July 10, 1957
Los Angeles
Let's suppose you are a famous comedian with a hit TV show. Fame and
wealth are yours--more than you could have ever imagined. You are
recognized wherever you go.
Now
let's suppose that the doctors at UCLA say your 9-year-old son,
Richard, has less than a year to live because of incurable leukemia.
Maybe only five months. All that wealth and fame can't bring him even
one more day.
You don't know how to explain such things to a
9-year-old, so you haven't told him. Right now, the leukemia is in
remission. He has no idea he has such a brief time to live.
But
when he sees "The Last Days of Pompeii" on TV and thinks it looks
interesting, that's all you need to book a trip for you, your wife,
your son and your 10-year-old daughter to Pompeii. There's no way to
pack a lifetime's worth of experiences into a year, but you can try, so
you add stops in Copenhagen, Switzerland, Rome, Barcelona, Paris,
London and Dublin, Ireland.
Although you're not Catholic, you
meet Pope Pius XII, who read about your trip in the newspapers and
granted a request for a private audience. Pius tells your son: "Life is
eternal because of God. So if life is taken away from one person in a
family they are never separated because the family will always live
together in eternal life with God."
Of course, the reporters follow you everywhere. In Paris, they ask
your son what he wants to see first. The Eiffel Tower, he says.
And what next? "What else is there?" he asks.
At the Louvre, where your family upstages the artwork, Richard asks
why the "Mona Lisa" was smiling. "Because everybody is looking at her,"
is the answer.
But in London, you are not received so
favorably. Some of the British papers see the trip as nothing more than
a ghastly publicity stunt by a gauche Hollywood TV star exploiting his son's illness. One paper lectures you to go back to America. Another
calls a session with reporters: "a nauseating jamboree." Columnist
Simon Ward of the Daily Sketch says: "I was horrified and revolted at
the spectacle of this poor little boy being put under the spotlight."
According
to the Daily Sketch's description of a news conference, your son: "sat
there white-faced and near to tears while the crowd milled around him
in the smoke-filled room"
It was only then that your son, Richard, finds out he is dying. He
remarks: "Everybody says I'm going to die but that means everybody but
me."
You attack the local press and defend yourself on British TV: "I do
not believe my son is going to die. I believe in God. I believe in the
medical profession. I believe that an answer will be found."
Back
in Los Angeles, a British envoy does his best to defend the British
press, saying: "I don't think there's a person in Britain who doesn't
wish only the best for Mr. Skelton and his son."
In August 1957,
you visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal, saying: "God
alone can save my boy's life as science has done all it can."
Around
New Year's 1958, you are hospitalized for what the papers call an
asthma attack. A few months later, Brentwood Country Club honors you
as the Man of the Year at the United Jewish Welfare Fund banquet.
And
then of all the prayers for your son, there was a final one for Richard
Freeman Skelton, who died May 10, 1958, a little more than a week
before his 10th birthday. You asked him if he wanted a big birthday
party and he said no, just a few friends. So you brought a Sears
catalogue to the hospital so Richard could pick whatever he wanted. He selected a
tent and camping equipment--and a surprise gift for Mother's Day.
As he lay there dying, with an IV in his leg because all the other veins
were collapsed from transfusions, he asked: "Daddy, will you get Mama
that red blanket for Mother's Day? I don't suppose they'd let me out of
here with this cut on my leg."
An hour later, Richard said: "I can't see. Everything is fuzzy." And he
was gone. You and your wife, Georgia, sat with him for half an hour,
weeping. "I had to sit there and cry," Georgia said. "Richard wouldn't
let me cry before. He always chided me if I came into see him with my
eyes red."
Then you and your wife came home to tell the news to your daughter,
Valentina. You went into Richard's bedroom, decorated with his toys,
his favorite camera and the stuffed dog he slept with at night.
Next to Richard's bed was a small suitcase he had packed with
underwear, socks and a toothbrush in case the family went on another
trip. "He said, 'Mama, you never know when we'll be leaving on a trip.
It's best to be ready.' "
Georgia started to turn off the lights and stopped. "No, I can't turn
off that light. I don't want it dark in here, not tonight."
Richard was laid in his casket with a cross he'd requested from the
pope, his other last wish, in a lavish funeral at Church of the
Recessional at Forest Lawn.
Before a crowd of mourners that included Vincent Price, David Rose, Johnny Weismuller and even mobster Mickey Cohen, actor William Lundigan read a eulogy by Gene Fowler, whom Richard nicknamed "Grandpa Wrinklepants."
"We
now stand at the gate of mystery and great sorrow, a place beyond which
we of the living world cannot go with little Richard.
"This is the end of his brief journey
on earth. This is the end of the glad hours we have spent with this
bright and shining child.
"We shall say but a few words of
farewell to the red-haired boy whose golden years touched so many of us
like some heaven-sent miracle.
"What words of ours, grown up though
we may be, or wise as we mistakenly think we are, can define the
miracle? What praise can awake the sleeping child? Or explain the
meaning of God's will?
"Through the cruel months of his
illness he did not complain.... Always a most courageous little
gentleman. A president and a pope were his friends.... and hundreds of
thousands of men, women and children" who had never known him.
"Now he belongs to God. Farewell then, little fellow, and thanks for your short visit with us here on Earth."
A Red Skelton clip from 1952.
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Larry Harnisch. The leading Black Dahlia expert and a collaborator in the 1947project, Harnisch has been a copy editor at The Times since 1988. He has appeared on many TV shows discussing the Dahlia case, notably "James Ellroy's Feast of Death."
Join him for a spin through old Los Angeles in the Mirror's radio car. Keep your eyes open for Mickey Cohen and Tempest Storm. It's quite a ride.
The reporter's badge belonged to Sid Hughes (1908-1958), legendary reporter who worked at nearly every newspaper in Los Angeles.