S. Sylvan Simon, directed all three of the Whistling pictures, including Whistling in Brooklyn (1943), and proved to be just what Red Skelton needed. Having come from the circus, vaudeville, and burlesque, Skelton was a seasoned comedy veteran. With eleven films under his belt, he knew the importance of having a director who understood him and the way he worked. He found that in Simon. "To me, Sylvan Simon was the only director I met outside of Frank Borzage that knew anything about comedy. He knew what was funny, and he let you be free and do whatever you wanted to do." Ann Rutherford remembered working on the Whistling series created a unique problem for Simon: He could not control his laughter. At least when Red was at the helm. "Now he would direct a scene...Out of my peripheral vision I would see Sylvan sitting in his canvas chair, tears streaming down his face and a handkerchief wadded in his mouth. Because Red would invariably know what a patsy he had in Sylvan. He would invariably come up with another little bit of business that hadn't been rehearsed before and Sylvan had to be quiet or he'd ruin the take. And thus lose those moments forever. But it was glorious. It was just a wonderful experience. We all had lots of fun."
Skelton enjoyed working with Ann Rutherford, but blamed the studio for ruining her career. "She was a nice lady. The press department sort of killed Ann Rutherford. She was married at the time to David May, the man who had the department store [The May Co.], and during the war when things were very difficult to get, they came out with a story that her house was robbed and they stole 500 pairs of nylon stockings. And believe it or not this killed her. Women couldn't get stockings; she's got 500 pairs of stocking? See...but they wouldn't admit it but basically I think that's what did it."
Whistling in Dixie also featured Guy Kibbee, George Bancroft, Diana Lewis and Rags Ragland, who played twin brothers in the film. Skelton had worked with Ragland before in burlesque. "I was in burlesque with Rags Ragland, and I was with him three weeks in Louisville, Kentucky, the Gehrig Theater there. [...] Rags was a nice man." Ragland would appear in the final Whistling film, Whistling in Brooklyn but his career was cut short when he died of uremic poisoning in 1946; he was just 40 years old.
Ann Rutherford once spoke about the joys of working with Red Skelton, "He is so deliciously off center about a half inch off center. The first movie I made with Red, about the second day, as the day wore on I thought, 'Uh-oh, they're gonna have to call Dr. Feel Good or something.' I thought I was coming down with pneumonia or pleurisy. I had terrible pains in my chest and I went home and I told my mother. I said, 'I think I'm coming down with something. I'm having a hard time breathing.' Well, she arranged for me to see a doctor the next morning and be late to the studio and this doctor said, 'What have you been doing?' And I told him I'd been working with Red Skelton. He said, 'What have you been doing? I mean, have you been trying to blow up the world's supply of balloons? What, have you been stretching yourself?' I said, 'I've just been laughing.' He said, 'You've done it with laughter.' I had pulled muscles in my rib cage on both sides from laughing at Red Skelton...He is a total delight. If he would come into a room and there was a throw rug on the floor he'd say, 'Well, I've got to go down cellar and get something for dinner.' And he'd pick up an end of the throw rug and you could see him descending into no basement at all. His talents were unbelievable. His face was made of rubber and I just loved Red dearly."
The Whistling series were B pictures and not taken seriously by audiences and critics alike. The New York Times was lukewarm about the results of Whistling in Dixie, when it was released on New Years' Eve, 1942, saying, "As the "Fox" of a radio serial murder mystery, Mr. Skelton speaks with a deep, brave voice. But it quickly becomes a frightened falsetto when he finds himself honeymooning in a gloom-shrouded old Southern manse or prowling through the dungeon recesses of an abandoned old Confederate fort occupied by a parrot, a Civil War veteran, secret treasure and a strong premonition of murder. What with rampart passions, political skullduggery and a pair of twins, one a reformed criminal, the other not. Mr. Skelton's capacity for horrified surprise is left pretty limp at the ending. As usual, Mr. Skelton faces his perils with nothing more explosive than a gag and not infrequently they fail to go off as intended. Also his double-takes, lunatic facial contortions and fainting spells do tend to become repetitious after several reels. But with "Rags" Ragland, alumnus of Minsky's [Burlesque] on hand as sparring partner, Whistling in Dixie becomes an intermittently amusing exercise in comic insanity."
Producer: George Haight
Director: S. Sylvan Simon
Screenplay: Nat Perrin; Wilkie Mahoney (additional dialogue); Lawrence Hazard, Jonathan Latimer (uncredited, contributor to screenplay)
Cinematography: Clyde DeVinna
Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons
Music: Lennie Hayton
Film Editing: Frank Sullivan
Cast: Red Skelton (Wally 'The Fox' Benton), Ann Rutherford (Carol Lambert), George Bancroft (Sheriff Claude Stagg), Guy Kibbee (Judge George Lee), Diana Lewis (Ellamae Downs), Peter Whitney (Frank V. Bailie), 'Rags' Ragland (Chester Conway/Sylvester 'Lester' Conway), Celia Travers (Hattie Lee), Lucien Littlefield (Corporal Lucken), Louis Mason (Deputy Lem), Mark Daniels (Martin Gordon), Pierre Watkin (Doctor), Emmett Vogan (Radio Producer), Hobart Cavanaugh (Mr. Panky).
BW-74m. Closed Captioning.
by Lorraine LoBianco
SOURCES:
Interviews with Red Skelton and Ann Rutherford for The MGM Archival Project
The New York Times film review, Whistling in Dixie, Wherein Red Skelton Has Appointment With Murder, Is the Latest Visitor at Loew's Criterion; At Loew's Criterion , December 31, 1942
The Internet Movie Database
The MGM Stock Company by James Robert Parish and Ronald L. Bowers
The Great Movie Comedians by Leonard Maltin Famous Movie Detectives II by Michael R. Pitts
