still young that Red Skelton began performing. He was only ten when he travelled as a performer with a medicine show. By the time he was 15 Mr. Skelton was working the vaudeville circuit. At 16 he performed with the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus as a clown.

Red Skelton proved to be a very popular performer in vaudeville, and it would not be long before he expanded into other media. In 1932 young Mr. Skelton had a screen test in Hollywood, but failed it when he was given a dramatic script (he had a difficult time not being funny). Despite this, Mr. Skelton would go onto a successful film career. He made his feature film debut in Having a Wonderful Time in 1938. Two Vitaphone shorts and supporting roles in Flight Command (1940) and The People vs. Dr. Kildare (1941) followed. It was in 1941 that he received his first lead role, playing Wally "the Fox" Benton in the comedy mystery Whistling in the Dark. The film proved to be successful enough to produce two sequels: Whistling in Dixie (1942) and Whistling in Brooklyn (1943). Red Skelton's film career proved highly successful, and he appeared in such films as Du Barry Was a Lady (1943), I Dood It (1943), Bathing Beauty (1944), Ziegfeld Follies (1945), Merton of the Movies (1947), The Fuller Brush Man (1948), Watch the Birdie (1950), The Clown (1953), and The Great Diamond Robbery (1954). Red Skelton's film career wound down in the Fifties, and his last film appearance was a cameo in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 hours 11 minutes (1965).

Of course, while Red Skelton had a very successful career in movies, it would be for his work in radio and television that he would be best remembered. Indeed, in 1940 when he renegotiated his contract with MGM, the far sighted Red Skelton asked for a clause to work on radio and television without receiving the studio's permission. While MGM granted him the radio clause, they rejected the television clause (keep in mind, at this point television was still very much in the experimental stage). Later, when Red Skelton once more renegotiated his contract, MGM gave him the right to appear on television without their approval. This was very wise of Mr. Skelton. While he was a very successful movie star, arguably he is now best remembered for his long running radio and television shows.

Red Skelton made his radio debut on 12 August 1937 on The Rudy Vallee Show. He proved so popular with listeners that he made another appearance on the show two weeks later. It was in 1938 that he became the regular host of a show for the first time, replacing Red Foley as the host of Avalon Time. He remained with the show for around a year. It was on 7 Ocotber 1941 that he received his very own show, The Raleigh Cigarettes Programme. With an interruption from 6 June 1944 to 18 September 1945, during which time he was in the Army, and with a few changes in sponsors, Red Skelton's radio show ran until May 1953. Starting in 1954 he would have radio show syndicated by Ziv for three years.

While Red Skelton was a huge star on radio, his MGM contract would not permit him to do television without their permission. Fortunately he was able to renegotiate his contract. The Red Skelton Show debuted on NBC on 30 September 1951. With the 1953-1954 season The Red Skelton Show moved to CBS. The Red Skelton Show proved very popular, ranking in the top thirty for most of its run. The show also became well known for its comedy sketches, and it was not unusual for Mr. Skelton, his guest star, or both of them to crack up during a skit. The show was also one of the earliest airing in colour. It aired in colour from 1955 to 1958, then switched back to black and white. In 1965 it switched back to colour for the rest of its run.

For the 1969-1970 season The Red Skelton Show was still enormously popular. It ranked #7 in the Nielsens for the season. Unfortunately, demographics had begun to play in a role in the television industry at the time, and CBS believed that the audience for The Red Skelton Show was too rural and too old. CBS cancelled The Red Skelton Show, makign it one of the highest rated shows to ever be cancelled. NBC picked up The Red Skelton Show for the 1970-1971 season, but cut it back from an hour to a half hour. On NBC the once high rated Red Skelton Show did not even rank in the top thirty shows for the season and ended its run after twenty years on the air.

