Few Went as Low…as Skip E. Lowe

Someone who watches vintage celebrity interviews as often as I do was bound to discover Skip E. Lowe (Sammy Labella, 1929-2014) sooner or later. I’d heard of him long before I ever saw him. The source was of course Martin Short, who has mentioned him as one of the inspirations for his character Jiminy Glick. Then one day, I stumbled on a public access interview clip, in which the host was making the most egregious factual errors (a veritable bliss-cloud of ignorance about the career of the person he was talking to), while AT THE SAME TIME saying the most horrible things about them to their face. And a light dawned — this has to be the guy! The voice and physicality are very different from Short’s character, but that glaring lack of concern about either truth or somebody else’s feelings, that all lined up perfectly. The real guy was nearly as (unintentionally) hilarious as Glick is.

Lowe’s public access show launched in 1978, and was best known to Angelinos, for L.A. is where he taped most of his shows. New Yorkers will get a clearer idea if they picture a kind of cross between Joe Franklin and Bill Boggs. A strange local character who is obsessed with show business but then reveals a layer of hostility beneath, by going for the jugular vein with evil gossip. He asked questions like, “That movie didn’t do very well, did it?” or “Tell me about your horrible drinking problem” or “Do you still hit your wife?” I mean, these aren’t literal quotes, I just made them up, but his actual interview questions could sometimes be roughly as brutal as that. One can’t help psychoanalyzing: was he jealous? After all, his own run at stardom was not a meteoric success story.

Born in Greenville, Mississippi, Lowe spent part of his childhood in Rockford, Illinois, and part with an aunt in New York, where he performed as The Singing Newsboy in Sammy’s Bowery Follies. While still a youngster, he toured with the U.S.O. and had small roles in a handful of Hollywood films: Best Foot Forward (1943) with Lucille Ball, Song of the Open Road(1944), Hotel Berlin (1945) with Faye Emerson, and Forever Amber (1947) with Linda Darnell and Cornel Wilde. In the 1950s and ’60s, he performed as a comedian and emcee in night clubs, resorts, and cabarets.

By the mid ’70s, Lowe was in Hollywood, taking bit parts mostly in exploitation films. These included Crazy Mama (1975), Black Shampoo (1976), Ilsa: Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976), Bitter Knuckles (1977), The World’s Greatest Lover (1977), and Bitter Heritage (1979). By then he had discovered the glories of public access: no money but plenty of opportunity to develop an audience. He conducted over 6,000 interviews over the decades, ranging from American entertainment’s biggest stars…to up-and-comers grateful for even a public access level of publicity.

After about a decade of building local fame, Lowe began to get film roles again, mostly in exploitation films scarcely less distinguished than the ones he had appeared in back in the ’70s. In many of these, he essentially played himself (i.e. a tv personality). In the end, he was an institution of a kind. He taped his final interview just weeks before expiring at age 85.

For more on show biz history,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.