Red Skelton In the 30's & 40's
1/11/1933 HCN Elizabeth Yeaman
It was almost imperative that Jesse Lasky find an English actress to play opposite Ernest Truex in The Warrior's Husband. Truex, the famous stage comedian, is so typically English. And Fox now has a corner on the market of English acting talent. But Elissa Landi, the first English star to be placed under contract at this studio, is to share honors with Truex in The Warrior's Husband. She will have the role portrayed by Katharine Hepburn in the New York stage production of the play. Miss Landi is now completing the feminine lead opposite Ronald Colman in The Masquerader. Truex, by the way, is not under term contract to any studio. At the moment he is starring in the screen version of his recent stage success, Whistling In the Dark, at MGM. Another interesting actress is expected to join the cast of The Warrior's Husband. She is Marjorie Rambeau. Lasky has offered her a contract for the picture and she is expected to sign it any day now. Miss Rambeau retired from the screen a year or so ago following her marriage. But Charles R. Rogers persuaded her to relinquish a little domesticity in order to take one of the featured roles in a picture he is producing for Paramount under the title Strictly Personal. After Miss Landi completes The Warrior's Husband, she is slated to star in The Dressmaker From Luneville.
....
It looked for a time as if Hoot Gibson would move over to Universal to make the series of westerns which had been planned for Tom Mix, now retired. Of course Hoot may eventually go to Universal, but he is not free from his present contract for another six months, and the program of westerns cannot wait for him. So Ken Maynard has been signed by Universal. This popular young Texan has been the hero of more than a hundred pictures, and he will star in a series of six western features under the Universal banner. He is just back from an airplane trip to Mexico, and he starts work on his new contract in a few weeks. This is the second time that Maynard has been under contract to Universal. His famous horse, Tarzan, will share honors in the pictures, of course.
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MGM has given Diana Wynyard a new contract. They didn't need to wait for the result of her work on their own lot, since she has given a sensational performance in Cavalcade, for which she was loaned to Fox. Her new contract gives her a vacation until June. And she is returning to London just the moment that she completes Men Must Fight for MGM. While in London she will appear in at least one stage production and if Cavalcade is released by the time she arrives, she undoubtedly will be the toast of the city. Miss Wynyard is one of the most unassuming, thoroughly charming actresses who has come to Hollywood.
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Not to be outdone by Samuel Goldwyn and his now famous Goldwyn girls, Warners announce they intend to gather the loveliest chorus ensemble available, with the hope of developing the girls for bigger things. They will make a series of public screen tests on the stages of various theaters in Southern California. Busby Berkeley, who knows a good deal about feminine pulchritude, will direct the tests. Out of the first chorus which Berkeley assembled in Hollywood, 15 of the most promising girls have been signed to term contracts at Warners. In this group the studio believes it has several valuable players. The new chorus will be used for the ensembles in High Life, a forthcoming picture.
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Gloria Stuart, a newly crowned Wampas Baby star who started her movie career only a year ago, is one of the busiest little actresses in Hollywood. At the moment she is playing feminine leads in two important pictures at different studios. At Radio Pictures she is with Lionel Barrymore in Sweepings, and from there she dashes to Universal, her home lot, for one of the leads in The Kiss Before the Mirror . As though these were not enough work for one little actress, she is now making extensive tests for the much sought lead in Only Yesterday which John Stahl will direct for Universal.
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Jack Cooper, in the press department at Warners, is finding that life is just a husk. For months now he has received stacks of mail which doesn't belong to him. It is intended for small Jackie Cooper who is under contract to MGM. But the last straw came last night when he was routed out of bed in the wee hours by a long distance telephone call. A fond parent at the end of the wire asked him to say something to soothe her crying child. Jack thinks little Jackie should handle the bedtime stories.
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Harry T. Brundige, nationally known newspaper reporter and the author of several books, is the latest addition to the publicity department at Fox. Brundige is noted for the many exposes he has conducted during his reporting days with the St. Louis Star and Times. Now he will have an opportunity to turn his talent for digging up hidden facts into a genius for glossing over things the studio wishes to keep dark.
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Twenty tons of genuine snow were hauled from Mt. Baldy to the Radio pictures lot yesterday for scenes for Sweepings.
Red Skelton In the 30's & 40's
ABBREVIATIONS
DN – (Los Angeles) Daily News
EE – Los Angeles Evening Express
EH -- Los Angeles Evening Herald
EHE -- Los Angeles Evening Herald Express
FD -- Film Daily
IDN -- Los Angeles Illustrated News
HCN -- Hollywood Citizen News
HDC -- Hollywood Daily Citizen
LAR -- Los Angeles Record
LAPR -– Los Angeles Post-Record
LAX -- Los Angeles Examiner
MPH -- Motion Picture Herald
9/?/1937 (source unknown)
A newcomer to RKO-Radio, Richard, "Red" Skelton, will make his bow to the picture public in the Arthur Kober hit, Having a Wonderful Time, for which Kober is doing the screen play.
Skelton, a vaudeville and radio entertainer, is described as a comedian who is good-looking enough to be a leading man.
Another addition to the cast of Having a Wonderful Time, which will be directed by Al Santell with Ginger Rogers, is Lana Turner, who won attention in Mervyn LeRoy's film, They Won't Forget. And still another addition is Lucille Ball, who gained much favor among studio executives with her work in Stage Door, which, by the way, will be previewed tomorrow night.
6/30/1938 FD Having Wonderful Time
RKO Radio 71 minutes
That stage success which has broken records on Broadway and brought laughter to thousands, will now do the same for millions in the film theaters. The story follows the stage version closely, with the elimination of the Bronx dialects and dialecticians so that the folks in the other sections of the country will be able to understand it. So it resolves itself into a very human story of the average American boy and girl who go to a camp for their two-weeks' vacation. Ginger Rogers does a grand job as the girl Teddy who gets a crush on Chick, the waiter, played to the hilt by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. The daily routine of the vacation camp is amusingly presented, with all the various activities and diversions laid out to amuse the guests. Into this phase of the proceedings enters very actively and amusingly "Red" Skelton as Itchy, the paid funny-man whose business it is to keep the guests constantly amused with extemporaneous gags. He does a fine job. Another who scores impressively is Lee Bowman as Buzzy, the "wise guy" who makes a play for Teddy,, inviting her to his cabin one evening, only to have her sidetrack him in a series of games of backgammon. This is a howl sequence, and Bowman handles it superbly. He is due for some big parts, this lad, for he has what it takes. There is plenty of emotional appeal, sentiment, and all kinds of human interest touches, in fact a down-to-earth story that should hit the younger element and bowl ‘em over.
Cast: Ginger Rogers, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Peggy Conklin, Lucille Ball, Lee Bowman, Eve Arden, Dorothea Kent, Richard Skelton, Donald Meek, Jack Carson, Clarence H. Wilson, Allan Lane, Grady Sutton, Shimen Ruskin, Dorothy Tree, Leona Roberts, Harlan Briggs, Inez Courtney, Juantia Quigley.
Credits: Producer, Pandro S. Berman; Director, Alfred Santell; Author, Arthur Kober; Screenplay, same; Editor, William Hamilton; Cameraman, Robert de Grasse.
Direction, Very Good. Photography, Fine.
7/27/1938 EHE Having a Wonderful Time, a RKO-Radio production, opened July 26 at RKO-Hillstreet and Pantages-Hollywood. Produced by Pandro S. Berman. Directed by Alfred Santell. Screen play by Arthur Kober. Photographed by Robert de Grasse. Music by Sam Stepi. Lyrics by Charles Tobias. CAST: Ginger Rogers, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Peggy Conklin, Lucille Ball, Lee Bowman, Eve Arden, Dorothea Kent, Richard Skelton, Ann Miller, Donald Meek, Jack Carson, Kirk Windsor, Grady Sutton and Shimen Ruskin.
Wives Under Suspicion on same bill.
By W.E. Oliver
A thought that lurks in the mind of all of us through the year and comes out about this time to take over is behind Having Wonderful Time, comedy-drama of city office workers' summer camp paradise, now screening at the RKO-Hillstreet and Pantages-Hollywood.
The locale of this new RKO-Radio is Kamp Karefree, where the dwellers of New York's Bronx crowd in two weeks a year's yearning for romance, fun and leisure.
The story is the familiar boy meets, loses, gets girl, told against this background of young folk engaged in the frenzied pursuit of a fun. But a touch of honesty in the treatment and one or two novel complications created out of the locale keep the film from being stereotyped.
The boy and girl are played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Ginger Rogers. These two alone should keep not too exacting fans ecstatically engrossed in the tiny saga of Chic, the college youth working out his vacation as a waiter, and Teddy, the stenographer who pins all her hopes on the few days she spends on the mass vacation principle.
PLOT SKIMPY
Adapted from Arthur Kober's play, which ran successfully in New York, the plot of Having a Wonderful Time comes out skimpy in celluloid. The film producers eke out by interjecting bits of parallel comedy and byplay here and there that do add to the entertainment but give the picture a stumbling cadence.
Fairbanks plays an earnest, likeable character, touched up with a feeling of reality by an unconventional attempt to grasp happiness with the girl instead of waiting until he gets a job and can give her something more than a doorstep. He rounds out the character nicely with his customary deft touches of light comedy.
Miss Rogers' role falls into the character class once or twice. She speaks Teddy's lines with a slow thoughtfulness and plays the character with the glimmerings of being different from the "mob," but who gives in to the call of romance like any daughter of Eve since the first apple was plucked.
However playwright Kober's script had the thing work out, the Hays version will give twinges to no censors.
NICE COMBINATIONS
More than the playing of the principal pair, you'll like the combination of their personalities in this little, touching romance of a couple trying to found an individualistic heaven.
Richard Skelton, as an ubiquitous camp social director, spurs the story into broad comedy by some amusing knockabout tricks and gags. There are other effective performances by Peggy Conklin as Ginger's pal, Lucille Belle as the distraught sweetheart of a chaster, Lee Bowman as the philanderer, Donald Meek as the camp proprietor.
The cabin scene between Ginger and Bowman, where the heroine protects her honor by playing backgammon all night is one of the best things in the picture.
As a bright, brash depiction of young folk at their fun, Having a Wonderful Time will do very well until the next picture comes along.
Wives Under Suspicion and a newsreel n the Coast Guard are also on the bill.
7/27/1938 LAX Having Wonderful Time
An RKO picture directed by Alfred Santell, produced by Pandro Berman. Screen play by Arthur Kober from his stage play.
THE CAST: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Ginger Rogers, Peggy Conklin, Lucille Ball, Lee Bowman, Eve Arden, Dorothea Kent, Richard Skelton.
By Erskine Johnson
Fifty weeks out of the year Teddy pounds a typewriter in a New York office building, eats her lunch on a drug store stool and bucks the subway traffic. Then for two weeks she escapes from it all to a mountain resort where she can breathe air "that hasn't been used before" and where she discovers Chic.
The girl is bony, spindle-legged Ginger, the boy is Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and the picture is Having Wonderful Time, the celluloid version of Arthur Kober's hit play, which opened yesterday at the RKO-Hillstreet and Pantages Hollywood theaters.