There can be no doubt that much of Red Skelton's success was because he was very funny. Indeed, throughout his career he not only created hundreds of sketches, but some of the best remembered comedy characters of all time. There was Cauliflower McPugg, a boxer who had taken one too many blows to the head. There was Clem Kadiddlehopper, a hick with no clue as to life beyond the hills. There was the Mean Widdle Kid, a, well, mean little kid. Perhaps his most famous character, however, was Freddie the Freeloader. Freddie was a warm hearted tramp who was constantly down on his luck. Many of the Freddie the Freeloader sketches were played in pantomime. Even when one of Red Skelton's sketches did not include one of his usual characters, it could be incredibly funny. Indeed, Mr. Skelton's best known sketch may be Guzzler's Gin, in which a radio (later television) announcer gets progressively more and more drunk on the gin he is pitching.

Of course, the 20th Century produced many funny comedians and many of those comedians produced memorable sketches and great characters. What set Red Skelton apart from them is that his sketches often included a touch of pathos to them. This was particularly true of his sketches featuring Freddie the Freeloader. One of his most memorable Freddie the Freeloader sketches was set on a cold, snowy, Christmas Eve.  Freddie wants to get thrown in jail so that he can have a warm place to sleep. Unfortunately, every effort he makes to do so (from stealing a rich man's umbrella to throwing a brick through a store window) fails. It was an incredible feat for Red Skelton, who managed to create a sketch that was very funny, but at the same time warm and funny. This brings out another strong point of Red Skelton. He could play characters such as Cauliflower McPugg and Clem Kadiddlehopper, who weren't the brightest individuals, without deriding them. Mr. Skelton's characters may have been none too bright or even eccentric, but he always treated them as human beings.

One hundred years after his birth, Red Skelton is not as well known as he was at the height of his career. And that is a shame. He was a master comedian and master clown, who was capable of being very funny while at the same time being very touching as well. He left behind not only several movies, but literally hundreds of hours of radio and television that should continue to be heard and watched. There were many funny men in the 20th Century. There were even many funny men capable of creating hilarious sketches. In the end, however, there were only a few as gifted as Red Skelton.

TV Producer Ray Butt R.I.P.

Ray Butt, television director and producer best known for producing the show Only Fools and Horses, died on 12 July 2013 at the age of 78.

Ray Butt was born on 25 June 1935 in London. He served in the Royal Air Force. He began his career in television as a production assistant on Porridge. In the late Seventies he directed episodes of The Liver Birds, One-Upmanship, Are You Being Served, Mr. Big, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Citizen Smith, and Q5. His first producer credit was on Happily Ever After in 1974. In the late Seventies he also produced Citizen Smith.

In the Eighties he served as a producer on Citizen Smith, Seconds Out, Just Good Friends, Dear John, Only Fools and Horses, and Young, Gifted, and Broke. He directed episodes of Just Good Friends, Dear John, Only Fools and Horses, and Sob Sisters.

The Ageless Barbara Stanwyck

Today in 1907 Barbara Stanwyck was born. She has always numbered among my favourite actresses of all time. She was obviously beautiful. And she could be incredibly sexy without even trying. And she was extremely talented, one of the most talented actresses of all time. That having been said, I have always thought Barbara Stanwyck was remarkable for one other reason. She just did not seem to age! At the very least she did not age the way most of us do.

This is a picture of Miss Stanwyck from 1924 when she was a Ziegfeld Girl. At the time she was only 17 years old.

This photo is from around 1930-1931 She would have been about 23 at the time. She really does not look that different from when she was 17!

A picture of Miss Stanwyck from 1937. She turned 30 that year, and yet she doesn't look any older than when she was 25.

Barbara Stanwyck circa 1943. She still doesn't look that much older than she was in 1930. She would have been 36, but to me she still looks like she is in her mid-twenties!

This picture is from 1949. I think Miss Stanwyck looks a little more mature in this shot, but I think that is because of her hair and make up. At 42 she still looked much younger.

