Tag: Red Skelton
Here’s a Winter Solstice-Chanukah-Christmas-Kwanza-New Year’s present for you, a compilation of Santa’s favorite physical comedy acts. This year you’re being gifted self-contained acts, not physical comedy that’s part of a narrative, which is why there are no movie clips from Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd, and the rest of the gang in your stocking. Sure, some of these 13 acts are from movies, but they were just snuck in there like whiskey in the eggnog to punch things up.
Way back in the day, 1980 to be precise, when I was working with Joe Killian and Michael Zerphy, whenever we saw other performers do a bit we really liked, we’d say “consider it stolen!” I think the phrase originated with Joe, but he may have stolen it.
Here’s the song classic “Baby It’s Cold Outside” done not once but twice with some nice physical comedy elements. Both are from the 1949 movie Neptune’s Daughter, for which it won the Best Song Oscar. The first version features Ricardo Montalban trying to seduce Esther Williams. The second version reverses the roles, with Betty Garrett putting the moves on none other than Red Skelton (Spanish accent and all).
We continue our series of popular guest posts on eccentric dance by Betsy Baytos with a piece on the multi-talented Red Skelton. I was actually on his show (in a skit with Jackie Gleason!) a few days after my seventh birthday, and 28 years later he consented to be honorary chairperson of the first NY International Clown-Theatre Festival, but (unlike Betsy) this time around I did not get to meet him. Click here for all of Betsy’s posts on eccentric dance. —jt
TRANSLATE THIS PAGE
Workshops & Other Events
My first book (1976)
My book Clowns has long been out of print, but you can borrow it for two weeks at a time from the Internet Archive. More information is available here.
My second book (2015)
Visual and verbal humor for the cognitively and artistically curious! Available here.
“A book to treasure!”
—Bill Irwin