As a play, Having Wonderful Time was a highly successful, graphic portrait of vacation life at a Jewish camp. As a picture it is just another boy-meet-girl story, completely lacking the play's original charm, and far from being worth the $250,000 RKO officials spent on re-takes and added scenes when the original production failed to jell.
Usually swashbuckling Fairbanks Jr. seems miscast as a law school graduate without a job who waits on tables at Camp Care-Free during the day and dances with its feminine guests at night. Even usually vivacious Ginger Rogers plods unanimated through the story, reads her lines as if they were printed on an off-stage blackboard. The story was not for them, or anyone else in Hollywood in its screen-play form.
Despite these drawbacks, Having Wonderful Time probably will enjoy fair success as a timely insight into vacation life, will prove hilarious and romantic to those of you who have just returned from the wide open spaces now populated with citizens craving relaxation.
Only one sequence in the picture stands out in our mind as worth writing a Having Wonderful Time postcard to the folks back home. Angered with Fairbanks when she mistakes his plea of poverty for a proposition, Miss Rogers goes to the cabin of the camp's Casanova, rebukes his advances and settles down with him to a game of backgammon. Hours later he retires to his bed, locks his door against her and she continues to play backgammon herself, a means of avoiding Fairbanks who awaits her outside.
As the camp Casanova, Lee Bowman almost steals the picture. Two other supporting players, Eve Arden and Dorothea Kent, will be remembered for their delightful comedy.
Warren William and Gail Patrick are co-starred in the second feature, Wives Under Suspicion, which is as heavy melodrama as the title suggests.
1/23/1941 EHE Flight Command
An MGM picture, opened Jan. 22, 1941, at Loew's State and Grauman's Chinese theaters. Directed by Frank Borzage. Screenplay by Wells Root and Harvey Haslip, from a story by John Sutherland and Halsip. Photographed by Harold Rosson. CAST: Robert Taylor, Ruth Hussey, Walter Pidgeon, Paul Kelly, Shepperd Strudwick, Red Skelton, Nat Pendleton, Dick Purcell and Addison Richards.
Michael Shayne, Private Detective—A 20th Century-Fox on program. CAST: Lloyd Nolan, Marjorie Weaver and Joan Valerie.
By Harrison Carroll
Of vital interest to every American in these anxious days is MGM's Flight Command, which dramatizes the story of this country's first-line air defenders, the Navy pilots.
There is, of course, a certain resemblance in plot to all other service stories. Robert Taylor, the hero, at first is a cocky graduate of Pensacola, who obviously is going to have his ears pinned back a couple of times before he becomes an experienced pilot. Then there are the usual planes lost in storm and fog, and the inevitable tragic crash which costs the life of one of the principals.
ROMANCE SURPRISES
But, as far as romance concerned, there is a surprise twist. It probably will take the average playgoer a couple of minutes to get used to the denouement when it is sprung.
Flight Command was made with the full cooperation of the Navy. The shots of machine gun practice, of precision flying, of takeoff and landings from an airplane carrier at sea are all enacted by Navy pilots and are fascinating to watch.
The final episode, where a squadron of planes, bearing their injured commander, must depend upon a new fog-landing device to pierce ceiling zero weather and put down safely at their San Diego base, is more on the fictional side, but provides a climax that tingles with suspense.
For an action picture, built around a more or less familiar formula, there are several good characterizations in Flight Command: Walter Pidgeon, for instance, as the commander of "The Hellcats" squadron, who doesn't realize that his wife isn't made of the same iron stuff that he is; Ruth Hussey, always an intelligent actress, as the wife; Shepperd Strudwick, as her brother, and Paul Kelly, as a tough lieutenant commander.
ROLE CONVENTIONAL
Taylor's role is conventional, but he plays it forthrightly.
Good work also is done by Red Skelton, as the comedian of the outfit; by Dick Purcell, as one of the officers and by Nat Pendleton, as a mechanic.
Flight Command was directed by Frank Borzage. It is something of a departure for him, but he has turned in an excellent job.
This picture not only will entertain you, but will give you a shot of confidence.
Second feature at the Loew's State and Grauman's Chinese this week is Michael Shane, Private Detective. It's a good thriller of the hard-boiled type, with Lloyd Nolan playing the sleuth and with Marjorie Weaver as the girl.
2/17/1941 HCN
Jack Haley, Kay Kyser, Skinnay Ennis and His Band, the Nicholas Brothers, Red Skelton, and Abbott and Costello all won big hands at the Warner Club party at the Biltmore Saturday night, but it was Ray Bolger, whose pantomime dance turns were strictly wonderful.
2/18/1941 LAX Hollywood Parade
By Ella Wickersham
It has always pleased us to regard Hollywood's aristocracy, if it has one at all, as an aristocracy of achievement, with little deference to birth, pelf or wealth. In the eyes of the film colony, a film star is only as good as his last picture. And although the items of his private life may make the front page, he is solely ranked in accordance with his CURRENT achievements.
Hollywood has several Who's Whos, but nary a Blue Book! And probably there's nothing that indicates this refreshing function of true democracy more than the annual dinner dance of the Warner Brotehrs Club in the Biltmore Bowl–an event that honors the achievements of the studio's entire personnel, from prop boys to stars and executives.
In fact, it is the stars who appear at a disadvantage on these occasions, for always the high spot of the evening is the screen showing of stellar "blow-ups"–a symposium of film excerpts revealing the stars in their most embarrassing moments. That is, when they "go up in their lines" and with clenched fists appealing to the universe, shout, "Oh, pshaw," or something even more explosively eloquent. One "blow up" which is shown each year and promises to become a classic reveals the stalwart cowboy hero Dick Foran mounting a horse. It simply must be seen and HEARD to be appreciated.
On this occasion the 1,200 convivers found the Biltmore Bowl handsomely arrayed with a Valentine decor of Cupids, hearts and a myriad of flamboyant blossoms. The Kay Kyser orchestra and the Skinnay Ennis music-makers alternated in providing the dance music, and in his gracious and imitable manner Kay officiated as m.c. to bring on Jack Haley, Abbott and Costello, Red Skelton, Ray Bolger, Nan Wynn, the Nicholas Brothers, Ginny Simms and Harry Babbitt in a variety show that the Palace even in its heyday couldn't have afforded.
In Ann and Jack Warner's party were Bob Taplinger with Georgia Carroll, Marlene Dietrich, Eddie Albert and Beverly Holden, The Bert Teitlebaums, Louella Parsons and Dr. Harry Martin, Reggie Gardiner, Jean Negulesco and Margaret Chapman, Joy Page and Robert Hutton, Lee Bowman, Marian Alden, Eddie Goulding, Mona Maris, Jesse Lasky, Vincent Price, Nelson Seabra and Walter Vant.
Stealing the fashion spot, Bette Davis wore a black gown featuring a tight bodice and a bouffant net skirt embroidered in various shades of yellow, green and blue. And in her party were hubby Arthur Farnsworth, Rachel Field and Arthur Pederson, Mary Astor and Manuel del Campo, Geraldine Fitzgerald and the Hon. Edward Lindsay-Hogg, Mary McCall Jr., Mrs. Ruth Davis, the Robert Pelgrams, Margaret Donovan and Keith Douglas.
Another party included Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan, Priscilla Lane with John Barry, the Curtis Bernhardts and the Hugh Cummings. Mrs David Butler and Doris and Jules Stein were others present. Juel and Wally Klein and the Walter McEwans were a foursome. As were Lucille Fairbanks and Owen Crump and Gwenn and Bud Ernst.
6/3/1941 EHE Harrison Carroll
Did you hear Red Skelton's definition of a jerk?–a man who sits in a crowded street car and flirts with a woman standing up.
6/17/1941 EHE Jimmy Starr
DAILY DIARY
Sunday at home...filled with ambition to clean out the garage, throw away a lot of junk....
Edna and Red Skelton dropped in. Gave them a marble game and got a couple of benches in exchange. We keep trucks busy traveling between our houses....
6/23/1941 EHE Jimmy Starr
DAILY DIARY
Over to the Greek Theater to play master of ceremonies for the Bowlers' Party....it was a tough job, bu I think I had as much fun as the audience (about 4800 persons)...Red Skelton and Jerry Lester literally rolled the folks up and down the hills with laughter. They were WOWderful...
CeePee Johnson and his Rhum-Boogie gang with the Three Chocolateers took good care of the jive department, while Johnny Mercer, Eddie Foy Jr., Buddy Pepper, Stanley Clements, Anne Triola, Allan Lane, Garwood Van's orchestra, Sergio Orta (250 pounds of hot rumba and conga), lovely Carole Landis and Jane Withers sorta had the audience going nuts with fast and furious entertainment.
6/27/1941 EHE Harrison Carroll
That was a mean trick of Red Skelton's pals–filling his brand new swimming pool with live catfish.
7/15/1941 FD Lady Be Good
MGM 111 minutes
Gershwin music highlights a tuneful but longish romantic comedy
(In Metro's first block)
Featuring some grand music, including the title song and "Fascinating Rhythm," by George and Ira Gershwin. "The Last Time I Saw Paris," by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, and other good numbers of Roger Edens and Arthur Freed. Lady Be Good should be well received by the popular music devotees. Unfortunately the film, running nearly two hours, is overlong to the point of becoming monotonous at times. Fault is with the script which takes too much footage to tell of the marital troubles of a couple of pleasant people.
All of the cast do good jobs. Ann Sothern and Robert Young are a song-writing team that clicks before they are married and after they are divorced. Eleanor Powell has Little to do until late in the picture when she does two of her tap specialties, a cute rehearsal number with a dog, and a full-scale Busby Berkeley routine. Lionel Barrymore is up to par as a judge, while John Carroll sings a couple of numbers and Red Skelton is a song plugger.
Yarn, which has no resemblance to the original legit. musical, tells of the song writing team that clicks in a small way until they are married. Then Young gets an enlarged head from attention paid him by the Park Ave. set; the girl walks out, and they are divorced. Teamed up again for song writing only, they turn out a best seller and are remarried, only to split up again when Young wants to play instead of working on a show they are writing. This time the judge refuses to grant a divorce and the couple is eventually brought together by their friends.
Musical numbers are interspersed throughout with songs sung by Miss Sothern, Virginia O'Brien and Connie Russell, as well as Carroll, as the story moves through rehearsal rooms, night clubs, radio, etc. A typical Berkeley production number is spliced in near the finish.
CAST: Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern, Robert Young, Lionel Barrymore, John Carroll, Red Skelton, Virginia O'Brien, Tom Conway, Dan Dailey Jr., Reginald Owen, Rose Hobart, Phil Silvers, The Berry Brothers, Connie Boswell.