A publicity shot for the film Executive Suite, released in 1953. Barbara Stanwyck does look more mature than she was in her twenties, but not by much. At 46 she looks closer to 30.

A black and white promotional shot for the TV show The Big Valley, which debuted in 1965. By this point Miss Stanwyck had some grey hair and a few wrinkles, but she did not look terribly much older than she had been in the Forties. She was 58 when the show debuted, but would have looked closer to 40 if not for the grey hairs.

Many actresses age gracefully, but my point is that they do age. Aside from a few wrinkles and grey hair, Barbara Stanwyck appeared to age very little from her mid-Twenties to her late Fifties. This is even more remarkable when one considers that Miss Stanwyck never had plastic surgery and lived most of her life at a time before collegen and Botox. I suspect that her youthful looks were largely a result of good genetics and good care. It was either that or Barbara Stanwyck had discovered the Fountain of Youth. All actresses age, but none seem to have done so as slowly as Miss Barbara Stanwyck.

Ironside

If you keep up with such things, you may have heard that NBC has picked up a reboot of the Sixties and Seventies show Ironside starring Blair Underwood. Perhaps not so coincidentally, ME-TV began rerunning the original Ironside starring Raymond Burr (perhaps best known for Perry Mason).

 Ironside was created by Collier Young, who had previously produced the anthology series Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond. The show centred around Robert Ironside (played by Mr. Burr), a San Francisco Police Chief of Detectives who was paralysed from the waist down by a sniper's bullet and hence confined to a wheelchair. Ironside did not exactly retire, however, convincing the Police Commissioner to make him a special police consultant, complete with his own team, including Detective Sergeant Ed Brown (Don Galloway) and detective Eve Whitfield (Barbara Anderson). Completing the team was Ironside's assistant/bodyguard/driver, Mark Sanger (Don Mitchell), who functioned as Dr. Watson to Ironside's Sherlock Holmes or Lewis to Ironside's Inspector Morse.

If it has not become obvious by now, Ironside was not only different from other shows on at the time, but any shows before or since. Sadly, disabled characters on television shows have been rare even as regular characters on American television shows, let alone lead characters. Gunsmoke featured Chester (Dennis Weaver), who walked with a pronounced limp. On the short lived Seventies show Longstreet, insurance investigator Mike Longstreet (played by James Franciscus) was blind. On Little House on the Prairie  Mary Ingalls (played by Melissa Sue Anderson) went blind during the course of the show, must as the historical Mary Ingalls did in real life. More recently there was Dr. Gregory House (played by Hugh Laurie) on House, who not only had only partial use of his right leg (forcing him to walk with a cane), but was also addicted to Vicodin). Robert Ironside was then one of the very few characters in the history of television who was disabled and probably the only wheelchair bound lead character in the history of the medium.

Of course, it is important to note that while Robert Ironside was confined to a wheelchair, he did not let that keep him from investigating crimes. He was a dogged investigator with a skill for piecing together clues. And he could be a shrewd opponent when it came to criminals, not below using a bit of trickery to see that justice was meted out. Unlike the lead characters of many police dramas, Ironside's weapons were not guns or his fists, but his mind, which was ultimately much more dangerous to criminals. In the end, if Ironside had any sort of message, it may have been that one does not have let his or her disability define him or her.

Ironside was not only progressive in having a disabled character as a lead, but also in the fact that it included an African American character in a primary role. Indeed, arguably Mark Sanger was the most important character on the show aside from Robert Ironside himself. Prior to serving as Ironside's assistant, Mark had been a juvenile delinquent who had grown up in the bad part of San Francisco. He attended law school. In the course of the show he became a police officer, graduated from law school, and became a lawyer.  In the capable hands of Don Mitchell, Mark was no mere sidekick to Ironside. He often provided valuable advice to Ironside and was a very capable detective himself, in many ways better than police officers Ed and Eve. In many ways Mark Sanger was a very remarkable character for a Sixties television show. Ironside debuted in 1967, only two years after Bill Cosby made history as the first African American lead on a drama as Alexander Scott on I Spy. It was still very rare for any television show to have a black character, particularly one in a role as important as that of Mark Sanger. Indeed, in 1967 perhaps the only other drama with a black character in a prominent role besides I Spy was Mission: Impossible, with Greg Morris as electronics expert Barney Collier.

