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Snapshot by Valerie Yaros Click here for more photos Comedian Red Skelton onstage at the Los Angeles Breakfast Club, 3201 Los Feliz Blvd., at the 2nd Annual AFRA Frolics held by the Los Angeles Local of the American Federation of Radio Artists on June 26, 1950. SKELTON HITS THE STAGE T his is not the Face on the Barroom Floor nor is it breakdancing: It's 36-year-old funnyman Red Skelton taking a pratfall to entertain party guests at the 2nd Annual AFRA Frolics of the American Federation of Radio Artists. Skelton, who had his own hit Sunday night radio program at the time, had already spent a busy month doing live comedy. He'd performed for a home show at the Pan-Pacific Auditorium, as well as a Shriner's convention at the Los Angeles Coliseum, where his overexertions resulted in an ambulance trip to the hospital. he purpose of the AFRA Frolics, as stated on the event's promotional flyer, was to raise funds to help send "from three to five additional delegates to the AFRA convention. Any surplus above the amount necessary is to be put into our local Welfare Fund." Red Skelton's Frolics performance of June 26, 1950, took place at a tense time in history, however. hat month, the publication Red Channels: he Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television came out and, the day before the Frolics, communist North Korean forces invaded South Korea, sparking the Korean War. he previous month, Julius Rosenberg had been arrested on espionage charges for giving the secrets of the atomic 76 SAG-AFTRA | Winter 2013 | SAGAFTRA.org bomb to the Soviet Union. In another dramatic contrast with the lighthearted Frolics, the 1950 AFRA convention, which was held Aug. 10-13 in Chicago, had serious business to discuss, including jurisdictional disputes and communism. AFRA's former executive secretary, George Heller, reported on the jurisdictional dispute over film television between Screen Actors Guild and the Television Authority, of which Heller was the new national executive secretary (in 1952, aſter a series of NLRB elections won by Screen Actors Guild, AFRA and Television Authority merged, creating AFTRA). AFRA convention delegates also passed an Anti-Communist/ Anti-Totalitarianism Resolution and authorized the board to find a way to bar or expel communist members from the union. Red Skelton (1913-1997) received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1987. he Red Skelton Show was one of the most popular programs on television for 20 years, 1951-1971. his AFRA Frolics photograph is from a scrapbook commemorating the event, donated to AFRA's then- Western Regional Director Claude McCue, and resides in the SAG-AFTRA archives. "Carroll Wax," the name on the speakers, was a bandleader and not a household product!