Avalon Time
How Red Skelton Got His Start
Avalon Time holds a specific place in radio history: it was the first regular comedy show for Red Skelton. When the program launched on NBC's Red Network on October 1, 1938 — under the full title Avalon Variety Time, sponsored by Avalon Cigarettes and built around western music — Skelton wasn't part of it yet. The 1938 lineup was a variety package built around announcer Del King, country singer Red Foley, vocalist Kitty O'Neil, and a group billed as the Neighborhood Boys, with Phil Davis leading the orchestra. Foley's hosting duties marked a small piece of broadcasting history in their own right: with that October premiere, he became the first country artist to host a network radio program, having come up through WLS's National Barn Dance and, in 1937, co-creating the Renfro Valley Barn Dance with producer John Lair for WHAS in Louisville.
Skelton first turned up as a guest in mid-December 1938, while Foley was still the host. The fan response was strong enough that the show was retooled around him in January — Skelton as the featured comic, Foley staying on as the featured singer. The program was broadcast from WLW in Cincinnati, and Skelton and his first wife Edna, who worked on the show as a gag writer under her maiden name Stillwell, traveled in weekly from Chicago to do it. Edna had a methodical system: pick through writers' material, add her own contributions, and file the unused bits away for later. The comedy itself was unusual for what Skelton would become — none of the recurring characters that would later make him famous. Instead, each week's bit revolved around a "famous Skelton ancestor": Christopher Columbus Skelton, King Arthur Skelton, Marco Polo Skelton, Julius Caesar Skelton. The premise was thin and the gags were broad, but it worked well enough that the show shifted to Wednesdays at 8:30 in mid-1939 and started adding talent in the fall — singers Dick Todd and Janette Davis, comic Marlin Hurt, the comedy team of Tommy Mack and Bud Vandover. Curt Massey had stepped in for Foley by July. Bob Strong had taken over orchestra duties from Davis. While Skelton was the star, the program was sometimes billed as Red Skelton Time.
A Note on All the Red Hair
One thing worth pausing on: every host this program ever had was a redhead. Two of them — Foley and Skelton — went by the nickname Red, and the whole thing aired on NBC's Red Network. It's the kind of coincidence that no one would have planned and no one seems to have remarked on at the time, but stacked up in retrospect it's hard to miss.
What Happened After Skelton Left
Skelton's run ended on December 20, 1939 — just under a year after he'd joined. He was leaving to concentrate on his film career; a supporting role in Having Wonderful Time (RKO) in 1938 had caught the attention of a radio advertising agent, and MGM would sign him to a long-term contract in 1940. (His next radio home, The Raleigh Cigarette Program, premiered on NBC in October 1941 with Ozzie Nelson leading the band and Harriet Hilliard handling vocals and skits.)
Cliff Arquette stepped in as the comic star starting January 3, 1940, having made a guest appearance just a week earlier. Arquette was a seasoned hand — he'd made his radio debut in 1924 and had spent the late thirties playing the Old Timer on Fibber McGee and Molly and, beginning in 1936, the original Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve on that same program, plus Thaddeus Cornfelder on Myrt and Marge. With Arquette aboard, the title Red Skelton Time officially reverted to Avalon Time. Don McNeill, already established as the host of NBC Blue's Breakfast Club, took on hosting duties, with Bud Vandover and Dick Todd staying on in support. Arquette would later achieve his greatest fame as the folksy "Charley Weaver" on Jack Paar's Tonight Show and Hollywood Squares, but that was a decade away.
Arquette left in May, and Canadian-born singer Dick Todd briefly took over hosting in the show's final weeks. By then the ratings had collapsed. The last broadcast aired on May 1, 1940. What happened next says something about how closely the program's identity was tied to its roster rather than its format: the cast, orchestra, and Avalon Cigarettes as sponsor all moved together into a revamped version of Show Boat, which continued until April 1941. Avalon Time didn't so much end as dissolve into something else.
The Sponsor
The show is named for its sponsor, and the sponsor is worth a sentence. Avalon was Brown & Williamson's economy cigarette brand, introduced in 1932 and marketed with slogans like "cost you less" and "give you change back" — the budget option in a market dominated by premium brands. Avalon Time was the first radio program Avalon sponsored; a second, the original Show Boat, premiered in 1939 and ran concurrently, which is part of why the cast-and-sponsor migration in May 1940 was such a tidy handoff. Over the run, Sir Walter Raleigh Pipe Tobacco and Bulova Watch Company also took turns as sponsors. The program is occasionally referred to in listings as Avalon Hour.
What It Left Behind
The show ran only about a year and a half in its Skelton-era form, and most of what's remembered about it is Skelton's presence. That's not unfair — his year as the featured comic was the most compelling stretch the program had. For listeners in 1939, it was a chance to hear a comedian who would go on to one of the longest careers in American entertainment, still finding his footing on a variety show built around country music and cigarette sponsorship. Around forty-four episodes are known to circulate, and a certified set of properly identified episodes was released in December 2017, though that collection doesn't capture everything that survives. It's a partial record of a show whose chief importance now is the year it gave Red Skelton to figure out what he was doing.