Red Skelton turned in a wonderfully dramatic performance along with his usual comic spots in this gut-wrenching 1953 film.
Red portrays an alcoholic clown, once famous on the Ziegfeld circuit whose career has gone southward due to his drinking son. His young son adores him and the two eke out an existence. Jane Greer was the wife who divorced Skelton years before when he was on top and allowed Skelton to take charge of the boy.
Going nowhere in his career and meeting Greer by chance with her new, wealthy husband, Skelton pretends to turn on the boy so that he will want to live with his mother. The scene where he slaps his son along with the comical scene of him being in a lady's ballet group were memorable.
This film is so good that it will tug at your heart. It's not the ending we all expected or wanted but the writers saw that the boy must live with his mother.
Red portrays an alcoholic clown, once famous on the Ziegfeld circuit whose career has gone southward due to his drinking son. His young son adores him and the two eke out an existence. Jane Greer was the wife who divorced Skelton years before when he was on top and allowed Skelton to take charge of the boy.
Going nowhere in his career and meeting Greer by chance with her new, wealthy husband, Skelton pretends to turn on the boy so that he will want to live with his mother. The scene where he slaps his son along with the comical scene of him being in a lady's ballet group were memorable.
This film is so good that it will tug at your heart. It's not the ending we all expected or wanted but the writers saw that the boy must live with his mother.