He has stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in radio and television, and also appeared in burlesque, vaudeville, films, nightclubs, and casinos, all while he pursued an entirely separate career as an artist.

Despite high ratings, the show was canceled by CBS in 1970, as the network believed that more youth-oriented programs were needed to attract younger viewers and their spending power.

Author Wesley Hyatt suggests that since he began working at such an early age, Skelton may have claimed he was older than he actually was in order to gain employment.

He dropped out of school around 1926 or 1927, when he was 13 or 14 years old, but he already had some experience performing in minstrel shows in Vincennes, and on a showboat, The Cotton Blossom, that plied the Ohio and Missouri rivers.

[6] Skelton, who was interested in all forms of acting, took a dramatic role with the John Lawrence stock theater company, but was unable to deliver his lines in a serious manner; the audience laughed instead.

In another incident, while performing in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Skelton was on an unseen treadmill; when it malfunctioned and began working in reverse, the frightened young actor called out, "Help!

[15] Ida Skelton, who held multiple jobs to support her family after the death of her husband, did not suggest that her youngest son run away from home to become an entertainer, but "his destiny had caught up with him at an early age".

[18] Skelton and Edna worked for a year in Camden, New Jersey, and were able to get an engagement at Montreal's Lido Club in 1934 through a friend who managed the chorus lines at New York's Roxy Theatre.

[4][34] Actor Mickey Rooney contacted Skelton, urging him to try for work in films after seeing him perform his "Doughnut Dunkers" act at President Roosevelt's 1940 birthday party.

In 1940, he provided comic relief as a lieutenant in Frank Borzage's war drama Flight Command, opposite Robert Taylor, Ruth Hussey, and Walter Pidgeon.

[40][41][42] In 1941, Skelton began appearing in musical comedies, starring opposite Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern, and Robert Young in Norman Z. McLeod's Lady Be Good.

[44] In 1943, after a memorable role as a nightclub hatcheck attendant who becomes King Louis XV of France in a dream opposite Lucille Ball and Gene Kelly in Roy Del Ruth's Du Barry Was a Lady,[45][46] Skelton starred as Joseph Rivington Reynolds, a hotel valet besotted with Broadway starlet Constance Shaw (Powell) in Vincente Minnelli's romantic musical comedy, I Dood It.

[51] In 1946, Skelton played boastful clerk J. Aubrey Piper opposite Marilyn Maxwell and Marjorie Main in Harry Beaumont's comedy picture The Show-Off.

[60] In 1948, columnist Sheilah Graham printed that Skelton's wishes were to make only one film a year, spending the rest of the time traveling the U.S. with his radio show.

He went on to appear in films such as Jack Donohue's The Yellow Cab Man (1950),[67] Roy Rowland and Buster Keaton's Excuse My Dust (1951),[68] Charles Walters' Texas Carnival (1951),[69] Mervyn LeRoy's Lovely to Look At (1952),[38] Robert Z. Leonard's The Clown (1953), and The Great Diamond Robbery (1954),[70] and Norman Z. McLeod's poorly received Public Pigeon No.

[72] As a result, Skelton would make only a few appearances in films after this, including playing a saloon drunk in Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), a fictional version of himself as a gambler in Ocean's 11 (1960), and a Neanderthal man in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965).

[74] On October 1, 1938, Skelton replaced Red Foley as the host of Avalon Time on NBC; Edna also joined the show's cast, under her maiden name.

[36][85][86] After a talk with President Roosevelt in 1943, Skelton used his radio show to collect funds for a Douglas A-20 Havoc to be given to the Soviet Army to help fight World War II.

Brown and Williamson, the makers of cigarettes, asked Skelton to change some aspects of the skit; he renamed the routine "Guzzler's Gin", where the announcer became inebriated while sampling and touting the imaginary sponsor's wares.

[101][102] He was on army furlough for throat discomfort when he married actress Georgia Maureen Davis in Beverly Hills, California, on March 9, 1945; the couple met on the MGM lot.

[100][117] Upon returning to radio, Skelton brought with him many new characters that were added to his repertoire: Bolivar Shagnasty, described as a "loudmouthed braggart"; Cauliflower McPugg, a boxer; Deadeye, a cowboy; Willie Lump-Lump, a fellow who drank too much; and San Fernando Red, a confidence man with political aspirations.

[129] His television debut, The Red Skelton Show, premiered on that date: At the end of his opening monolog, two men backstage grabbed his ankles from behind the set curtain, hauling him offstage face down.

[131] The move to television allowed him to create two nonhuman characters, seagulls Gertrude and Heathcliffe, which he performed while the pair were flying by, tucking his thumbs under his arms to represent wings and shaping his hat to look like a bird's bill.

[167] In happier times, he had frequently mentioned his children on his program, but he found it extremely difficult to do this after Richard became ill. Skelton resumed this practice only after his son asked him to do so.

[207] Believing the demographic and salary issues to be irrelevant, he accused CBS of bowing to the antiestablishment, antiwar faction at the height of the Vietnam War, saying his conservative political and social views caused the network to turn against him.

[30][207][af] In 1983, Group W announced that it had come to terms with him for the rights to rebroadcast some of his original television programs from 1966 through 1970; some of his earlier shows were made available after Skelton's death.

[13] After he learned that his performances were popular with the hearing-impaired because of his heavy use of pantomimes, Skelton hired a sign language interpreter to translate the non-pantomime portions of his act for all his shows.

[240] Although Simon had planned to cast Jack Albertson, who played Willy on Broadway, in the same role for the film, Skelton's screen test impressed him enough to change his mind.

[268][269] Skelton became interested in Masonry as a small boy selling newspapers in Vincennes, when a man bought a paper from him with a $5 bill and told him to keep the change.

"With one prop, a soft battered hat", Groucho wrote, describing a performance he had witnessed, "he successfully converted himself into an idiot boy, a peevish old lady, a teetering-tottering drunk, an overstuffed clubwoman, a tramp, and any other character that seemed to suit his fancy.