Screenland (Nov 1941-Apr 1942)

lo play tennis because the court's there and they might s well use it. "What do you want with a car that big ?" cowled their manager, who keeps Red on an allowance | fifty a week. "People make more than you, get along llth smaller." "When you've gone hungry, Red pointed out, you jat too much at first. Those people got big cars out of Iheir system. We're getting 'em out of ours." They're reveling in the childhood neither had as chilIren. Red buys himself the electric trains and putt-putts Es mouth watered for at eight. His mother used to feed ier flock on soup beans, with limas once a week as a feat. Now he lunches daily on pie and lima beans— jfcth desserts to him. He has the big desk, just to sit jehind, which he always wanted. There's nothing in the drawers. But he leans back, puts his feet up, hums the Brahms' lullaby — their good luck tune — and feels fine. "I've got a very funny mother," he'll tell you. "She always said : be nice to people, even when they annoy you. You annoy them, too. That's the first rule. The second is, don't take life seriously because you never come out of it alive." Red's a funny fellow too. He must have got it from his mother. He likes everybody. His approach to people is genial, guileless and disarming. While still a comparative stranger on the Metro lot, he was asked by a man how he liked his part. "Swell! If it goes over, I'll have you promoted. — Nice guy. Who is he?" he asked his companion. "Louis B. Mayer." "Hi, there, old pitchman," he yelled at another executive, smoking a stogie. "Three days with that weed and you'll be in an iron lung." One day he swung himself up ion a stool at the lunch counter, and inquired of his neighbor what he did around the joint. "I'm only the janitor." "That makes a couple of us," said Red. "I'm the hired help, too." " He's a clown and the son of a clown, and from the age of four his ambition has been to make people laugh. His father worked for the Hagenbeck & Wallace Circus, quit when he met a girl he loved in Vincennes, Indiana, ' married the girl and opened a grocery store. Red, christened Richard, the youngest of four boys, was born two months after his father's death. Mrs. Skelton ran the store till it burned down, uninsured, then turned her hand to elevators, washing clothes. As the boys grew old enough, they helped. Red began selling newspapers at eight. He was born to the platform. The ministry attracted him first. Draping a flag round his highchair, he'd clamber to the seat and sermonize the folks. Then he saw his first show, his father's blood spoke in his veins, and his course was set. Mrs. Skelton got all the boys in on passes. Red was four. He remembers that the picture was with Charlie Ray, that he walked home in a trance, and built his own theater out of boxes and rags, with old dolls as actors. Time passed, and he haunted the local playhouses, sneaking in under the arms of ushers, getting kicked out and sneaking back in again. Before long he was performing on street corners — Joe Jerk, the town cut-up — singing in black-face and selling trick cards manufactured by himself. His mother cut him his first wig out of a cast-off chinchilla coat. "Hitchykoo" came to town and Red stood with his newspapers, doping his chances of getting in that night, when a man sauntered up. "What do you do with your money, kid?" "Give it to my mother." "Is that a routine?" (Please turn to page 60)