Episode:  Deadeye and the Magician
Original Air Date:  1960/10/18
Guest Stars:  Vincent Price, Marie Windsor

Wow, Vincent Price looking, well, middle-aged.

Red retells a joke that he told last week because people wrote in and were confused. So he retold it the same way. Alien lands in Beverly Hills and goes, “You’ve got change for a ‘herne’?”

Political humor again, just before the 1960 election. Red’s daughter was mad after the famous 1960 debate.

“‘Who you mad at? Nixon? Kennedy?’ She says, ‘Both of them. I missed, “Huckleberry Hound.’”

“You’ve got change for a ‘herne’?” - Running Joke time…

Pantomime of a little old man having a testimonial dinner. The storyteller is keeping Red on the edge of his seat.

Dancers having a fight in a saloon. That glass bottle trick never seems to get old.

Deadeye and the Magician Act I

At Cactus Kate’s Saloons. The lady dancers are still dancing. There’s Cactus Kate (Windsor). She introduces Maxwell the Magician (Price). Deadeye stops the show, coming in wearing a saddle.

“Sorry I was late, it was my horse’s day to ride. Rather embarrassing, too. He was riding side-saddle.”

Deadeye is getting hypnotized. He’s crazy. There he goes. NIIICE, lol. Vincent Price doesn’t break character.

The magician pulls out a wallet and goes to pay Deadeye the $5.

“Do you have change for a ‘herne’?”

Deadeye brings in the magician. Deputy uses gunpoint.

They take the magician to jail. The magician uses magic to open the bars to let himself in. Then gets Deadeye to hypnotize himself…here comes the melee.

 
Deadeye and the Magician Act II

Deadeye brings the rest of the loot in town. “Here’s the rest of the ‘herne.’”

Here comes the Marshall, there goes the magician out the window. Sound effects are slow on the take. J

Red’s taking a minute to get the sheriff’s to crack-up. Nice. Good impromptu. Whoa, Deadeye has picked up a trick or two. He can open the bars with magic.

The magician is heading the hanging party. Deadeye comes in wearing the magician’s cloak and goes to pull something out of the cloak but a prop fell on the floor. Nice catch.

More running jokes.

Final thoughts on Deadeye and the Magician

These are the kind of humorous shokes I like the most. The ones where everything under the sun gets tied in together. The jokes went running on this episode. He works really well with Vincent Price. I love how that even though the prop fell out of the magician’s cloak, Vincent Price never broke character when Red lost it.

“Do you have change for a ‘herne’?”

Episode:  Appleby’s Bearded Boarder
Original Air Date: 1962/03/06
Guest Stars: John Carradine, Marie Windsor

Show theme:  fake Indian Shieks - (maybe the Beatles should have seen this episode) - and their power of concentrations on things like dieting…

The monologue is diet themed. Hard to quote a pantomime, but it was fun watching him making fun of the diet scene at West Palm Beach.

The cast is singing about ’signs, signs, everywhere signs’ (but not that song). It’s this kind of choreography that makes me wonder if Danny Kaye ever guest starred on the Red Skelton Show and if he did, then whether or not he danced with the cast. That’d be worth the price of admission.

Ahh…song leads into the skit with the “Room for Rent” sign. And Appleby’s Bearded Boarder begins…

Red runs through the laundry list of items he picked up at the store for his wife and became dumbfounded at the cue card, “Cooking Vodka?” as if it was supposed to be cooking, “Sherry.” I don’t think Red had the heart to make an alcoholic joke out of the line.

“Now gimmie the rest of your paycheck.”

“Well how you have it? Heads or tails?”

Marie Windsor doesn’t break character despite Red’s attempts to crack her up. She plays a great bitter wife. She just rolls her eyes at him as she stays in character about how they need more income. Perfect domestic housewife stereotype (my apologies).

Her practicality has her decide that they should rent out the back bedroom. Red still can’t crack her. She’s good.

After the commercial break the scene cuts to the couple in the bed room.

“Ohh, I’m kinda sorry we’re shooting this show. The rehearsals were so much better.” - and with that Red line, he finally got Marie to crack. She was a tough nut to crack. There must be an inside joke I’m not privileged to.

Now he has fun with the censors, “This is what is known as the CBS honor system. Of course with that big Eye lookin’ at you, what can you do?”

“Oh, well. On to the funny stuff…”

Once the scene starts you see that the shot was zoomed in way to close for the snoring gags.

Persistent door ringer at 3am.

“Time is a fraud perpetrated on the human race by the manufacturers of wrist watches,” Yeah, George and the boarder will get along in that ying & sardine sort of way.

‘Towelhead’ jokes aplenty. Phrases you couldn’t say in today’s world.

“I couldn’t let him see me like this.”
“Well, I wish you would show me the same courtesy.” - wife and husband banter aplenty.

The boarder, of course, hasn’t paid and needs sundries every 5 minutes. Now he’s making phone calls to Calcutta.

The boarder has got the wife doing workouts. ‘Old hindu exercises.’

“That’s the first time I’ve seen him go out of character,” Red says of Carradine as Carradine struggles to get up from the exercise.

Now the wife is quoting the boarder.

Now, after a hard day’s work, his dinner consists of a lima bean.

Uh, oh, the boarder is a con man and is on the front page of the paper.

Nice, the producers start the end music and cut the scene short. The downside of waiting for the laugh. That steak must have been tough.

Red uses the con man’s getup and gets his dream…the episode was shot on the 50th Anniversary of the Girl Scouts.

Final Thoughts on Appleby’s Bearded Boarder:

Enjoyable. It wasn’t as aggressive as some of the other episodes I’ve seen. But in the same breath, I don’t know if they could use the them in today’s world. Not as many zingers either. And the sharp zingers are not PC by today’s times. But I enjoyed it.