The Red Skelton Show - "Deadeye Trades In His Horse" (09-17-48)

Deadeye Trades In His Horse (Aired September 17, 1948)

Skelton married Edna Marie Stillwell (b.1906 - d.1982), a joke writer, business manager, and former usher at Kansas City's old Pantage Theater, on June 1, 1931. Skelton was one month away from his 18th birthday, and Edna was 16 (or as old as 25 if the birth date given above is correct.). They divorced in 1943. Stillwell remained an advisor on his career after their marriage ended. It was his ex-wife/manager Edna who negotiated a seven-year Hollywood contract for him in 1951, the same year "The Red Skelton Show" (1951) premiered on NBC. On March 9, 1945 he married Georgia Maurine Davis in Beverly Hills, California. They had two children, Richard Jr., and Valentina Marie Skelton (b.1947). Richard Skelton Jr.'s death on May 10, 1958 from leukemia, just 10 days before his 10th birthday, devastated the Skelton household. Family friend Arthur Marx, Groucho's son, whose unauthorized biography of Skelton came out in 1979, wrote "Red treated his son's room in their Palm Springs house like a little museum. ...He had it cordoned off with a velvet rope so nobody could go in there."

 

THIS EPISODE:

110198. The Red Skelton Show. September 17, 1948. NBC network. The Four Knights sing, "Brother Bill.". Red Skelton, The Four Knights. "Deadeye Trades In His Horse" (09-17-48) Episode Notes From The Radio Gold Index.