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5 out of 5 people found the following review useful: Red Skelton's Crowning Glory!, 6 January 2008 Author: vitaleralphlouis from United States
When I plunked down my half-dollar at Washington DC's most deluxe Loew's Capitol Theatre in 1953 --- for a matinée of THE CLOWN plus their Stage Show --- I had no idea the powerhouse of raw emotion and dramatic excellence waiting on the screen inside.THE CLOWN is without a doubt the finest work of one of America's best comedy actors. This film is loaded with belly-laugh humor, drama, tragedy, hope, redemption, pathos. More than 50 years later I can still feel the emotion of this great film.Skelton plays a down-and-out comedy star who's drifted into a daze of alcoholism. He's given up on reconnecting with his ex-wife, but has hopes of a relationship with his young son. IF ONLY... if only he can stay off the sauce.... if only he can find somebody who'll let him perform again......
6 out of 8 people found the following review useful: "The Champ" remade as a clown story, 19 September 2000 Author: Schlockmeister from Midnight Movie Land
Red Skelton plays Dodo Delwyn, a clown who has seen better days (and years...). He has a problem keeping jobs because of his drinking and he also has a big problem with gambling away the little money he does make when he works. This wouldn't be so bad if he was on his own, but he has a young son Dink (Tim Considine) tagging along with him. Add in the fact that Dink's mother suddenly appears and wants him back so she can give him a better life (she has married well..) and the fact that Dodo can't make any kind of life for a young boy and you see where this plot is headed. Dink is (miraculously, considering his record..) offered a TV show of his own to host. The year before (1951) Red has also started his own "Red Skelton Show" so this wasn't a stretch for Red. Will Dodo be able to handle a TV show? Will he and his son have the "big times" they dream of (A yellow convertible and a real house of their own..)? Essentially a remake of "The Champ" with a clown in the boxer's role. Red Skelton, along with Charlie Chaplin, is a master of pathos, and he is here at his best.
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful: Skelton as you've probably never seen him, 28 October 2007 Author: jimdandy43 from United States
I used to watch The Red Skelton Show every Tuesday night at 9:30, with my dad. And every Tuesday night we'd laugh and hope that Red would perform as Freddy The Freeloader... which he often did.I only knew Skelton as a comic on TV. When The Clown played at our neighborhood theater, I asked my mom if we could go see it. "Sure can"..says she, and that weekend we were off to the movies.I walked into the theater fully expecting to leave with a belly ache caused by my laughter. To my great surprise, and later even greater delight, The Clown featured Skelton as a SERIOUS actor. And as a serious actor, Skelton excelled! I've never forgotten his performance.
4 out of 5 people found the following review useful: Made me cry!, 3 December 1998 Author: Roy F. Plummer (plummerrf@zianet.com) from Organ, NM
Just a kid when I saw this movie. Red Skelton should have got a good review for his part. To have made me cry, as a kid, not bad for a comic.
Just an excuse to show off Skelton's dramatic and comedic chops...but he infuses it with heart nevertheless, 20 August 2009 Author: moonspinner55 from redlands, ca
Reworking of 1931's "The Champ" is a predictable father-son wallow permeated with self-pity...but you have to expect that with this formula--without it, the movie would crumble apart. Story of an ex-Ziegfeld comedian who has fallen on hard times provides the perfect opportunity for Red Skelton to stretch some dramatic acting muscles, and he does not disappoint. Plus, his relationship with young Tim Considine is well-played, and the surrounding milieu of nightclubs and talent agencies is believable. Still, this script really goes out on a limb to give Skelton's Dodo an even break (he lands a TV gig!), and the heartache inherent in the finale is telegraphed from miles away. Skelton does his familiar comic routines, enjoying them himself as much as the audience does, yet in these instances he's playing to his popular persona and the semblance of an actual character slips away. We also didn't need a reprisal of the ballet sequence from "Bathing Beauty" inserted as a flashback, nor a running-away-from-home thread which is just shucked off. Screenwriter Martin Rackin seems shackled to the by-the-numbers recipe lifted from the previous version; yet if it works at all, this is due to Skelton's panache. Dimply-cute and sad-eyed, the nervous warmth Red imbues to his paternal scenes, as well as towards Jane Greer in a dressing-room meeting, is indeed moving. **1/2 from ****
0 out of 1 people found the following review useful: Not very good, 22 August 2009 Author: BigWhiskers from United States
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
