Show Business: Golden Silence

The show as originally written was just another pastiche of obvious jokes, carefully planted “ad libs” and situations more ridiculous than riotous. Then Writer Sherwood Schwartz had a radical notion: drop the dialogue entirely. Comedian Red Skelton, who has hankered for years to work in pantomime, leaped at the idea.

Pantomime, according to the brilliant French mime, Marcel Marceau, is “the art of expressing feelings by attitudes and not a means of expressing words through gestures.” When Skelton this week shut his mouth for half an hour, he demonstrated Marceau’s point better than any of the other U.S. performers—Caesar. Gleason Kovacs—who have tinkered fitfully with the unspoken attitude. Skelton shuffled through the pathetic attempts of Freddie the Freeloader to cadge a Thanksgiving dinner from the Elite Restaurant. His kindness in returning a rich matron’s purse was rewarded with no reward: a policeman rapped a lone apple from his hand; he bungled his temporary job as a dishwasher. But at last a kindly stranger invited him to share his turkey dinner (fastidious Freddie, presented with a finger bowl, carefully daubed his armpits). By the time bird-sick Freddie woke up in the hospital to find a beaming Florence Nightingale holding out a tray of turkey dinner to him. Pantomimist Skelton had put together perhaps the most rewarding half-hour of his TV career.