Radio mirror (Jan-June 1948)

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Nothing mystic, either — I have good solid reasons. If there is ever any disagreement about a line on the show, Red asks the cast's opinion. If we out-vote him, he backs down without an argument. "You may be right, Namah," he'll say, "let's-try it your way." Not so big, you see, but that he can be bigger, not so smart but that he is willing to learn. He fights with Edna, of course, but like a spoiled child fights with his mother. You know how the child psychologists explain it: the child isn't really "bad," he just wants attention, he'd rather provoke a fight and risk punishment than get no attention at all. fIKE "Namah," I've never had much ^ use for the modern school of child rearing, the "make a game of it and they'll like it" technique. I'll stick with my own generation's maxim: "spare the rod and spoil the child." But I must admit that Edna uses the new theories very successfully in coping with Red when he gets in one of those moods. I remember when she broke the news to him that he was to conduct a concert in the Hollywood bowl. "Watch David (David Rose, our orchestra leader) carefully tonight, Red," she said casually one day in rehearsal, "you'll need some pointers when you conduct in the Bowl." It was the first Red had heard of it. "Conduct! Where?" The roof blew off. "I won't do it!" "Sure you will," Edna said, smiling. The mercury was about to break the glass in Red's temper thermometer. "In a pig's eye I will," he shouted, fairly stamping his foot. Edna's voice didn't raise a notch when she replied. "I wouldn't know where to begin to look for one," she said, "but if you really think you need a pig's eye I'll do my best to find one for you." He had to laugh, so he lost. He usually loses, in those arguments with Edna. He'll fight for a line she dislikes, swear by heaven he'll read it on the show — and then comes evening, and the broadcast, and the line is out. Edna knows what's right for Red, and he knows she knows. He'd be lost, professionally, without her. And he knows that too. One night, Edna left the control room during a broadcast. Some of the veterans from a Birmingham hospital, were having trouble getting into the studio, and Edna rushed out to fix it up with the ushers. Red looked up to the booth during a routine with me, saw she was gone, and for a moment something very close to panic came into his face. At the next musical break, seeing her in the wings, he crossed to her and demanded to know where she'd been. She explained. "Don't ever do that again," he said, in dead seriousness. "I'm used to you up there. I want you there. When I look up I want you there." He wants us all around. Used to us, too, I guess. It is traditional that the whole company barge over to the Brown Derby for supper after the broadcasts, and we linger over count less cups of coffee rehashing all of the slips and flukes of the show. He clings to us. We're a sort of hand-picked second family. I was grateful for all my years of barnstorming those first few weeks on the Skelton show, when I was just finding out about Red — how he will stop after the first line of a six-line speech if he feels like it (or cut out a joke completely if he sees someone in the audience he thinks the joke line might offend) — and he'll expect the other people in the routine to go merrily on, cue or no cue. I had worked like that for years, so it was no problem for me — but not every actor's nervous system can take it. Red expects more than routine efficiency from the people who work with him, and he should — for he certainly puts into his side of the bargain more than most people expect from a bossemployee relationship. Having a person like Red to work for has been a life-saver for me and I mean that, literally. My husband, Lee Millar, with whom I had twenty-two years of a wonderful marriage, died five years ago, with shocking suddenness. It was on Christmas Eve — we had just decorated our tree together — and only a few months after my mother's death. I wasn't prepared for the blow. He had been so well. On Monday night we worked together on Radio Theater. On Tuesday night he was gone. Our son, Lee, Jr., was away from home, in the Navy. Now that the war is over, and he is free to make a life for himself, he is in New York starting from scratch — as his parents did — trying to be an actor. I kept sane those first few months by working harder than I had ever worked in my life. Work continued to be the way out, and the job with Red Skelton — in which I could invest heart as well as brains — helped me tremendously in fitting together a new life. RED gave me one of those wonderful clown pictures he paints. I have it over the fireplace in my home in North Hollywood, which I share with my stepfather, my mother's old housekeeper, my own housekeeper, my cocker, Mike, my English sheep-dog. Skipper, and my Persian cat, Veronica. The clown grinning imperturbably down at me reminds me that people must go on working, go on laughing — no matter what blow falls. And it reaffirms my old conviction that the best laughs are awfully close to drama, close to the hearts of the people. The laughs Red and I have had together, as well as the laughs we hope we get from you when we work together on the air, are that kind of laughter, for Red is the classic clown whose lips make jokes while his insides seeth with drama. Red is one funny man who really could play Hamlet. I am not joking. I think he is really great — a great actor, a great human being. I love him, the good, bad little boy — the complex, appealing adult. "Of course you love me, Namah," he'd say, pooh-poohing. "And I love you, cross my heart." Childlike, he would remember: "It's because our birthdays are so close together . . . yours the eighteenth of July; mine the twentieth. That's why we love one another." Oh, think I. Is that why? In a pig's eye. Red. . That's what I'd say to that.