Telephone Trouble – The Red Skelton Show season 1, originally aired May 18, 1952
In Telephone Trouble, Red Skelton jokes about the fire at Warner Brothers. Willie Lump Lump fights a telephone booth. J. Newton Numbskull can’t remember the name of the sponsor. Cobina Wright hires Clem Kadiddlehopper as a butler at a fancy dinner!
Monologue
- A guy walks up to another fellow the other day, he says, “I don’t know you from Adam.” He says, “You should – I got on more clothes.”
- This is National Pickles week — they told me to say that. You should see my uncle — he got started early.
Marilyn Monroe’s surgery
- You know it’s spring in Hollywood — everyone wants to adopt Marilyn Monroe.
- Did you hear she was operated on last week? Yeah, it took 17 hours for the operation. It took that long for the staff to walk by.
- There was doctors who operated who hadn’t studied medicine until that morning!
- Isn’t that silly, to go crazy over some movie star like that? You should have seen my smock, it was a mess …
Fire at the Warner Brothers studio
- We had a fire out here in Hollywood last week, Warner Brothers caught on fire. Boy, when Humphrey Bogart asked for a match, he ain’t kidding!
- One actor went home and he gave his agent a hotfoot for the 10% commission.
- Warner Brothers is in television now whether they like it or not!
- But everyone here had wonderful spirit. All the different studios, as soon as Warner Brothers caught on fire, it wasn’t more than four hours till MGM had sent a bucket of water over in a studio car.
- At Columbia studio they had coffee and donuts …. For the people at Columbia.
- Republic was the first one to see the blaze, and it wasn’t five minutes until they had a horse saddled and a guy riding to the Alamo for help.
- Paramount went over and shot thousands of feet of film, they tell me, I think it’s because someday Bob Hope and Bing Crosby are going to make a picture called “On the Road to you-know-where”
Telephone Trouble
Willie Lump Lump experiences misadventures with a telephone booth. It’s a funny bit, reprised from “Dr. Kildare’s Wedding Day” – only with the drunken Willie Lump Lump trying to use an out of order phone booth.
The Absent-Minded Announcer
J. Newton Numbskull has difficulty remembering the name of the sponsor he must promote. It’s a funny bit, making fun of various advertising tropes of the time, with Benny Rubin as another announcer. With Benny’s help remembering, it turns out to be Tide detergent, which turns into a Tide commercial.
Dinner at Cobina Wright’s
Cobina Wright has made the mistake of hiring Clem Kadiddlehopper as a butler at the last moment for her fancy dinner party. It’s an absolutely hilarious sketch, as he proceeds to unintentionally ruin the entire affair.
Cast of characters
- Red Skelton (Whistling in the Dark) … Self – Host / Willie Lump Lump / Clem Kadiddlehopper / J. Newton Numbskull
- David Rose and His Orchestra … Themselves
- Lucy Knoch (Executive Suite) … Woman in Phone Booth in Telephone Sketch / Woman With Shopping Cart in Announcer Skit / Maid in Dinner Sketch
- Bob LeMond … Self – Announcer (voice)
- Pat McGeehan … Self – Announcer
- Gil Perkins (Batman – The Movie) … Man With Sandwich Board in Announcer Skit
- Benny Rubin (How to Frame a Figg; Income Tax Sappy) … Self – Announcer Sketch
- Cobina Wright (Week-end in Havana) … Self in Dinner Sketch