CREDITS: Producer, Arthur Freed; Director, Norman Z. McLeod; Story, Jack McGowan; Screenplay, Jack McGowan, Kay Van Riper, John McClain; Musical Director, Georgie Stoll; Musical Continuity (for Eleanor Powell), Walter Ruick; Vocals and Orchestrations, Leo Arnaud, George Bassman, Conrad Salinger; Musical Numbers Director, Busby Berkeley; Art Director, Cedric Gibbons; Associate, John S. Detlie; Cameramen, George Folsey, Oliver T. Marsh; Film Editor, Frederick Y. Smith.
Direction, Slow. Photography, Good.
7/21/1941 LAX Louella O. Parsons
I was out at MGM and ran into Ann Sothern who trailed me around with a photograph–and bruises, to prove she had actually caught a 245-pound marlin, the biggest catch for a woman this year. Annie is starting rehearsals for Panama Hattie. So are Red Skelton, Rags Ragland and Ben Blue–the three sailors in the show. With these lads trying to outwit each other for comedy lines, I reckon Norman McLeod has his troubles.
8/4/1941 FD Whistling In the Dark
MGM 77 mins.
Blues chasing comedy; is a sure-fire box office intro. For newcomer Red Skelton.
As good entertainment, as an introduction to newcomer Red Skelton, and as an audience and exhibitor picture, Whistling In the Dark will hit the mark it was aimed at.
Enhanced by good down-to-earth hokum and comedy situations that lend themselves well to Skelton's ability and personality, plus the fine trouping of Conrad Veidt, Ann Rutherford and Virginia Grey, audience reaction was highly favorable and held the promise of definite acceptance of the screen birth of a new comedian.
To director S. Sylvan Simon goes full acclaim for his deft handling of what might otherwise have proved itself to be a mediocre slap-stick opus, but under his understanding guidance becomes comedy deluxe, as noted by audience reaction.
Faced with the necessity of inventing the perfect crime when kidnaped by a cult of moon-worshipers, headed by Conrad Veidt, who seek to rid themselves of the nephew of a millionairess patron who had will them the money after the death of her nephew, Skelton, who is known as "the Fox" via his radio broadcastings of perfect crime detections, thinks and acts his way through situation after situation until his final outsmarting of the gang through a broadcast from the inner sanctum of the cult.
Fine portrayals were the order of the pic, with Conrad Veidt, Ann Rutherford and Virginia Grey turning in very satisfying characterizations, but to "Rags" Ragland, as "Sylvester" and Will Lee, as "Herman" go added plaudits. The rest of the numerous cast are deserving of recognition for their fine support.
Credit as producer goes to George Haight who supervised the production, with Robert MacGunigle, Harry Clork and Albert Mannheimer sharing in the credits of a well-done screenplay based upon the play by Laurence Gross and Edward Childs Carpenter. Bronislau Kaper furnished the well-knit musical background. Sidney Wagner, the photography.
CAST Red Skelton, Conrad Veidt, Ann Rutherford, Virginia Grey, "Rags" Ragland, Henry O'Neill, Eve Arden, Paul Stanton, Don Douglas, Don Costello, William Tannen, Reed Hadley, Mariska Aldrich, Lloyd Corrigan, George Carleton, Will Lee and Ruth Robinson.
CREDITS: Producer, George Haight; Director, S. Sylvan Simon; Screenplay, Robert MacGunigle, Harry Clork and Albert Mannheimer; Photography, Sidney Wagner; Recording Director, Douglas Shearer; Art Director, Cedric Gibbons; Film Editor, Frank E. Hull.
Direction, Fine. Photography, Good.
8/4/1941 HCN Frederick C. Othman
Saw a lot more movie makers making movies today, with the aid of rubber crocodiles, sweat, form-fitting gowns, and wisecracks. The place was MGM and the actors were acting all over the establishment. Sweatiest of the lot were the Messrs. Red Skelton, Rags Ragland, and Ben Blue, rehearsing dance numbers for Panama Hattie They were dancing with the Misses Suzanne Ridgeway, Carmen Morales and Zedia De La Conde, and what we couldn't understand was the fact though the ladies worked just as hard as the gents, they weren't even damp.
Skelton is Hollywood's newest big-time comic, getting his chance after four years of trying to crack the place. Ragland is the burlesque red-nose who got his chance to entertain the $4.40 seat holders in the stage version of Hattie, while Blue is the perennial limber-legs of a hundred movie comedies. Director Norman McLeod said these lads were working so well together that he was hopeful of turning them into a continuing trio, something like the Marx Brothers.
8/4/1941 EHE Harrison Carroll
Funny story about Red Skelton's birthday present to his wife, Edna. The comedian, a big hit in Whistling in the Dark, bought his missus a new couple. Attached to the steering wheel as an envelope containing two dollars.
When the Skeltons were married, Red had to borrow the amount from his bride-to-be to buy the license.
Mrs. Skelton had been an usherette in a Kansas City theater. Red, a burlesque comedian down to his last dime, had met her when he played the house. The only reason he got the job was because another act failed to show up.
8/5/1941 EHE Jimmy Starr
Well, it was sorta song writer's day out at my fun house...Sammy Stept, Jerry Gottler and Lew Pollack took long turns at the piano, while Fay MacKenzie, a lovely with loads of personality, sang; Myra Sullivan, a miniature Eleanor Powell, tossed off a neat tap-rhumba. Incidentally, she got first-rate dancing lessons from no less than Red Skelton and Charley Foy.
8/16/1941 EHE COMEDIANS VS. LEADING MEN
By Warren Christopher
With the infield looking more like that of a racetrack than a baseball diamond, the annual frolic (or so-called baseball game) between the Comedians and Leading Men got under way a half hour late last night at Wrigley Field.
The reason? Mayor Fletcher Bowron forgot the game was Thursday night and let his maid have her customary night off!
Thus, His Nibs had to prepare his own dinner–and the indigestion that followed kpt him from turning up at all. Nevertheless, the game finally went on–Mayor or no Mayor, indigestion or no indigestion.
A petition was signed to ban forever from the movie colony that "traitor," Dennis Morgan. Much to the surprise of fans and more to the ultimate chagrin of the other players, it came out last night that Morgan had once played a game of baseball, and that, of course, made him ineligible for last night's encounter.
The first time up, the Irish lad hit a double down the right-field foul line. Later, after watching other strong men either whiff thrice and walk away, or bound out to the infield, Morgan threw his catching togs aside, stepped to the plate and blasted one over the right field wall. That incident didn't actually appear in the script complied by 291 directors and assistants.
SIX MOVIE MAYORS
Six movie mayors fought for the honor of throwing out the first ball, and it ended, as all things like that should, with all six heaving a ball at the somewhat bewildered Ronald Reagan, who was catching. The game began in the best of movie style, with the blare of bands featuring nearly 100 short-skirted baton twirlers. Between the bands rode a host of stars: Rudy Vallee, Martha Raye, Mary Both Hughes, Joan Blondell, Rochelle Hudson and scores of others.
The most hilarious incident of the evening was a monologue by the old master Leon Errol. He staggered to the plate in the best pose seen since John Barrymore drank that zombie at a Hollywood night spot. He ended by giving "it" up for life when two pictures threw two balls to a pair of catchers. He hit neither of them and promptly fell flat on his face while the catchers each threw a ball to a first baseman and so around the infield.
RAH FOR SKELTON!
A lot of credit should to Red Skelton, who took the mike for nearly an hour and kept the spectators literally in the aisles.
Adolph Menjou drew a roar of laughter when he was escorted to the plate by a valet, masseur, secretary, and a double.
Joan Blondell, supposed to be the umpire, stuck it out on the field for half an inning and promptly retired to a cushioned box. Tony Quinn, the screen bad man, assertedly pilfered a pair of pistols from Republic Studios and easily made a home-run when he pumped each of the infielders full of lead. Quinn is in the doghouse, as an efficiency expert from the studio hailed him after the game for wasting bullets.
The score? No one knows and apparently no one cares.
8/19/1941 FD Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day
MGM 82 Mins.
(Hollywood Preview)
Excellent Kildare story with unexpected romantic twist packs emotional wallop.
It's going to be interesting to watch the public's reaction to this latest of the Doctor Kildare series, not because it's particularly different than the others–the same standard of excellence set in the others is upheld–but because Laraine Day, Lew Ayres' sweetheart in the films dies in this.
Obviously Metro has other things in mind for Miss Day, but the reaction of the fans at the preview was one of great shock. Because of this "drastic" climax to this screen love affair, all the characters are permitted to go to extremes in emotional acting and it makes for a much stronger picture than is usually possible in these family things.
One event which will make Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day outstanding is the playing for the first time in a motion picture of a truly fine piece of music. It is called "Tableau Russe," a Symphonic Suite, written by Lionel Barrymore and it's superior to a great many pieces of music written by our best modern composers.
Harold Bucquet's direction is fine. Willis Goldbeck and Lawrence P. Bachman's screenplay has plenty of body and good dialogue. The cast, with the old standbys, Lionel Barrymore, Lew Ayres, Laraine Day, Samuel S. Hinds and Alma Kruger, are ably assisted by "visitors" Nils Asther and MGM's much-touted new comic, Red Skelton.
The story deals with the preparation for Dr. Kildare's wedding day–the death of his wife-to-be–and the problem and struggle he goes through pulling himself together. It can be highly recommended as first-class screen-fare anywhere, and for all ages.
CAST: Lew Ayres, Lionel Barrymore, Laraine Day, Red Skelton, Alma Kruger, Samuel S. Hinds, Nils Asther, Walter Kingsford, Emma Dunn, Miles Mander, Neil Craig, Frank Orth, Marie Blake, Margaret Seddon.
CREDITS: Director, Harold S. Bucquet; Authors, Ormond Ruthven and Lawrence P. Bachman; based on the characters created by Max Brand; Screenplay, Willis Goldbeck, Harry Ruskin; Cameraman, George Folsey, ASC; Art Director, Cedric Gibbons; Associate, Malcolm Brown; Editor, Conrad A. Nervig; Musical Score, Bronislaw Kaper; "Tableau Russe" (Symphonic Suite) Lionel Barrymore.
Direction, Fine. Photography, Good.
8/20/1941 HCN LITTLE WOMAN CREDITED BY SKELTON
By Frederick C. Othman
The girl we want to meet is Edna Skelton, one-time usherette at Loew's Theater in Kansas City. She's made her red-headed husband worth $2,000 of the movies' money every week; if it weren't for her he'd be a bum. That's exactly what he said.
As it is, with Edna writing the gags and managing the business and teaching her husband the rudiments of trigonometry and medieval history, he's one of the funniest comedians in the business, star of the hit, Whistling In the Dark, and one of the principals of the upcoming musical Panama Hattie. Edna did it all. Red insists she did.
Young Skelton, who was born in 1913 in Vincennes, Ind., and got his first theatrical experience at the age of 10 tooting a horn in a medicine show, tried his hand as a minstrel, a show boat comedian, a circus clown and a red-nosed burlesque tramp before he met Edna.
"I was 17 and I was playing in Loew's in Kansas City," he reported today. "Edna Stillwell was head usherette in the balcony. She'd come backstage with our paychecks on Saturday night, and she took an instant dislike to me. So okay. I new a lot of girls."