While obviously a product of its time, Ironside holds up very well. For the most part the episodes are both well written and well acted. And the show had a good deal of variety. Episodes ranged from classic mysteries to police procedurals to character studies. The show boasted some big name guest stars, including Edward Asner, Joseph Cotten, Bruce Lee, Ricardo Montalban,  and many others. Of course, like many shows of the late Sixties and early Seventies, Ironside sometimes tried to be relevant, and this is often the show's weakest point. The "hippies" who appeared on the show were more often than not caricatures than any realistic representations of the subculture. In defence of Ironside, however, it must be pointed out that nearly all hippies on television in the late Sixties were caricatures, and at least Ironside acknowledged the Vietnam War, drug use, and other issues of concern to youth at the time. Most shows in  the late Sixties did not acknowledge youth culture or issues of concern to youth at all.

I have my serious doubts as to how good the new version of Ironside will be. Too often many reboots of shows fall far short of the original. Even if it does, however, I hope that it brings attention to the original Ironside starring Raymond Burr. It was one of the better police dramas of the time and certainly a little ahead of its time. It certainly deserves to be better remembered than it has been.

Chuck Foley, Co-Inventor of Twister, R.I.P.

Eva Gabor and Johnny Carson play Twister.

Chuck Foley, who invented the popular game Twister with Neil Rabens, died 1 July 2013 at the age of 82. He had Alzheimer's Disease.

Chuck Foley was born in Lafayette, Indiana on 6 September 1930. He worked on a Ford assembly line for a time, and served in the Michigan Air National Guard from 1950 to 1953. He worked as a salesman and eventually at  Lakeside Toys in Minneapolis.

It was while he was working at the Reynolds Guyer House of Design that he and his collaborator Neil Rabins developed the idea for a game called "Pretzel". Pretzel was licensed to the board game company Milton Bradley, who immediately renamed it "Twister", and first put it on the market in 1965. Twister did meet with some controversy. Sears thought the game was too inappropriate to include in their catalogue. Not surprisingly, sales were initially very low. All of that changed when Twister was featured on the 3 May 1966 edition of The Tonight Show on NBC, on which Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor played the game. Sales shot through the roof to the point that Twister became an outright fad. Even before the end of 1966 over one million Twister games had been sold. Critics still called the game "Sex in a Box", but with such phenomenal sales it really didn't matter. In 1967 it was named "Game of the Year". It has remained in production ever since.

While Twister was by far Chuck Foley's most successful invention, it was not his only one. He held 97 patents. Another one of his popular inventions was Un-Du Adhesive Remover, a liquid to remove tape, stickers, and labels. Not surprisingly, he invented or co-invented several toys and games, including Striker: A Safe Dart Game (a game with soft-tipped darts), plastic toy handcuffs, the game Paddle Pool, and many others.

While Chuck Foley is not a household name, he certainly left his mark on popular culture. Twister proved to be one of the most successful games of all time, and is still in production nearly fifty years after its introduction. Weird Al Yankovic parodied The Beastie Boys with a song about the game, "Twister". A game of Twister with Death was a pivotal plot point in the film Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. And while Un-Du Adhesive Remover may not have seen the success of Twister, it has proven very successful nonetheless. It can be found in libraries and offices across the nation. The average person may not know who Chuck Foley was, but chances are he has touched their lives in some way.

