Red Skelton / An Appreciation -- Seeing Red -- From Circus Midway To Burlesque To TV, America's Clown Lived To Make US Laugh

Red Skelton, the rubber-faced harlequin and pantomimist, delighted stage, radio, film and TV audiences with such characters as Clem Kadiddlehopper, Freddie the Freeloader and the Mean Widdle Kid.

Skelton died yesterday at the age of 84. He had been in declining health for several years before death came at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

He was the quintessential clown. In his later years he even painted clown faces, earning more than $80,000 for a single canvas and some $2.5 million a year from lithographs.

His waning years were spent at the easel and on stage with as many as 75 performances a year. But modern audiences remember him most as a pioneering television comedian. He was on the small screen from 1951 until 1971, for NBC and CBS, until viewers' changing taste dictated cancellation.

"Red was a wonderful, wonderful man. His work was fantastic. He was a treasure," said fellow television comedian Sid Caesar.

Another vaudeville and television contemporary, Milton Berle, said, "We lost a great entertainer, a great comedian, and I lost a very, very dear friend."

In Seattle, Gladys Gray, owner of the House of Paintings in Lower Queen Anne, was the exclusive dealer for Skelton's art in Washington. Skelton had visited Gray's store five or six times. She last spoke with him six months ago.

"It's just like losing a member of my family. He has been so special to my son and daughter and me.

"I feel a real, real sense of loss. I just thought Red would go on forever. He had a strong will to live. We just thought he was eternal. He was a dear man. Never said a mean thing to anybody. No one has ever said anything derogatory about Red Skelton. Everybody loved him."

Skelton appeared at the Puyallup Fair in 1987, and was one of the top draws that year. By then, it had been 16 years since he had appeared regularly on network TV.

`It has something to do with demographics," he said at the fair, `"ut demographics can't tell you human emotions, it can't tell you what makes them laugh and makes them cry."

He continued to appear on TV specials through 1995, when he was on "Inside the Dream Factory." Skelton was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1988.

A year later, the Screen Actors Guild recognized his work in 43 movies by granting him its achievement award for his outstanding career and his charitable contributions.

In an age of prefabricated biography and press-agent flamboyance, Skelton was one character that no writer - whether of comedy or tragedy - could have invented.

"I don't want to be called `the greatest' or `one of the greatest'; let other guys claim to be the best," he once said. "I just want to be known as a clown because to me that's the height of my profession. It means you can do everything - sing, dance, and above all, make people laugh."

Skelton had two attributes that set him apart: a talent for mime that could and did transcend the barrier of language, and the gift of evoking tears as readily as laughter.

He came by both honestly. They were his birthright - and only legacy - from a clown named Joseph Skelton who died two months before Red was born. The death of Joe, an alcoholic, left his wife, Ida, and her four sons penniless. Ida supported her family by scrubbing floors.

Richard Bernard Skelton was born on July 18, 1913, in Vincennes, Ind. At age 10, he got his first taste of professional show business when a snake oil purveyor named Doc Lewis hired him as an assistant - to do nothing more than fall off the stage.

He later worked in a minstrel show and then got a job on the Cotton Blossom, a showboat plying the the Ohio and Missouri rivers.

Skelton then was hired to work the parade and walkarounds (the entry-level of clowning) at a circus. But circusing was winding down, and Skelton soon abandoned the sawdust in favor of burlesque.

The 17-year-old "third banana" met Edna Stillwell, a 15-year-old usherette who became his first wife a year later.

As Skelton rose to top banana, Edna, too, had ambitions. She began writing scripts and was soon providing the bulk of his material.

The Lido Club in Montreal was a place where hecklers always included themselves in the evening's entertainment, and at first Skelton was nonplussed by the problem - while his act died. In desperation, he began to field the insults.

"Hey, stupid . . . !" a heckler called.

"Not as stupid as you," Red retorted, "you paid to get in here!"

By the end of the first week, he was a favorite and the squelches were a permanent fixture of the act.

His later success New York had two immediate consequences: an invitation to make his radio debut with a guest spot on Rudy Vallee's show in 1937, and a booking in Washington, D.C., that gained him an invitation to the White House.

His White House success led to his screen debut. A guest recommended him to Louis B. Mayer, who cast him (billed as Richard "Red" Skelton) in "Having a Wonderful Time" with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Ginger Rogers.

His big breakthrough, however, came in 1941 with the release of "Whistling in the Dark," in which he starred as a radio performer trying to solve a murder mystery.

He followed with similar roles while establishing himself among radio's dozen leading comics with the weekly show "Red Skelton's Scrapbook of Satire."

The radio shows became a fixture in network programming while his film credentials were being bolstered by such successes as "Lady Be Good," "Maisie Gets Her Man," "Panama Hattie" "Ship Ahoy" "Dubarry Was a Lady" "As Thousands Cheer" and "Bathing Beauty."

Through it all, Edna remained his manager, chief writer and friend, although their marriage ended in 1943 and both remarried.

The second Mrs. Skelton was Georgia Maureen Davis, a sometime artist and model, whom he married while on furlough from the Army in 1945. Their daughter, Valentina Maris, was born in 1947. A son, Richard Freeman, was born in 1948 and died of leukemia at age 9 during the height of Skelton's TV show.

Skelton himself had health problems: He was hospitalized for an undisclosed ailment in 1952, for a severe asthma attack in 1957 and for a resection of his stomach in 1960.

Unhappy with his films after the war, he found new satisfaction in television. "The Red Skelton Show" first appeared on network TV in 1951; it was an immediate hit, maintaining that status until its final season two decades later.

The weekly show finally wound down to its final performance in 1971, the marriage ended two years later, and in 1976 - 18 years to the day after her son's death - Georgia Skelton took her own life.

Skelton was remarried by then to third wife Lothian Toland, daughter of cinematographer Gregg Toland.