Here's an old episode of The Red Skelton Show with guest star Harpo Marx. This aired September 25, 1962 and there's a brief cameo at the end by Jack Benny.
Here's an interesting sidelight to this episode. Red went on TV in 1951 on NBC and switched to CBS in 1953. For most of that time, it was a half-hour show. They tried occasionally to expand it to an hour but it didn't work at that length so it reverted to 30 minutes.
In 1960, Skelton purchased the old Chaplin Studio in Hollywood, reportedly just because he wanted to feel a closeness of some sort with Charlie Chaplin. It was a bad investment and soon, Red was losing money at a ridiculous pace. About the only show that was produced there was his own…and CBS kept pressing him to not do that. At the Chaplin Studio, it had to be done on film and CBS preferred its variety shows on tape.
Despite being done on film, Skelton's weekly half-hour remained strong in the ratings. In 1962, his contract was up for renewal and Skelton insisted, as a condition of signing a new deal, that CBS buy the studio off him. CBS grudgingly agreed on the condition that Skelton move to CBS Television City, where the show could be done on tape, and that they try making it an hour again. This was the first of the new hour episodes and it stayed that way until it was cancelled in 1970. (NBC picked it up as a half-hour for one more season. CBS got their money back for the Chaplin Studio by filming Perry Mason there…and then when Perry Mason ran its course, they sold the place to Herb Alpert's record company. It's now the Jim Henson Studio.)
Anyway, here's the first show Skelton did when he went back to an hour. One new addition, which you'll see here, was to do a wordless sketch each week called "The Silent Spot." Harpo was, of course, the perfect guest to be in "The Silent Spot." A few years later when I went to a Skelton taping, I saw an even more appropriate guest — a "Silent Spot" with Skelton and Marcel Marceau.
