Skidoo is a 1968 American comedy film directed by Otto Preminger,[1] starring Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Fred Clark (who died on December 5, two weeks before the film's release), Michael Constantine, Frank Gorshin, John Phillip Law, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, George Raft, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, and Groucho Marx playing a top mobster named "God".

[3] As a cartoon character dressed in prison stripes (and holding a peace-logo flower which turns into a tiny parasol and then a helicopter blade) executes a few dance steps to the music of Nilsson's Skidoo theme, the words "Otto Preminger" appear below him.

Additional words "presents SKIDOO starring" can also be seen as the camera pulls back to reveal that this image is on a TV screen, while Carol Channing's voice is heard exclaiming to Arnold Stang: "No, Harry, not that.

Gleason and Stang subsequently go to the kitchen and, as they come out, the TV screen shows combative 1960s TV personality Joe Pyne commenting on the hearings: "...and, as one witness follows another, Senator Hummel is getting the same answer Senator Kefauver got in 1950 and 1951..." Tony Banks (Jackie Gleason), a retired mob "torpedo" (hitman), now settled with wife Flo (Carol Channing) and daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay), worries about his daughter's new hippie boyfriend Stash (John Phillip Law), and his own paternity of Darlene.

[6] Tony refuses, but upon discovering another old friend, Harry (Arnold Stang), shot through the head, goes along with God's wishes and, now wearing a convict's striped outfit, finds himself in Rock Island Federal Penitentiary, a futuristic, high-tech, Alcatraz-style institution where Packard is held under top-level protection.

She visits Angie (as does Darlene, also seeking to find out what happened to her father) to persuade him to either cancel the job, or take her to God (who's living without a country, on a yacht in international waters) so she can ask personally.

One of Tony's cellmates turns out to be a draft dodger called Fred the Professor (Austin Pendleton), an electronics wizard who has renounced technology, but makes an exception in rigging a television set to allow Banks the opportunity of cell-to-cell communication with Packard.

Next, in calm waters, a small sailboat, with sails decorated in large psychedelic designs of the words "LOVE" and "PEACE", holds two occupants – Fred the Professor and God, both dressed in Hare Krishna / transcendental meditation garb.

[9][10] Pop culture buffs have noted that three cast members, Frank Gorshin (The Riddler), Burgess Meredith (The Penguin) and Cesar Romero (The Joker), played recurring villains in the 1966–68 Batman television series, which broadcast its final episode in March, nine months before Skidoo's release.

The film's then-futuristic costume designer, Rudi Gernreich, also made an acting appearance on Batman and, in one 1966 two-part episode, Otto Preminger, himself, portrayed another of the show's recurring villains, Mr.

"[20] In his 2011 review of the DVD in his New York Times column, Dave Kehr framed the film as the product of Preminger being "politically aligned with the kids... but culturally bound to the grownups", which "allows his ambivalence to fester into an across-the-board caricature...

"[25] Following the December 19, 1968 release of Skidoo, Otto Preminger (wearing a Nehru jacket), Nilsson (performing music and songs from the film), and Carol Channing appeared with Hugh Hefner on the February 15, 1969 episode of the syndicated series Playboy After Dark.

[26] New York City's Museum of Modern Art periodically exhibits a 35mm print, and it also screened at the USA Film Festival in Dallas in 1997 and had a Los Angeles showing in 2007 at the American Cinematheque.