Red's next job was that of master of ceremonies at one of those weird athletic events known as a walkathon. Edna was cashier. She finally made a date with him. He took her home on a street car. It was such a long ride, Red said never again. He knew girls who lived closer.
SO IT WAS LOVE
"And one night they called in the photographers to take some pictures and they wanted a picture of me kissing a girl," Red continued. "There was Edna, and I grabbed her and kissed her and it made me dizzy. This was it. This was love. I guess we both were dizzy. We got married. Edna paid for the license. I borrowed $10 from her and bought her a new hat. And we went to St. Louis, where I had a deal to do another walkathon show at $75 a week. Only they wanted to cut my salary.
"Edna made me sore by going to the boss and playing manager for me. I told her I'd handle my own affairs. Only she shut me up with the news that I'd get $100 a week. She also talked the boss into doing my dry cleaning. I said I'd have to have free food, too. I was still mad. The manager said I could have my meals on the cuff. That's when Edna floored me first. But that was only the beginning. She gradually worked me up to $500 a week in the walkathon business."
Then Red went into vaudeville. He had a $25-week run in Montreal and he began to run out of material. Edna wrote him some. It didn't seem funny to that experienced comedian, Red Skelton.
"But the customers laughed," he said. "Edna knew what she was doing. She kept on writing my material."
His wage went up to $1,000 a week. That wasn't enough for Edna. Her husband was a prosperous man, but he made a lot of bad grammatical errors. He'd never had a chance to pass the seventh grade. So she bought some books and started teaching him English and spelling and arithmetic. Then she hired a tutor and forced him to take a high school final examination. He passed it.
"She made me study," he said. "And pretty soon I didn't feel like such a fool when I was in a room full of people talking about something besides burlesque."
The Skeltons came to Hollywood three years ago, with Red earning $2,000 a week for 12-weeks in Having Wonderful Time. He was funny, but the picture was bad. You remember–Ginger Rogers and Doug Fairbanks Jr.
BROKE BUT PROUD
Back to the stage went Red and he went broke because he wouldn't accept any job under $1,000 a week. Edna made him stick to that. In New York once they went three days without feed because Red didn't have the 40 cents that would buy them two meals at their favorite Chinese restaurant.
Then he got a coast-to-coast radio program and soon he was clicking in vaudeville and at Edna's price. She invested his money in real estate and kept on writing his jokes, and there was Red in Washington at the Earl [Rest Cut Off!]
9/1/1941 EHE Harrison Carroll
Out on the Panama Hiattie set at MGM, they were kidding Red Skelton about his new home in Brentwood and his new car.
"You wait until you see that place," said Red. "My barbecue pit is so big that I have to use two swimming pools for finger bowls. And my car! I can ride a motorcycle up and down the running board!"
9/6/1941 EHE Harrison Carroll
Lights! Camera! Action!
On the Panama Hattie set at MGM Ann Sothern is playing a scene where she is a little drunk. Sitting around a table with her are Red Skelton, Rags Ragland, Joe Yule (Mickey Rooney's father), and Ben Blue.
BUTLER ROLE
Alan Mowbray also comes into the scene as a hoity-toity butler.
It is interesting to analyze this little group. Ann Sothern and Mowbray graduated into the movies from the stage. Ben Blue came up from vaudeville.
But funnymen Skelton, Ragland and Yule, all arrived via burlesque.
It's quite a commentary on the best training school for comedians.
Still, the gang on the Panama Hattie set say that Mowbray stopped the burlesque contingent cold. When he came onto the set, he walked right up to them and said:
"Listen, boys, this is my first scene. Just keep your face straight and your backs to the camera."
9/13/1941 HCN When Ladies Meet
By James Francis Crow
There are two pictures on the new bill at Grauman's Chinese and Loew's State theaters, and each of them serves a definite purpose.
When Ladies Meet has big names in the cast: Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Herbert Marshall, and it is designed to get you into the theaters.
Whistling in the Dark is the other of the two features. It is the one designed to entertain you after you've got inside.
It is an unpretentious little number, this Whistling In the Dark. It is a new adaptation of the play by Laurence Gross and Edward Childs Carpenter, done previously on both stage and screen by Ernest Truex. Now it has a newcomer, Red Skelton, in the leading role. He is one of the funniest things this department has laid eyes on in many months. He has a consummate skill in the handling of a comedy line or situation, and he has, additionally, an ingratiating personality that will remind you somewhat of Bob Hope without suggesting imitation.
His vehicle is okay, too. It has been directed in lively fashion by S. Sylvan Simon, and entertainingly adapted by Robert MacGonigle, Harry Clork, and Albert Mannheimer. They have freshened and brightened the original play, and given it the brisk action that it lacked, as I recall, in the previous screen version.
Skelton appears as the author of perfect crime stories for the radio. He is somewhat disconcerted to be kidnaped by a gang of cult criminals, and set to the task of devising for them a perfect murder, on pain of death if he fails. So he fixes them up a perfect murder, all right–along with a perfect prevention. Meantime there are all sorts of hilarious goings-on at cult headquarters Conrad Veidt is providing the perfect villainy, and Ann Rutherford and Virginia Grey are providing plenty of romance. Rags Ragland, Eve Arden, Lloyd Corrigan, and Will Lee take turns at being Skelton's rivals for audience laughs.
Of course, you can go ahead and like When Ladies Meet also if you want to. Lots of people did at yesterday's opening, but your reviewer was conspicuous among them by his absence. Taylor is pretty fair, and so are Greer Garson and Spring Byington, but the others are grievously at disadvantage in a tediously wordy remake of the Rachel Crothers play.
It is about a lady novelist who is trying to justify, in her novel, her own real-life affair with a married man, namely her publisher. And whom does she pick to talk the matter over with–unwittingly–but the publisher's wife. Miss Crawford is the novelist, Marshall is the publisher, Miss Garson is the wife, and Taylor is the novelist's boyfriend who puts a stop to the affair. High time, too, I thought.
9/18/1941 HCN Sidney Skolsky
Watching Them Make Pictures
The old gag that in Hollywood no matter how hot it is during the daytime, there's nothing to do at night often has much truth in it. So the other night, when there wasn't anything to do, I decided to go out to Metro where they were shooting some night scenes for Panama Hattie. I had been on sets all day, but his seemed different and it was something to do.
Everyone was working. Ann Sothern, Red Skelton, Rags Ragland and Ben Blue. The scene was a street in Panama, and it seemed realistic with the lights from the cafes and theater marques, and some 200 extras waiting to be atmosphere.
Director Norman McLeod, through a loud speaker, explains to the crowded extras that this is the "I'll Do Anything For You Number," and what is expected of them. While director McLeod is doing this, Ann Sothern is sitting in her portable dressing room waiting to be called. Miss Sothern is wearing a flimsy low-necked formal gown, her costume, but she has a fur coat draped from her shoulders. It is a chilly night, for no matter who warm it is during the daytime, you always need a blanket at night. (Courtesy of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce) I haven't a fur coat and I am chilly despite the fact that I am not wearing a flimsy gown but even have the protection of a sweater–my usual autumn garb.
Annie Sothern tells me about her new friendship with Hedy Lamarr, "We've worked together at this studio for two and a half years," says Annie, "and do you know, I never met her until a month ago at a party at the Fred MacMurray's. I suppose everyone thinks that because you work at a studio you know all the stars. Funny, what they'll think. I also discovered that Hedy lives two and a half blocks from me in Beverly. Ever since I separated from Roger, and have been working nights, I hated to go home to an empty house. So I"m staying at Hedy's place. When I finish here tonight, or I should say early in the morning, there's where I'm going. It's nice...."
Annie went to work. Rags, Red, and Blue were waiting. Miss Sothern had shed her fur coat. She stood on the Panama street, shivering. "I'm gold," she said. "That'll never do," said director McLeod. "It's a hot night in Panama." So Ann Sothern is quickly bundled in her fur coat, given a cup of hot coffee, then she tosses the coat to the assistant director and plays the scene. Ann Sothern drank more coffee that night than Damon Runyon. That's the kind of wicked night life we have in Hollywood.
9/19/1941 HCN
Tony Martin will have a leading role in I'll Take Manila, the Metro musical with Eleanor Powell and Red Skelton.
9/22/1941 EHE Harrison Carroll
Speaking of cars, the ladies have the last laugh on Red Skelton. Red, who does a murderously funny takeoff on women drivers, flunked out the other day on his first attempt to renew his driver's license. He missed some of the traffic questions.
Mrs. Skelton passed with flying colors.
10/1/1941 EHE RED SKELTON IS ALL OUT FOR GLAMOR
By W.E. Oliver
A week or two back a breezy young gentleman bounded wisecrackingly onto the local screen in a picture called Whistling In the Dark. Leaving the theater lobby, fans stopped in droves to look up his name. It was Red Skelton, air and vaudeville wit and known as America's court jester, because he has been master of ceremonies for the past four presidential birthday balls at Washington, D.C.
Until Whistling In the Dark, he was practically anonymous to screengoers. Now MGM are rubbing him down for a place on the marquees alongside Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Abbott and Costello. Friday he makes his second screen featured screen appearance when Lady Be Good opens at Loew's State and Grauman's Chinese.
First Hollywood actor in years to admit it, Skelton points to his wife and says, "There sits 90–well, 60 percent of my so-called success. IF it weren't for her, I'd still be combing sawdust out of my head."
He believes that the stars are missing a bet by dropping the oldtime glamor parade on Hollywood Boulevard. "I'd like to have a long limousine," he says, "with a liveried chauffeur and a footman. I'd get me the most outlandish wardrobe in town and have the boy drive me slowly down the Boulevard so I could nod carelessly to my public.
"Boy, that's what this town needs a little more of!"
Spouses Edna and Red Skelton ran away and got married when they were 16, and he was learning the job of circus clown. Outside of film scripts, she has shared the job of writing every bit of material he uses, including the change of program for every one of the 17 weeks he played the New York Paramount Theater.
One of utilitarian whimsies is heckling Husband Red while he is on the stage. "I like to shout, anyway," she explains. "Besides it gives me a chance to feed him lines."
This pair, Red as the front man, Edna, as a sort of "straight woman" to his career, have trouped circus, burlesque, medicine shows, marathons, one-nighters, radio, vaudeville, "anything that would pay off in doughnuts," he says.
One of his hobbies is collecting gadgets. Wife Edna isn't always there to restrain him. As on the occasion he bought an old Salvation Army organ for $6 to put in his den.
Vital statistics include: Age, 28; height, 6 feet 2 inches; smoking, none; drinking, ditto; although he does a classic drunk act; voice, loud, which is why he bought the organ. He is suitably lens-tropic, which means the camera can look his way without gagging.
Confounding the notion that all comedians have doleful pocket personalities, he has only one gripe. That is about his San Fernando Valley home near the dive-testing area for the plane factories.
"I can out-shout them," he says, "but my bathroom is right on the beam and every time a plane dives while I'm shaving, I come near scalping myself."
One of his curious notions is putting a siren on the icebox to control night-raiding activities of his houseguests.
