August 15, 2019
Volume 49 - No. 33
By Friedrich Gomez
It is still the early predawn hours in 1937, a mild 65 degrees outside, and Red Skelton is sitting comfortably in his hotel room in New York City flipping the pages of his newspaper. He just read the musical reviews of a new dance band that debuted with high hopes of making it big someday. The music group failed miserably on the East Coast and disbanded. Red The Paper - 760.747.7119
website:www.thecommunitypaper.com
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Skelton likes the fighting spirit of the bandleader who vowed not to give up and would try again. The orchestra leader goes under the name of Glenn Miller and he made good on his resolve: he would, one day, rerecord the huge musical-hit “In the Mood” which would rule the charts for a staggering 13 straight weeks. Skelton’s interest in the young upstart, Glenn Miller, is two-fold: Glenn Miller’s never-give-upattitude resonated deeply with
Red Skelton’s own career as a struggling burlesque and vaudeville entertainer. Secondly, aside from his stage performances, Skelton is very musical-minded and would, in time, compose over 8,000 songs and symphonies, himself – a relatively unknown fact during the course of his lifetime. There was much about Red Skelton that the world never knew.
Red Skelton - See Page 2
He reads further news. Franklin D. Roosevelt has begun his second term as President of the United States; a painter by the name of Pablo Picasso is making noise in the art world and starting to get a lot of attention in France, and tragedy has struck close when the German airship, the Hindenburg, explodes into horrific flames over Lakehurst, New Jersey, making 1937 world headlines and