I'm not a big Red Skelton fan.Warranted I wasn't born until 1965 and didn't even know of him until the late seventies well after his heyday - I eventually watched a few of his movies as an adult and noted that he was mainly a comedic actor and mostly starred in movies involving slapstick type humor and gags. I did find some of them funny and the co-stars were equally as funny. This movie though with him in a serious role just doesn't wash. Besides the awful writing , his name is Dodo and his son is Dink ? Who wrote this a two year old?. I don't understand why some people could give kudos to the acting. Fair at best - most times wooden. The actors seems to be sleepwalking at times. Skelton as the alcoholic father battling inner demons does a decent job but his part is so badly written that he can't really stretch his acting chops- sometimes he seems to wish he was someplace else. Jane Greers' character I disliked as she just shows up 13 yrs later and says I'm your Mom ,come live with me, Who cares that I dumped you off when you were a newborn, I'm married into money now so that makes it better - yeah right b/s.Her husband is a jerk too, he slaps money down in front of Dodo for 15 minutes with Dink. Of course Dodo takes it and Dink is off to their room. When she says I'm your Mom , his reaction is so ridiculous ,Don't you think he would have been a bit suspicious or even mad , his reaction is more a "Ok and now I'm leaving". Later in the movie Dodo decides to send his kid away to live with his biological mother thinking it would be a better life for him- the kid loves him greatly so how do the writers handle having Dodo do this- BADLY in my opinion- they do the "I need to hate my kid so bad that he'll want to go scene". So Dodo not only maliciously tells his kid how much he hates him and what a nuisance he is , he also hits the kid hard across the face knocking him down. awful scene -basically saying i cant tell you how much i love you and how this is killing me to force you to go ,no i have to tell you i hate you out of the blue and also beat on you to make you hate me when i really love you. I HATE SCENES LIKE THAT!. Then of course the obligatory "I hit my kid ,im a bad person and punch the wall scene". I hated every scene with Jane Greer and her spoiled brat daughter and her stuck up husband. The ending is abrupt with Dodo of course dying after a performance in his comedy show and Dink simply says "Dodo's dead over and over " Of course now he calls Jane Greer mother when he didn't even know her for the first 13 yrs of his life and in the movie he only knows her a few weeks. The mother and her husband walk Dink down the hall-fade to black. Very poor ending to me and lousy writing. I'm sure it didn't do Skeltons' career any good to stray away from what he did best ,comedy.
0 out of 2 people found the following review useful: A Sad Clown, 4 October 2008 Author: robert-temple-1 from United Kingdom
This Red Skelton film caused a big stir when it was released because it featured the famous comedian in a serious role, as a sad case of someone too far gone on drink but passionately loved by his young son. The son, played in his film debut by Tim Considine, gives a magnificent and powerful performance. Skelton is very good as well. The film is a bit tepid despite the fierce intensity of Considine's acting because, as was usual with Skelton's films, not enough attention was paid to it, and it was not produced or directed with sufficient care. Considine's mother, whom he meets for the first time since infancy in this story, is played by the elegant Jane Greer, who is very at home in a nervous mother role, and conveys a sense of anxiety-ridden maternity with applomb. This film is a bit soft around the edges. In order to pack a real punch, it should have been a bit more like 'The Country Girl', and Skelton should have been allowed to play the alcoholic with the same hopeless and tragic air as Bing Crosby did in that film. Instead, the producers could not really bring themselves to push the story or the portrayal through to its logical conclusion, or make it realistic enough, and they let it drift off into fairyland. Because of the vacillation and lack of conviction of the producers, this film largely wastes Skelton's talents, will not allow him to go for true pathos, and reigns in the realism needlessly. This causes the film to verge on being an 'exploitation picture' playing harps to the music of the hopeless-dad-loving-young-son motif. The film could have been original and powerful, but despite the 100% given to it by Tim Considine, it is disappointing, and remains in the category of 'films that might have been'. If only Skelton had met the right director and had been able to sear the screen with his magic, but he was unlucky. Not for lack of acting support, though! Considine and Greer are just what was needed.
7 out of 16 people found the following review useful: NOT a good idea, 28 February 2002 Author: david from California, USA
Red Skelton fulfils the Clown wants to play Hamlet manifesto; playing not Hamlet, but - a Clown, in this ill advised Schary era remake of Beery's Oscar winner THE CHAMP, none too good its own self. Red's Dramatic experiment blew up in the lab. A major boxoffice flop. Red was done at Metro by the end of 1952, Schary by 1956. CBS TV beckoned, and Red starred for 20 years. His niteclub act, which I saw four times in Vegas, once in Tahoe, and once at the Venetian Room in SF's Fairmont Hotel; was just about the funniest hour I ever saw anywhere by anyone. The Guzzler's Gin bit was an alltime classic. But this movie is Absolutely Awful! My #8 Worst of 1952.
0 out of 4 people found the following review useful: Ill Advised, 26 October 2005 Author: skallisjr from Tampa, FL United States
I haven't seen this since it first came out, some 52 years ago. I was a teenager, and was expecting a comedy; it wasn't.I recall that the first we see Dodo Delwyn, he's a "receiver" in a comedic routine (the guy who gets a pie in his face), an obvious step down from his glory days in Ziegfeld. Skelton plays the part well, showing resignation under the abuse of the "comedian" who was the star of the routine.Skelton had good dramatic talents, though the story didn't merit them. The idea of a father sacrificing his deep bond with his young son in order to give the boy a better life is always moving, but somehow, it didn't quite jell.It's not Skelton's best film, but perhaps his most unusual.
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