It was almost imperative that Jesse Lasky find an English actress to play opposite Ernest Truex in The Warrior's Husband. Truex, the famous stage comedian, is so typically English. And Fox now has a corner on the market of English acting talent. But Elissa Landi, the first English star to be placed under contract at this studio, is to share honors with Truex in The Warrior's Husband. She will have the role portrayed by Katharine Hepburn in the New York stage production of the play. Miss Landi is now completing the feminine lead opposite Ronald Colman in The Masquerader. Truex, by the way, is not under term contract to any studio. At the moment he is starring in the screen version of his recent stage success, Whistling In the Dark, at MGM. Another interesting actress is expected to join the cast of The Warrior's Husband. She is Marjorie Rambeau. Lasky has offered her a contract for the picture and she is expected to sign it any day now. Miss Rambeau retired from the screen a year or so ago following her marriage. But Charles R. Rogers persuaded her to relinquish a little domesticity in order to take one of the featured roles in a picture he is producing for Paramount under the title Strictly Personal. After Miss Landi completes The Warrior's Husband, she is slated to star in The Dressmaker From Luneville.
....
It looked for a time as if Hoot Gibson would move over to Universal to make the series of westerns which had been planned for Tom Mix, now retired. Of course Hoot may eventually go to Universal, but he is not free from his present contract for another six months, and the program of westerns cannot wait for him. So Ken Maynard has been signed by Universal. This popular young Texan has been the hero of more than a hundred pictures, and he will star in a series of six western features under the Universal banner. He is just back from an airplane trip to Mexico, and he starts work on his new contract in a few weeks. This is the second time that Maynard has been under contract to Universal. His famous horse, Tarzan, will share honors in the pictures, of course.
....
MGM has given Diana Wynyard a new contract. They didn't need to wait for the result of her work on their own lot, since she has given a sensational performance in Cavalcade, for which she was loaned to Fox. Her new contract gives her a vacation until June. And she is returning to London just the moment that she completes Men Must Fight for MGM. While in London she will appear in at least one stage production and if Cavalcade is released by the time she arrives, she undoubtedly will be the toast of the city. Miss Wynyard is one of the most unassuming, thoroughly charming actresses who has come to Hollywood.
....
Not to be outdone by Samuel Goldwyn and his now famous Goldwyn girls, Warners announce they intend to gather the loveliest chorus ensemble available, with the hope of developing the girls for bigger things. They will make a series of public screen tests on the stages of various theaters in Southern California. Busby Berkeley, who knows a good deal about feminine pulchritude, will direct the tests. Out of the first chorus which Berkeley assembled in Hollywood, 15 of the most promising girls have been signed to term contracts at Warners. In this group the studio believes it has several valuable players. The new chorus will be used for the ensembles in High Life, a forthcoming picture.
....
Gloria Stuart, a newly crowned Wampas Baby star who started her movie career only a year ago, is one of the busiest little actresses in Hollywood. At the moment she is playing feminine leads in two important pictures at different studios. At Radio Pictures she is with Lionel Barrymore in Sweepings, and from there she dashes to Universal, her home lot, for one of the leads in The Kiss Before the Mirror . As though these were not enough work for one little actress, she is now making extensive tests for the much sought lead in Only Yesterday which John Stahl will direct for Universal.
....
Jack Cooper, in the press department at Warners, is finding that life is just a husk. For months now he has received stacks of mail which doesn't belong to him. It is intended for small Jackie Cooper who is under contract to MGM. But the last straw came last night when he was routed out of bed in the wee hours by a long distance telephone call. A fond parent at the end of the wire asked him to say something to soothe her crying child. Jack thinks little Jackie should handle the bedtime stories.
....
Harry T. Brundige, nationally known newspaper reporter and the author of several books, is the latest addition to the publicity department at Fox. Brundige is noted for the many exposes he has conducted during his reporting days with the St. Louis Star and Times. Now he will have an opportunity to turn his talent for digging up hidden facts into a genius for glossing over things the studio wishes to keep dark.
....
Twenty tons of genuine snow were hauled from Mt. Baldy to the Radio pictures lot yesterday for scenes for Sweepings.
Red Skelton In the 30's & 40's
ABBREVIATIONS
DN – (Los Angeles) Daily News
EE – Los Angeles Evening Express
EH -- Los Angeles Evening Herald
EHE -- Los Angeles Evening Herald Express
FD -- Film Daily
IDN -- Los Angeles Illustrated News
HCN -- Hollywood Citizen News
HDC -- Hollywood Daily Citizen
LAR -- Los Angeles Record
LAPR -– Los Angeles Post-Record
LAX -- Los Angeles Examiner
MPH -- Motion Picture Herald
9/?/1937 (source unknown)
A newcomer to RKO-Radio, Richard, "Red" Skelton, will make his bow to the picture public in the Arthur Kober hit, Having a Wonderful Time, for which Kober is doing the screen play.
Skelton, a vaudeville and radio entertainer, is described as a comedian who is good-looking enough to be a leading man.
Another addition to the cast of Having a Wonderful Time, which will be directed by Al Santell with Ginger Rogers, is Lana Turner, who won attention in Mervyn LeRoy's film, They Won't Forget. And still another addition is Lucille Ball, who gained much favor among studio executives with her work in Stage Door, which, by the way, will be previewed tomorrow night.
6/30/1938 FD Having Wonderful Time
RKO Radio 71 minutes
That stage success which has broken records on Broadway and brought laughter to thousands, will now do the same for millions in the film theaters. The story follows the stage version closely, with the elimination of the Bronx dialects and dialecticians so that the folks in the other sections of the country will be able to understand it. So it resolves itself into a very human story of the average American boy and girl who go to a camp for their two-weeks' vacation. Ginger Rogers does a grand job as the girl Teddy who gets a crush on Chick, the waiter, played to the hilt by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. The daily routine of the vacation camp is amusingly presented, with all the various activities and diversions laid out to amuse the guests. Into this phase of the proceedings enters very actively and amusingly "Red" Skelton as Itchy, the paid funny-man whose business it is to keep the guests constantly amused with extemporaneous gags. He does a fine job. Another who scores impressively is Lee Bowman as Buzzy, the "wise guy" who makes a play for Teddy,, inviting her to his cabin one evening, only to have her sidetrack him in a series of games of backgammon. This is a howl sequence, and Bowman handles it superbly. He is due for some big parts, this lad, for he has what it takes. There is plenty of emotional appeal, sentiment, and all kinds of human interest touches, in fact a down-to-earth story that should hit the younger element and bowl ‘em over.
Cast: Ginger Rogers, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Peggy Conklin, Lucille Ball, Lee Bowman, Eve Arden, Dorothea Kent, Richard Skelton, Donald Meek, Jack Carson, Clarence H. Wilson, Allan Lane, Grady Sutton, Shimen Ruskin, Dorothy Tree, Leona Roberts, Harlan Briggs, Inez Courtney, Juantia Quigley.
Credits: Producer, Pandro S. Berman; Director, Alfred Santell; Author, Arthur Kober; Screenplay, same; Editor, William Hamilton; Cameraman, Robert de Grasse.
Direction, Very Good. Photography, Fine.
7/27/1938 EHE Having a Wonderful Time, a RKO-Radio production, opened July 26 at RKO-Hillstreet and Pantages-Hollywood. Produced by Pandro S. Berman. Directed by Alfred Santell. Screen play by Arthur Kober. Photographed by Robert de Grasse. Music by Sam Stepi. Lyrics by Charles Tobias. CAST: Ginger Rogers, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Peggy Conklin, Lucille Ball, Lee Bowman, Eve Arden, Dorothea Kent, Richard Skelton, Ann Miller, Donald Meek, Jack Carson, Kirk Windsor, Grady Sutton and Shimen Ruskin.
Wives Under Suspicion on same bill.
By W.E. Oliver
A thought that lurks in the mind of all of us through the year and comes out about this time to take over is behind Having Wonderful Time, comedy-drama of city office workers' summer camp paradise, now screening at the RKO-Hillstreet and Pantages-Hollywood.
The locale of this new RKO-Radio is Kamp Karefree, where the dwellers of New York's Bronx crowd in two weeks a year's yearning for romance, fun and leisure.
The story is the familiar boy meets, loses, gets girl, told against this background of young folk engaged in the frenzied pursuit of a fun. But a touch of honesty in the treatment and one or two novel complications created out of the locale keep the film from being stereotyped.
The boy and girl are played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Ginger Rogers. These two alone should keep not too exacting fans ecstatically engrossed in the tiny saga of Chic, the college youth working out his vacation as a waiter, and Teddy, the stenographer who pins all her hopes on the few days she spends on the mass vacation principle.
PLOT SKIMPY
Adapted from Arthur Kober's play, which ran successfully in New York, the plot of Having a Wonderful Time comes out skimpy in celluloid. The film producers eke out by interjecting bits of parallel comedy and byplay here and there that do add to the entertainment but give the picture a stumbling cadence.
Fairbanks plays an earnest, likeable character, touched up with a feeling of reality by an unconventional attempt to grasp happiness with the girl instead of waiting until he gets a job and can give her something more than a doorstep. He rounds out the character nicely with his customary deft touches of light comedy.
Miss Rogers' role falls into the character class once or twice. She speaks Teddy's lines with a slow thoughtfulness and plays the character with the glimmerings of being different from the "mob," but who gives in to the call of romance like any daughter of Eve since the first apple was plucked.
However playwright Kober's script had the thing work out, the Hays version will give twinges to no censors.
NICE COMBINATIONS
More than the playing of the principal pair, you'll like the combination of their personalities in this little, touching romance of a couple trying to found an individualistic heaven.
Richard Skelton, as an ubiquitous camp social director, spurs the story into broad comedy by some amusing knockabout tricks and gags. There are other effective performances by Peggy Conklin as Ginger's pal, Lucille Belle as the distraught sweetheart of a chaster, Lee Bowman as the philanderer, Donald Meek as the camp proprietor.
The cabin scene between Ginger and Bowman, where the heroine protects her honor by playing backgammon all night is one of the best things in the picture.
As a bright, brash depiction of young folk at their fun, Having a Wonderful Time will do very well until the next picture comes along.
Wives Under Suspicion and a newsreel n the Coast Guard are also on the bill.
7/27/1938 LAX Having Wonderful Time
An RKO picture directed by Alfred Santell, produced by Pandro Berman. Screen play by Arthur Kober from his stage play.
THE CAST: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Ginger Rogers, Peggy Conklin, Lucille Ball, Lee Bowman, Eve Arden, Dorothea Kent, Richard Skelton.
By Erskine Johnson
Fifty weeks out of the year Teddy pounds a typewriter in a New York office building, eats her lunch on a drug store stool and bucks the subway traffic. Then for two weeks she escapes from it all to a mountain resort where she can breathe air "that hasn't been used before" and where she discovers Chic.
The girl is bony, spindle-legged Ginger, the boy is Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and the picture is Having Wonderful Time, the celluloid version of Arthur Kober's hit play, which opened yesterday at the RKO-Hillstreet and Pantages Hollywood theaters.