Why Google+ is Good for Classic Film

Like many American classic film buffs, I am a huge fan of the Warner Archive. Aside from having a huge selection of classic and not so classic films on both DVD and through streaming, they have always maintained a presence with their fans through social media. They have a Twitter account, a Tumblr blog, a Facebook page, and even a Pinterest page. The one thing they do not have is a Google+ page. Like most classic film buffs I am also a fan of Turner Classic Movies. While not quite as prevalent on social media sites as the Warner Archive, TCM has a Twitter account, a Facebook page, and even a Pinterest page. Like the Warner Archive, however, they do not have a Google+ page. In both instances I think this is a grave oversight.

The fact is that Google+ is the second largest social media site, bigger than Twitter and second only to Facebook. What is more, in my experience could well be the most active. Taking into account that more people follow me on Google+ than any other social media site (more on that in a bit), my Google+ stream is far more active than my Facebook news feed or Tumblr feed ever were, and a bit more active than my Twitter feed. As to Pinterest, well, in my admittedly limited experience it is not even in the running. Indeed, to give you an idea of how many people are on Google+ and how active it is, over 8000 people have me circled there. That is ten times as many people follow me on Twitter, which at 800 is the social media site on which I have the most followers after Google+.

Of course, even though Google is the second largest social media site and even though it is one of the most active (if not the most active), that still does not necessarily mean that it is good for classic film buffs and classic film outlets. That being the case, I then offer the fact that I know several classic films buffs on Google+. Indeed, there are even several communities on Google+ dedicated to classic film (communities are roughly equivalent to Facebook's groups, or MySpace's old groups if you prefer). Some of these classic movie communities have fairly large memberships. Quite simply, Google+ has a good number of classic movie buffs and their number is growing.

There are other advantages to Google+ beyond being a large social network with a sizeable number of classic movie buffs. Unlike some other social networks, there is no text limit on posts. This means that one could write an entire blog length post if one wanted to. And unlike other social networks, photos are often displayed in full size and, even when they are not, one can see the full photo. Photos are never cropped. This naturally increases the chances of one's photos getting notice. The same holds true with videos. Videos are displayed in close to full size or close to it. All of this means that there is a better chance of one's posts getting noticed than there is on Twitter and especially Facebook (which I will discuss shortly). I suspect even if I did not have many more followers on G+ than any other social network, I would still get much more response to my posts because they are simply more, well, noticeable. Indeed, I might mention that if one posts publically on Google+, every one of those posts will be indexed by Google, making it even more likely that they will be noticed!

From the advantages I listed above, it seems obvious to me that Google+ is much more advantageous as a promotional tool than Twitter. While I love Twitter, the fact is that the average tweet has a very short period of time in which it might get noticed. A recent study by Sysomos determined that only 29% of all tweets get any sort of response at all. Of these responses, 19.3% were retweets, with the remaining percentage being replies. Not only do very few tweets get any sort of reaction, but they have only a short time in which to do it according to the Sysomos study. According to Sysomos, 96.9% of the tweets that get any sort of reaction do so in their first hour. After that the chances of getting a response decline dramatically. While I don't have studies on Google+ activity, I can tell you what CircleCount (a site that keeps track of one's activity on G+) says about activity on my account there. On average I receive at least one comment per post, one reshare per post, and nine +1's per post (a +1 is more or less the equivalent of a Facebook like). I can also tell you that I have had posts that were months old that received comments, reshares, or +1's. Quite simply, Google+ posts not only get more reaction than Twitter tweets, but they have a longer life span too.

Of course, I have always been of the opinion that Twitter is a better promotional tool than Facebook, so it should come as no surprise that I think Google+ is a better promotional tool than it too. The simple fact is that, for all its ubiquitousness, Facebook is the worst social network to use to promote one's services or products. The reason for this that Facebook filters the posts one sees in his or her news feed (this despite the fact that the vast majority of FB users I know don't want their news feeds filtered). Because of this, in the end only about 15% of a page's followers will see any given post from that page in their news feed. If one wants all of their users to see any given post on Facebook, then they must pay $7 to promote the post. One does not need to be maths whiz to realise this could add up very swiftly. This can be contrasted with Google+, where every single one of one's uses will see every single of one's posts!

