The Red Skelton Show was on the air for 20 years, the longest-running primetime network comedy variety series on television. It was a top 10 series for nine years--an accomplishment surpassed only by Gunsmoke and Home Improvement. The series has a few unimpressive achievements too, such as becoming the first top 10 series to be cancelled by a network. Here is the history of The Red Skelton Show, beginning with its debut in 1951, one of the top five that year. The show then declined in popularity, moved from CBS to NBC in 1953, slowly rose back to the top. In its glory days of the 1960s it became an hour long show and finished at number two in two different years. The cancellation of the show by CBS in 1970 despite its place in the top 10 was a surprise; the last season back with NBC was a failure. Appendices list cast and crew credits and special guests by season, and offer information on the post-Red Skelton lives of many of the principal players.

Explores intricacies of a clown and loved comedian.

For more than twenty years, Hoosier comic Red Skelton entertained millions of viewers who gathered around their television sets to delight in the antics of such notable characters as Freddie the Freeloader, Clem Kaddiddlehopper, Cauliflower McPugg, and Sheriff Deadeye. Noted film historian Wes D. Gehring examines the man behind the characters—someone who never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Gehring delves into Skelton's hardscrabble life with a shockingly dysfunctional family in the southern Indiana community of Vincennes, his days on the road on the vaudeville circuit, the comedian's early success on radio, his up-and-down movie career with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and his sometimes tragic personal life.

For twenty years, Hoosier comic Red Skelton entertained millions of viewers who gathered around their television sets to delight in the antics of his notable characters. Gehring examines the man behind the characters-- someone who never let the facts get in the way of a good story. He delves into Skelton's hardscrabble life with a shockingly dysfunctional family in the southern Indiana community of Vincennes, his days on the road on the vaudeville circuit, the comedian's early success on radio, his up-and-down movie career with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and his sometimes tragic personal life.

There are generations that have never seen Sid Caesar become an automobile tire or Red Skelton stick his thumbs in his armpits and intone, "Two theagulls...," never journeyed with Ernie Kovacs to a surrealistic world of his warped imagination. Here seventeen comic talents are profiled (with photographs): their early years, marriages and personal challenges, anecdotes about them, the characters they created, their styles, and often representative dialogue or sketch descriptions. There is a listing of all television shows in which each comic starred (giving length, network, air dates). The comics include Lucille Ball, Milton Berle, Carol Burnett, Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Tim Conway, Jackie Gleason, Danny Kaye, Ernie Kovacs, Olsen and Johnson, Martha Raye, Soupy Sales, Red Skelton, Dick Van Dyke, Flip Wilson, Jonathan Winters, and Ed Wynn.

Maila Nurmi, the beautiful and sheltered daughter of Finnish immigrants, stepped off the bus in 1941 Los Angeles intent on finding fame and fortune. She found men eager to take advantage of her innocence and beauty but was determined to find success and love. Her inspired design and portrayal of a vampire won a costume contest that lead to a small role on the Red Skelton show which grew into a persona that brought her the notoriety she desired yet trapped her in a character she could never truly escape. This is Malia’s story. Her diaries, notes, and ephemera and family stories bring new insights to her relationships with Orson Welles, James Dean, and Marlon Brando. Sandra Niemi—Malia’s niece—fills in the nuances of her life prior to fame and her struggles after the limelight faded and she found a new community within the burgeoning Los Angeles punk scene who embraced her as their own. , Includes rare photographs.

When Ozzie Nelson died in 1975, he was no longer a household name. For a guy who had created the longest-running TV sitcom in history, invented the rock video, and fronted one of the most successful big bands of the 1930s, it's baffling that Nelson has faded so far from American media memory. Larger than life offscreen--an attorney, college football star, cartoonist, songwriter, major band leader--Ozzie created a smaller-than-life TV persona, the bumbling average Dad who became known to the rock generation (which included his teen idol son Rick Nelson) as the essence of blandness. But America also saw Ozzie as their iconic Dad: not a "father knows best," since his pontifications usually proved flawed by the end of each episode, but the father who tried his best. This book is the only full-length biography of Ozzie Nelson since he published his memoirs in 1973. It treats the big band and early TV icon with affection and hints that American pop culture may owe more to Ozzie than is generally acknowledged.