As a play, Having Wonderful Time was a highly successful, graphic portrait of vacation life at a Jewish camp. As a picture it is just another boy-meet-girl story, completely lacking the play's original charm, and far from being worth the $250,000 RKO officials spent on re-takes and added scenes when the original production failed to jell.
Usually swashbuckling Fairbanks Jr. seems miscast as a law school graduate without a job who waits on tables at Camp Care-Free during the day and dances with its feminine guests at night. Even usually vivacious Ginger Rogers plods unanimated through the story, reads her lines as if they were printed on an off-stage blackboard. The story was not for them, or anyone else in Hollywood in its screen-play form.
Despite these drawbacks, Having Wonderful Time probably will enjoy fair success as a timely insight into vacation life, will prove hilarious and romantic to those of you who have just returned from the wide open spaces now populated with citizens craving relaxation.
Only one sequence in the picture stands out in our mind as worth writing a Having Wonderful Time postcard to the folks back home. Angered with Fairbanks when she mistakes his plea of poverty for a proposition, Miss Rogers goes to the cabin of the camp's Casanova, rebukes his advances and settles down with him to a game of backgammon. Hours later he retires to his bed, locks his door against her and she continues to play backgammon herself, a means of avoiding Fairbanks who awaits her outside.
As the camp Casanova, Lee Bowman almost steals the picture. Two other supporting players, Eve Arden and Dorothea Kent, will be remembered for their delightful comedy.
Warren William and Gail Patrick are co-starred in the second feature, Wives Under Suspicion, which is as heavy melodrama as the title suggests.
1/23/1941 EHE Flight Command
An MGM picture, opened Jan. 22, 1941, at Loew's State and Grauman's Chinese theaters. Directed by Frank Borzage. Screenplay by Wells Root and Harvey Haslip, from a story by John Sutherland and Halsip. Photographed by Harold Rosson. CAST: Robert Taylor, Ruth Hussey, Walter Pidgeon, Paul Kelly, Shepperd Strudwick, Red Skelton, Nat Pendleton, Dick Purcell and Addison Richards.
Michael Shayne, Private Detective—A 20th Century-Fox on program. CAST: Lloyd Nolan, Marjorie Weaver and Joan Valerie.
By Harrison Carroll
Of vital interest to every American in these anxious days is MGM's Flight Command, which dramatizes the story of this country's first-line air defenders, the Navy pilots.
There is, of course, a certain resemblance in plot to all other service stories. Robert Taylor, the hero, at first is a cocky graduate of Pensacola, who obviously is going to have his ears pinned back a couple of times before he becomes an experienced pilot. Then there are the usual planes lost in storm and fog, and the inevitable tragic crash which costs the life of one of the principals.
ROMANCE SURPRISES
But, as far as romance concerned, there is a surprise twist. It probably will take the average playgoer a couple of minutes to get used to the denouement when it is sprung.
Flight Command was made with the full cooperation of the Navy. The shots of machine gun practice, of precision flying, of takeoff and landings from an airplane carrier at sea are all enacted by Navy pilots and are fascinating to watch.
The final episode, where a squadron of planes, bearing their injured commander, must depend upon a new fog-landing device to pierce ceiling zero weather and put down safely at their San Diego base, is more on the fictional side, but provides a climax that tingles with suspense.
For an action picture, built around a more or less familiar formula, there are several good characterizations in Flight Command: Walter Pidgeon, for instance, as the commander of "The Hellcats" squadron, who doesn't realize that his wife isn't made of the same iron stuff that he is; Ruth Hussey, always an intelligent actress, as the wife; Shepperd Strudwick, as her brother, and Paul Kelly, as a tough lieutenant commander.
ROLE CONVENTIONAL
Taylor's role is conventional, but he plays it forthrightly.
Good work also is done by Red Skelton, as the comedian of the outfit; by Dick Purcell, as one of the officers and by Nat Pendleton, as a mechanic.
Flight Command was directed by Frank Borzage. It is something of a departure for him, but he has turned in an excellent job.
This picture not only will entertain you, but will give you a shot of confidence.
Second feature at the Loew's State and Grauman's Chinese this week is Michael Shane, Private Detective. It's a good thriller of the hard-boiled type, with Lloyd Nolan playing the sleuth and with Marjorie Weaver as the girl.
2/17/1941 HCN
Jack Haley, Kay Kyser, Skinnay Ennis and His Band, the Nicholas Brothers, Red Skelton, and Abbott and Costello all won big hands at the Warner Club party at the Biltmore Saturday night, but it was Ray Bolger, whose pantomime dance turns were strictly wonderful.
2/18/1941 LAX Hollywood Parade
By Ella Wickersham
It has always pleased us to regard Hollywood's aristocracy, if it has one at all, as an aristocracy of achievement, with little deference to birth, pelf or wealth. In the eyes of the film colony, a film star is only as good as his last picture. And although the items of his private life may make the front page, he is solely ranked in accordance with his CURRENT achievements.
Hollywood has several Who's Whos, but nary a Blue Book! And probably there's nothing that indicates this refreshing function of true democracy more than the annual dinner dance of the Warner Brotehrs Club in the Biltmore Bowl–an event that honors the achievements of the studio's entire personnel, from prop boys to stars and executives.
In fact, it is the stars who appear at a disadvantage on these occasions, for always the high spot of the evening is the screen showing of stellar "blow-ups"–a symposium of film excerpts revealing the stars in their most embarrassing moments. That is, when they "go up in their lines" and with clenched fists appealing to the universe, shout, "Oh, pshaw," or something even more explosively eloquent. One "blow up" which is shown each year and promises to become a classic reveals the stalwart cowboy hero Dick Foran mounting a horse. It simply must be seen and HEARD to be appreciated.
On this occasion the 1,200 convivers found the Biltmore Bowl handsomely arrayed with a Valentine decor of Cupids, hearts and a myriad of flamboyant blossoms. The Kay Kyser orchestra and the Skinnay Ennis music-makers alternated in providing the dance music, and in his gracious and imitable manner Kay officiated as m.c. to bring on Jack Haley, Abbott and Costello, Red Skelton, Ray Bolger, Nan Wynn, the Nicholas Brothers, Ginny Simms and Harry Babbitt in a variety show that the Palace even in its heyday couldn't have afforded.
In Ann and Jack Warner's party were Bob Taplinger with Georgia Carroll, Marlene Dietrich, Eddie Albert and Beverly Holden, The Bert Teitlebaums, Louella Parsons and Dr. Harry Martin, Reggie Gardiner, Jean Negulesco and Margaret Chapman, Joy Page and Robert Hutton, Lee Bowman, Marian Alden, Eddie Goulding, Mona Maris, Jesse Lasky, Vincent Price, Nelson Seabra and Walter Vant.
Stealing the fashion spot, Bette Davis wore a black gown featuring a tight bodice and a bouffant net skirt embroidered in various shades of yellow, green and blue. And in her party were hubby Arthur Farnsworth, Rachel Field and Arthur Pederson, Mary Astor and Manuel del Campo, Geraldine Fitzgerald and the Hon. Edward Lindsay-Hogg, Mary McCall Jr., Mrs. Ruth Davis, the Robert Pelgrams, Margaret Donovan and Keith Douglas.
Another party included Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan, Priscilla Lane with John Barry, the Curtis Bernhardts and the Hugh Cummings. Mrs David Butler and Doris and Jules Stein were others present. Juel and Wally Klein and the Walter McEwans were a foursome. As were Lucille Fairbanks and Owen Crump and Gwenn and Bud Ernst.
6/3/1941 EHE Harrison Carroll
Did you hear Red Skelton's definition of a jerk?–a man who sits in a crowded street car and flirts with a woman standing up.
6/17/1941 EHE Jimmy Starr
DAILY DIARY
Sunday at home...filled with ambition to clean out the garage, throw away a lot of junk....
Edna and Red Skelton dropped in. Gave them a marble game and got a couple of benches in exchange. We keep trucks busy traveling between our houses....
6/23/1941 EHE Jimmy Starr
DAILY DIARY
Over to the Greek Theater to play master of ceremonies for the Bowlers' Party....it was a tough job, bu I think I had as much fun as the audience (about 4800 persons)...Red Skelton and Jerry Lester literally rolled the folks up and down the hills with laughter. They were WOWderful...
CeePee Johnson and his Rhum-Boogie gang with the Three Chocolateers took good care of the jive department, while Johnny Mercer, Eddie Foy Jr., Buddy Pepper, Stanley Clements, Anne Triola, Allan Lane, Garwood Van's orchestra, Sergio Orta (250 pounds of hot rumba and conga), lovely Carole Landis and Jane Withers sorta had the audience going nuts with fast and furious entertainment.
6/27/1941 EHE Harrison Carroll
That was a mean trick of Red Skelton's pals–filling his brand new swimming pool with live catfish.
7/15/1941 FD Lady Be Good
MGM 111 minutes
Gershwin music highlights a tuneful but longish romantic comedy
(In Metro's first block)
Featuring some grand music, including the title song and "Fascinating Rhythm," by George and Ira Gershwin. "The Last Time I Saw Paris," by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, and other good numbers of Roger Edens and Arthur Freed. Lady Be Good should be well received by the popular music devotees. Unfortunately the film, running nearly two hours, is overlong to the point of becoming monotonous at times. Fault is with the script which takes too much footage to tell of the marital troubles of a couple of pleasant people.
All of the cast do good jobs. Ann Sothern and Robert Young are a song-writing team that clicks before they are married and after they are divorced. Eleanor Powell has Little to do until late in the picture when she does two of her tap specialties, a cute rehearsal number with a dog, and a full-scale Busby Berkeley routine. Lionel Barrymore is up to par as a judge, while John Carroll sings a couple of numbers and Red Skelton is a song plugger.
Yarn, which has no resemblance to the original legit. musical, tells of the song writing team that clicks in a small way until they are married. Then Young gets an enlarged head from attention paid him by the Park Ave. set; the girl walks out, and they are divorced. Teamed up again for song writing only, they turn out a best seller and are remarried, only to split up again when Young wants to play instead of working on a show they are writing. This time the judge refuses to grant a divorce and the couple is eventually brought together by their friends.
Musical numbers are interspersed throughout with songs sung by Miss Sothern, Virginia O'Brien and Connie Russell, as well as Carroll, as the story moves through rehearsal rooms, night clubs, radio, etc. A typical Berkeley production number is spliced in near the finish.
CAST: Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern, Robert Young, Lionel Barrymore, John Carroll, Red Skelton, Virginia O'Brien, Tom Conway, Dan Dailey Jr., Reginald Owen, Rose Hobart, Phil Silvers, The Berry Brothers, Connie Boswell.
CREDITS: Producer, Arthur Freed; Director, Norman Z. McLeod; Story, Jack McGowan; Screenplay, Jack McGowan, Kay Van Riper, John McClain; Musical Director, Georgie Stoll; Musical Continuity (for Eleanor Powell), Walter Ruick; Vocals and Orchestrations, Leo Arnaud, George Bassman, Conrad Salinger; Musical Numbers Director, Busby Berkeley; Art Director, Cedric Gibbons; Associate, John S. Detlie; Cameramen, George Folsey, Oliver T. Marsh; Film Editor, Frederick Y. Smith.
