Calling Dr. Prankenstein – The Red Skelton Show – with Benny Rubin, Lucille Knoch. Clem Kadiddlehopper lectures, funny Tide commercial, then mad scientist with Dracula!
Calling Dr. Prankenstein – The Red Skelton Show season 2, originally aired October 19, 1952
Monologue – Red’s new house is almost finished
- One of the workers had a broken arm, I asked him what happened. “I bet one of the guys that he couldn’t carry me up a ladder … I won.”
- One of the guys, during his lunch break, kept staring at his hand. “What’s the matter?” “I got a splinter in my hand.” “Why don’t you pull it out?” “What, on my time?”
- They ran out of wallpaper, so one of the guys went to a music store, and got old piano player music rolls, to paper the walls with. It’s okay, but when you sneeze the walls play “Kiss of Fire”.
Skelton Scrapbook – Clem’s Barnyard Lecture
To allegedly sell a book on farming, Clem lectures on various barnyard animals. Drawing a picture of a cow — “How many faucets does she have?” with the advice to not buy a milking stool. When the cow sat on it, she couldn’t hit the bottle! Then a horse (erasing parts of the cow), a jackrabbit (“jack” apparently was a slang term for money), and the skunk. A righteous animal – when there’s trouble, the mother skunk will gather her children, and says, “Let us spray.”
“I won’t have billy goats around my place, because they’re tricky. You bend over to pick up a cigarette, you never know what kind of butt you’re going to get.”
And then a funny prop bit talking about giraffes. And then lions. “I had a good joke about the male lion and the female lion, but the censor came in and read between the lions and it’s out.” Finally, he calls home to see if he left the iron on when he was pressing his pants — ending with another bit of prop comedy.
Skelton Scrapbook – Sidewalk Confusion
A very funny Tide commercial, Red’s walking down the street with an armload of packages, and falls into a trough of wet cement! Lucille Knoch walks by, makes a comment about it, and walks on. Thankfully, it’s right outside of a grocery store, so he walks in, buys a package of “Tide, the washday miracle”, goes in another door and comes out sparkling clean! Then he has a fight with the workman using the cement, and gets pushed back in! Another comment from Lucille, another box of Tide, and he’s clean again. Then, he gets his revenge on the workman by pushing him in! And Lucille decides that, it looks like fun — everybody’s doing it! So she climbs into the cement trough! A good example of the Rule of Three in comedy.
Skelton’s Film Scrapbook – The Mad Scientist
The Mad Scientist, aka. Dr. Prankenstein — a skit that’s almost funnier because of what goes wrong! The basic story has Dracula calling on his friend Prankenstein, as the mad scientist is trying to bake up a monster. There’s a running gag of someone off camera going “Da da da dah! Duh duh duh da da da da!” at various moments, which Red and Benny Rubin react to. Some ad libbing by Benny as well. And when the monster’s finished baking? It’s the lovely Lucille Knoch! Prankenstein: I can’t help but think my wife’s going to come in and ask, what’s cooking?
Cast of characters
- Red Skelton … Self – Host / Clem Kadiddlehopper / Dr. Prankenstein
- David Rose and His Orchestra … Themselves
- Lucille Knoch (Executive Suite) … Tide commercial / monster in Dr. Prankenstein sketch
- Gil Perkins … cement worker in Tide commercial
- Benny Rubin … Dracula in Dr. Prankenstein sketch