Like my father, who was a country boy from Petersburg, Indiana, Red Skelton was from the neighboring town of Vincennes, Indiana.

Red Skelton was drafted in March 1944 and shipped overseas to serve with an Army entertainment unit as a private. He is pictured here entertaining the troops on board ship, destined for Europe in April, 1945. Red would later have a nervous breakdown in Italy, spent three months in a hospital and was discharged in September, 1945. He once joked about his military career, “I was the only celebrity who went in and came out a private.” Red would become a world renowned comedian and write over 70 symphonies. He was 6’7″ tall.

Born in Vincennes, Indiana, Richard (Red) Skelton was the son of a Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus clown named Joseph who died in 1913 shortly before the birth of his son. Red Skelton himself got one of his earliest tastes of show business with the same circus as a teenager. Before that, however, he had been given the show business bug at age ten by entertainer Ed Wynn, who spotted him selling newspapers in front of the Pantheon Theatre, in Vincennes, Indiana, trying to help his family. After buying every newspaper in Red Skelton’s stock, Wynn took the boy backstage and introduced him to every member of the show with which he was traveling.

By age 15, Red Skelton had hit the road full-time as an entertainer, working everywhere from medicine shows and vaudeville to burlesque, showboats, minstrel shows and circuses.

“I’m nuts and I know it. But so long as I make ’em laugh, they ain’t going to lock me up.”
~ Red Skelton

Comes A Soldier’s Whisper, remembering our veterans and history one day at a time…

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PHOTO SOURCE: www.indianamilitarymuseum.net