Direction, Slow. Photography, Good.
7/21/1941 LAX Louella O. Parsons
I was out at MGM and ran into Ann Sothern who trailed me around with a photograph–and bruises, to prove she had actually caught a 245-pound marlin, the biggest catch for a woman this year. Annie is starting rehearsals for Panama Hattie. So are Red Skelton, Rags Ragland and Ben Blue–the three sailors in the show. With these lads trying to outwit each other for comedy lines, I reckon Norman McLeod has his troubles.
8/4/1941 FD Whistling In the Dark
MGM 77 mins.
Blues chasing comedy; is a sure-fire box office intro. For newcomer Red Skelton.
As good entertainment, as an introduction to newcomer Red Skelton, and as an audience and exhibitor picture, Whistling In the Dark will hit the mark it was aimed at.
Enhanced by good down-to-earth hokum and comedy situations that lend themselves well to Skelton's ability and personality, plus the fine trouping of Conrad Veidt, Ann Rutherford and Virginia Grey, audience reaction was highly favorable and held the promise of definite acceptance of the screen birth of a new comedian.
To director S. Sylvan Simon goes full acclaim for his deft handling of what might otherwise have proved itself to be a mediocre slap-stick opus, but under his understanding guidance becomes comedy deluxe, as noted by audience reaction.
Faced with the necessity of inventing the perfect crime when kidnaped by a cult of moon-worshipers, headed by Conrad Veidt, who seek to rid themselves of the nephew of a millionairess patron who had will them the money after the death of her nephew, Skelton, who is known as "the Fox" via his radio broadcastings of perfect crime detections, thinks and acts his way through situation after situation until his final outsmarting of the gang through a broadcast from the inner sanctum of the cult.
Fine portrayals were the order of the pic, with Conrad Veidt, Ann Rutherford and Virginia Grey turning in very satisfying characterizations, but to "Rags" Ragland, as "Sylvester" and Will Lee, as "Herman" go added plaudits. The rest of the numerous cast are deserving of recognition for their fine support.
Credit as producer goes to George Haight who supervised the production, with Robert MacGunigle, Harry Clork and Albert Mannheimer sharing in the credits of a well-done screenplay based upon the play by Laurence Gross and Edward Childs Carpenter. Bronislau Kaper furnished the well-knit musical background. Sidney Wagner, the photography.
CAST Red Skelton, Conrad Veidt, Ann Rutherford, Virginia Grey, "Rags" Ragland, Henry O'Neill, Eve Arden, Paul Stanton, Don Douglas, Don Costello, William Tannen, Reed Hadley, Mariska Aldrich, Lloyd Corrigan, George Carleton, Will Lee and Ruth Robinson.
CREDITS: Producer, George Haight; Director, S. Sylvan Simon; Screenplay, Robert MacGunigle, Harry Clork and Albert Mannheimer; Photography, Sidney Wagner; Recording Director, Douglas Shearer; Art Director, Cedric Gibbons; Film Editor, Frank E. Hull.
Direction, Fine. Photography, Good.
8/4/1941 HCN Frederick C. Othman
Saw a lot more movie makers making movies today, with the aid of rubber crocodiles, sweat, form-fitting gowns, and wisecracks. The place was MGM and the actors were acting all over the establishment. Sweatiest of the lot were the Messrs. Red Skelton, Rags Ragland, and Ben Blue, rehearsing dance numbers for Panama Hattie They were dancing with the Misses Suzanne Ridgeway, Carmen Morales and Zedia De La Conde, and what we couldn't understand was the fact though the ladies worked just as hard as the gents, they weren't even damp.
Skelton is Hollywood's newest big-time comic, getting his chance after four years of trying to crack the place. Ragland is the burlesque red-nose who got his chance to entertain the $4.40 seat holders in the stage version of Hattie, while Blue is the perennial limber-legs of a hundred movie comedies. Director Norman McLeod said these lads were working so well together that he was hopeful of turning them into a continuing trio, something like the Marx Brothers.
8/4/1941 EHE Harrison Carroll
Funny story about Red Skelton's birthday present to his wife, Edna. The comedian, a big hit in Whistling in the Dark, bought his missus a new couple. Attached to the steering wheel as an envelope containing two dollars.
When the Skeltons were married, Red had to borrow the amount from his bride-to-be to buy the license.
Mrs. Skelton had been an usherette in a Kansas City theater. Red, a burlesque comedian down to his last dime, had met her when he played the house. The only reason he got the job was because another act failed to show up.
8/5/1941 EHE Jimmy Starr
Well, it was sorta song writer's day out at my fun house...Sammy Stept, Jerry Gottler and Lew Pollack took long turns at the piano, while Fay MacKenzie, a lovely with loads of personality, sang; Myra Sullivan, a miniature Eleanor Powell, tossed off a neat tap-rhumba. Incidentally, she got first-rate dancing lessons from no less than Red Skelton and Charley Foy.
8/16/1941 EHE COMEDIANS VS. LEADING MEN
By Warren Christopher
With the infield looking more like that of a racetrack than a baseball diamond, the annual frolic (or so-called baseball game) between the Comedians and Leading Men got under way a half hour late last night at Wrigley Field.
The reason? Mayor Fletcher Bowron forgot the game was Thursday night and let his maid have her customary night off!
Thus, His Nibs had to prepare his own dinner–and the indigestion that followed kpt him from turning up at all. Nevertheless, the game finally went on–Mayor or no Mayor, indigestion or no indigestion.
A petition was signed to ban forever from the movie colony that "traitor," Dennis Morgan. Much to the surprise of fans and more to the ultimate chagrin of the other players, it came out last night that Morgan had once played a game of baseball, and that, of course, made him ineligible for last night's encounter.
The first time up, the Irish lad hit a double down the right-field foul line. Later, after watching other strong men either whiff thrice and walk away, or bound out to the infield, Morgan threw his catching togs aside, stepped to the plate and blasted one over the right field wall. That incident didn't actually appear in the script complied by 291 directors and assistants.
SIX MOVIE MAYORS
Six movie mayors fought for the honor of throwing out the first ball, and it ended, as all things like that should, with all six heaving a ball at the somewhat bewildered Ronald Reagan, who was catching. The game began in the best of movie style, with the blare of bands featuring nearly 100 short-skirted baton twirlers. Between the bands rode a host of stars: Rudy Vallee, Martha Raye, Mary Both Hughes, Joan Blondell, Rochelle Hudson and scores of others.
The most hilarious incident of the evening was a monologue by the old master Leon Errol. He staggered to the plate in the best pose seen since John Barrymore drank that zombie at a Hollywood night spot. He ended by giving "it" up for life when two pictures threw two balls to a pair of catchers. He hit neither of them and promptly fell flat on his face while the catchers each threw a ball to a first baseman and so around the infield.
RAH FOR SKELTON!
A lot of credit should to Red Skelton, who took the mike for nearly an hour and kept the spectators literally in the aisles.
Adolph Menjou drew a roar of laughter when he was escorted to the plate by a valet, masseur, secretary, and a double.
Joan Blondell, supposed to be the umpire, stuck it out on the field for half an inning and promptly retired to a cushioned box. Tony Quinn, the screen bad man, assertedly pilfered a pair of pistols from Republic Studios and easily made a home-run when he pumped each of the infielders full of lead. Quinn is in the doghouse, as an efficiency expert from the studio hailed him after the game for wasting bullets.
The score? No one knows and apparently no one cares.
8/19/1941 FD Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day
MGM 82 Mins.
(Hollywood Preview)
Excellent Kildare story with unexpected romantic twist packs emotional wallop.
It's going to be interesting to watch the public's reaction to this latest of the Doctor Kildare series, not because it's particularly different than the others–the same standard of excellence set in the others is upheld–but because Laraine Day, Lew Ayres' sweetheart in the films dies in this.
Obviously Metro has other things in mind for Miss Day, but the reaction of the fans at the preview was one of great shock. Because of this "drastic" climax to this screen love affair, all the characters are permitted to go to extremes in emotional acting and it makes for a much stronger picture than is usually possible in these family things.
One event which will make Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day outstanding is the playing for the first time in a motion picture of a truly fine piece of music. It is called "Tableau Russe," a Symphonic Suite, written by Lionel Barrymore and it's superior to a great many pieces of music written by our best modern composers.
Harold Bucquet's direction is fine. Willis Goldbeck and Lawrence P. Bachman's screenplay has plenty of body and good dialogue. The cast, with the old standbys, Lionel Barrymore, Lew Ayres, Laraine Day, Samuel S. Hinds and Alma Kruger, are ably assisted by "visitors" Nils Asther and MGM's much-touted new comic, Red Skelton.
The story deals with the preparation for Dr. Kildare's wedding day–the death of his wife-to-be–and the problem and struggle he goes through pulling himself together. It can be highly recommended as first-class screen-fare anywhere, and for all ages.
CAST: Lew Ayres, Lionel Barrymore, Laraine Day, Red Skelton, Alma Kruger, Samuel S. Hinds, Nils Asther, Walter Kingsford, Emma Dunn, Miles Mander, Neil Craig, Frank Orth, Marie Blake, Margaret Seddon.
CREDITS: Director, Harold S. Bucquet; Authors, Ormond Ruthven and Lawrence P. Bachman; based on the characters created by Max Brand; Screenplay, Willis Goldbeck, Harry Ruskin; Cameraman, George Folsey, ASC; Art Director, Cedric Gibbons; Associate, Malcolm Brown; Editor, Conrad A. Nervig; Musical Score, Bronislaw Kaper; "Tableau Russe" (Symphonic Suite) Lionel Barrymore.
Direction, Fine. Photography, Good.
8/20/1941 HCN LITTLE WOMAN CREDITED BY SKELTON
By Frederick C. Othman
The girl we want to meet is Edna Skelton, one-time usherette at Loew's Theater in Kansas City. She's made her red-headed husband worth $2,000 of the movies' money every week; if it weren't for her he'd be a bum. That's exactly what he said.
As it is, with Edna writing the gags and managing the business and teaching her husband the rudiments of trigonometry and medieval history, he's one of the funniest comedians in the business, star of the hit, Whistling In the Dark, and one of the principals of the upcoming musical Panama Hattie. Edna did it all. Red insists she did.
Young Skelton, who was born in 1913 in Vincennes, Ind., and got his first theatrical experience at the age of 10 tooting a horn in a medicine show, tried his hand as a minstrel, a show boat comedian, a circus clown and a red-nosed burlesque tramp before he met Edna.
"I was 17 and I was playing in Loew's in Kansas City," he reported today. "Edna Stillwell was head usherette in the balcony. She'd come backstage with our paychecks on Saturday night, and she took an instant dislike to me. So okay. I new a lot of girls."
Red's next job was that of master of ceremonies at one of those weird athletic events known as a walkathon. Edna was cashier. She finally made a date with him. He took her home on a street car. It was such a long ride, Red said never again. He knew girls who lived closer.