Beyond the fact that Facebook's filtering of posts make it a very poor promotional took, I must also point out its various other disadvantages. First, for whatever reason Facebook crops pictures in the news feed. Second, videos are not displayed anywhere near their full size. This reduces the chance that even those who do see one's post will actually notice them. While Facebook may be the biggest social media out there,then, it is also probably the worst for promoting anything.

Other social media sites come with their own disadvantages. I love Tumblr, but because of its stream I think the lifespan of any given Tumblr post may be only a little more than that of a tweet on Twitter. At any rate, in my humble opinion the Tumblr stream is less user friendly that Google+'s stream. As to Pinterest, my experience is very limited with that site, so what I have to say must be taken with a grain of salt. Quite simply, it seems to me that Pinterest is not a terribly active site. Indeed, the claim that some misguided media outlets have made that Google+ is a "ghost town" seems much more applicable to Pinterest to me.

Of course, even with all the advantages I can see how some might complain that they are already busy with accounts for Facbook, Twitter, and various other social media sites, so they would have little time for Google+. To me that is not a problem. While I do not know how many social media management sites are set up to handle Google+ pages, I know that HootSuite (my Twitter client of choice) is. One could simply set up one's HootSuite account so that when one makes a post, it goes to Google+, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn, all at the same time. If one doesn't like HootSuite (and I don't know why one wouldn't), I suspect there are other social media managements sites out there that handle Google+ as well as Twitter and Facebook.

With the many advantages that Google+ has and the large number of classic film buffs there, I really do not see any reason the Warner Archive and Turner Classic Movies don't have pages there. Indeed, I would be among the first to circle them (actually, I would even volunteer to run their Google+ pages for them if they would just sit them up), and I am sure many others would circle them as well. Quite simply, I believe Google+ is an incredible resource, superior to both Twitter and Facebook, that too many media outlets are neglecting. I think if the Warner Archive and TCM set up Google+ pages, they would be surprised at the enormous response they would receive.

Beyond Casablanca by Jennifer C. Garlen

If you are a classic film buff and Turner Classic Movies fan on Twitter or Google+, you may be familiar  with Jennifer Garlen. Jennifer is the author of the blog Virtual Virago. What you might not know is that she recently published a book, Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching.

Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching  is a compendium of 100 reviews of classic movies that might be worth one's while. Included at the beginning of the book is a list of ten films that Jennifer considers essential viewing. Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching is a very easy reference to use. The movies are listed in alphabetical and there are also indexes that list the films by year, by director, and by actor.

Not only is Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching easy to use, but it is also very to read. What is more her reviews are very informative. Not only does she have some very insightful views on the various films, but she also dispenses a good deal of trivia as well. If you have ever read her blog, then you know that Jennifer knows her classic films. And while there are only 100 movies reviewed in the book, in the vast majority of reviews Jennifer mentions other films in which the viewer might be interested (for instance, in her review of Hammer Films' Dracula, she not only points the reader to other Hammer films, but similar horror films such as House of Wax, Night of the Demon, and so on. I must also mention that Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching has a good mix of various genres. One will find serious dramas, swashbucklers, science film movies, musicals, Silent films, and just about any other genre of which one can think.

My only real caveat with Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching is that Jennifer did not include my "Film That One Must See if He or She Sees Only One Film in His or Her Lifetime", Seven Samurai. To me it is the greatest film of all time. Of course, this points to the fact that film viewing is a subjective experience. What one person to be an essential film another might not. That having been said, the fact is that there are no films in the book that I don't think deserve to be there!

Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching is not simply a great reference for those just beginning to explore the vast world of classic film, but a book that can also be a source of discussion among veteran classic film buffs. Whether you're just starting to watch the classics or have seen the vast majority of them, Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watchingis a very worthwhile book to purchase.