SO IT WAS LOVE
"And one night they called in the photographers to take some pictures and they wanted a picture of me kissing a girl," Red continued. "There was Edna, and I grabbed her and kissed her and it made me dizzy. This was it. This was love. I guess we both were dizzy. We got married. Edna paid for the license. I borrowed $10 from her and bought her a new hat. And we went to St. Louis, where I had a deal to do another walkathon show at $75 a week. Only they wanted to cut my salary.
"Edna made me sore by going to the boss and playing manager for me. I told her I'd handle my own affairs. Only she shut me up with the news that I'd get $100 a week. She also talked the boss into doing my dry cleaning. I said I'd have to have free food, too. I was still mad. The manager said I could have my meals on the cuff. That's when Edna floored me first. But that was only the beginning. She gradually worked me up to $500 a week in the walkathon business."
Then Red went into vaudeville. He had a $25-week run in Montreal and he began to run out of material. Edna wrote him some. It didn't seem funny to that experienced comedian, Red Skelton.
"But the customers laughed," he said. "Edna knew what she was doing. She kept on writing my material."
His wage went up to $1,000 a week. That wasn't enough for Edna. Her husband was a prosperous man, but he made a lot of bad grammatical errors. He'd never had a chance to pass the seventh grade. So she bought some books and started teaching him English and spelling and arithmetic. Then she hired a tutor and forced him to take a high school final examination. He passed it.
"She made me study," he said. "And pretty soon I didn't feel like such a fool when I was in a room full of people talking about something besides burlesque."
The Skeltons came to Hollywood three years ago, with Red earning $2,000 a week for 12-weeks in Having Wonderful Time. He was funny, but the picture was bad. You remember–Ginger Rogers and Doug Fairbanks Jr.
BROKE BUT PROUD
Back to the stage went Red and he went broke because he wouldn't accept any job under $1,000 a week. Edna made him stick to that. In New York once they went three days without feed because Red didn't have the 40 cents that would buy them two meals at their favorite Chinese restaurant.
Then he got a coast-to-coast radio program and soon he was clicking in vaudeville and at Edna's price. She invested his money in real estate and kept on writing his jokes, and there was Red in Washington at the Earl [Rest Cut Off!]
9/1/1941 EHE Harrison Carroll
Out on the Panama Hiattie set at MGM, they were kidding Red Skelton about his new home in Brentwood and his new car.
"You wait until you see that place," said Red. "My barbecue pit is so big that I have to use two swimming pools for finger bowls. And my car! I can ride a motorcycle up and down the running board!"
9/6/1941 EHE Harrison Carroll
Lights! Camera! Action!
On the Panama Hattie set at MGM Ann Sothern is playing a scene where she is a little drunk. Sitting around a table with her are Red Skelton, Rags Ragland, Joe Yule (Mickey Rooney's father), and Ben Blue.
BUTLER ROLE
Alan Mowbray also comes into the scene as a hoity-toity butler.
It is interesting to analyze this little group. Ann Sothern and Mowbray graduated into the movies from the stage. Ben Blue came up from vaudeville.
But funnymen Skelton, Ragland and Yule, all arrived via burlesque.
It's quite a commentary on the best training school for comedians.
Still, the gang on the Panama Hattie set say that Mowbray stopped the burlesque contingent cold. When he came onto the set, he walked right up to them and said:
"Listen, boys, this is my first scene. Just keep your face straight and your backs to the camera."
9/13/1941 HCN When Ladies Meet
By James Francis Crow
There are two pictures on the new bill at Grauman's Chinese and Loew's State theaters, and each of them serves a definite purpose.
When Ladies Meet has big names in the cast: Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Herbert Marshall, and it is designed to get you into the theaters.
Whistling in the Dark is the other of the two features. It is the one designed to entertain you after you've got inside.
It is an unpretentious little number, this Whistling In the Dark. It is a new adaptation of the play by Laurence Gross and Edward Childs Carpenter, done previously on both stage and screen by Ernest Truex. Now it has a newcomer, Red Skelton, in the leading role. He is one of the funniest things this department has laid eyes on in many months. He has a consummate skill in the handling of a comedy line or situation, and he has, additionally, an ingratiating personality that will remind you somewhat of Bob Hope without suggesting imitation.
His vehicle is okay, too. It has been directed in lively fashion by S. Sylvan Simon, and entertainingly adapted by Robert MacGonigle, Harry Clork, and Albert Mannheimer. They have freshened and brightened the original play, and given it the brisk action that it lacked, as I recall, in the previous screen version.
Skelton appears as the author of perfect crime stories for the radio. He is somewhat disconcerted to be kidnaped by a gang of cult criminals, and set to the task of devising for them a perfect murder, on pain of death if he fails. So he fixes them up a perfect murder, all right–along with a perfect prevention. Meantime there are all sorts of hilarious goings-on at cult headquarters Conrad Veidt is providing the perfect villainy, and Ann Rutherford and Virginia Grey are providing plenty of romance. Rags Ragland, Eve Arden, Lloyd Corrigan, and Will Lee take turns at being Skelton's rivals for audience laughs.
Of course, you can go ahead and like When Ladies Meet also if you want to. Lots of people did at yesterday's opening, but your reviewer was conspicuous among them by his absence. Taylor is pretty fair, and so are Greer Garson and Spring Byington, but the others are grievously at disadvantage in a tediously wordy remake of the Rachel Crothers play.
It is about a lady novelist who is trying to justify, in her novel, her own real-life affair with a married man, namely her publisher. And whom does she pick to talk the matter over with–unwittingly–but the publisher's wife. Miss Crawford is the novelist, Marshall is the publisher, Miss Garson is the wife, and Taylor is the novelist's boyfriend who puts a stop to the affair. High time, too, I thought.
9/18/1941 HCN Sidney Skolsky
Watching Them Make Pictures
The old gag that in Hollywood no matter how hot it is during the daytime, there's nothing to do at night often has much truth in it. So the other night, when there wasn't anything to do, I decided to go out to Metro where they were shooting some night scenes for Panama Hattie. I had been on sets all day, but his seemed different and it was something to do.
Everyone was working. Ann Sothern, Red Skelton, Rags Ragland and Ben Blue. The scene was a street in Panama, and it seemed realistic with the lights from the cafes and theater marques, and some 200 extras waiting to be atmosphere.
Director Norman McLeod, through a loud speaker, explains to the crowded extras that this is the "I'll Do Anything For You Number," and what is expected of them. While director McLeod is doing this, Ann Sothern is sitting in her portable dressing room waiting to be called. Miss Sothern is wearing a flimsy low-necked formal gown, her costume, but she has a fur coat draped from her shoulders. It is a chilly night, for no matter who warm it is during the daytime, you always need a blanket at night. (Courtesy of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce) I haven't a fur coat and I am chilly despite the fact that I am not wearing a flimsy gown but even have the protection of a sweater–my usual autumn garb.
Annie Sothern tells me about her new friendship with Hedy Lamarr, "We've worked together at this studio for two and a half years," says Annie, "and do you know, I never met her until a month ago at a party at the Fred MacMurray's. I suppose everyone thinks that because you work at a studio you know all the stars. Funny, what they'll think. I also discovered that Hedy lives two and a half blocks from me in Beverly. Ever since I separated from Roger, and have been working nights, I hated to go home to an empty house. So I"m staying at Hedy's place. When I finish here tonight, or I should say early in the morning, there's where I'm going. It's nice...."
Annie went to work. Rags, Red, and Blue were waiting. Miss Sothern had shed her fur coat. She stood on the Panama street, shivering. "I'm gold," she said. "That'll never do," said director McLeod. "It's a hot night in Panama." So Ann Sothern is quickly bundled in her fur coat, given a cup of hot coffee, then she tosses the coat to the assistant director and plays the scene. Ann Sothern drank more coffee that night than Damon Runyon. That's the kind of wicked night life we have in Hollywood.
9/19/1941 HCN
Tony Martin will have a leading role in I'll Take Manila, the Metro musical with Eleanor Powell and Red Skelton.
9/22/1941 EHE Harrison Carroll
Speaking of cars, the ladies have the last laugh on Red Skelton. Red, who does a murderously funny takeoff on women drivers, flunked out the other day on his first attempt to renew his driver's license. He missed some of the traffic questions.
Mrs. Skelton passed with flying colors.
10/1/1941 EHE RED SKELTON IS ALL OUT FOR GLAMOR
By W.E. Oliver
A week or two back a breezy young gentleman bounded wisecrackingly onto the local screen in a picture called Whistling In the Dark. Leaving the theater lobby, fans stopped in droves to look up his name. It was Red Skelton, air and vaudeville wit and known as America's court jester, because he has been master of ceremonies for the past four presidential birthday balls at Washington, D.C.
Until Whistling In the Dark, he was practically anonymous to screengoers. Now MGM are rubbing him down for a place on the marquees alongside Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Abbott and Costello. Friday he makes his second screen featured screen appearance when Lady Be Good opens at Loew's State and Grauman's Chinese.
First Hollywood actor in years to admit it, Skelton points to his wife and says, "There sits 90–well, 60 percent of my so-called success. IF it weren't for her, I'd still be combing sawdust out of my head."
He believes that the stars are missing a bet by dropping the oldtime glamor parade on Hollywood Boulevard. "I'd like to have a long limousine," he says, "with a liveried chauffeur and a footman. I'd get me the most outlandish wardrobe in town and have the boy drive me slowly down the Boulevard so I could nod carelessly to my public.
"Boy, that's what this town needs a little more of!"
Spouses Edna and Red Skelton ran away and got married when they were 16, and he was learning the job of circus clown. Outside of film scripts, she has shared the job of writing every bit of material he uses, including the change of program for every one of the 17 weeks he played the New York Paramount Theater.
One of utilitarian whimsies is heckling Husband Red while he is on the stage. "I like to shout, anyway," she explains. "Besides it gives me a chance to feed him lines."
This pair, Red as the front man, Edna, as a sort of "straight woman" to his career, have trouped circus, burlesque, medicine shows, marathons, one-nighters, radio, vaudeville, "anything that would pay off in doughnuts," he says.
One of his hobbies is collecting gadgets. Wife Edna isn't always there to restrain him. As on the occasion he bought an old Salvation Army organ for $6 to put in his den.
Vital statistics include: Age, 28; height, 6 feet 2 inches; smoking, none; drinking, ditto; although he does a classic drunk act; voice, loud, which is why he bought the organ. He is suitably lens-tropic, which means the camera can look his way without gagging.
Confounding the notion that all comedians have doleful pocket personalities, he has only one gripe. That is about his San Fernando Valley home near the dive-testing area for the plane factories.
"I can out-shout them," he says, "but my bathroom is right on the beam and every time a plane dives while I'm shaving, I come near scalping myself."
One of his curious notions is putting a siren on the icebox to control night-raiding activities of his houseguests.
Labels: Gloria Stuart, Hoot Gibson, Jackie Cooper, Ken Maynard
posted by GDH at 1:48 AM
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