Sammy Labella- born on June 6, 1929, in Mississippi and raised in Rockford, Illionois was a kid who did not fit in with others. He was a victim of severe bullying for liking to dress up and play make believe. So, with his mother he moved to Hollywood to become a child actor. He was signed on MGM and in films Best Foot Forward with Lucille Ball, and Song of the Open Road with Jane Powell as one of the kid's picking oranges in the fruit trees. On the set of “Forever Amber,” he met friend Cornel Wilde.
Sammy left Hollywood for New York to work in the follies with his aunt during the last days of vaudeville. His act was a song and dance routine where he was known as “the singing newsboy.” It was lighthearted feature where he dressed up in a rumpled turtleneck, dirty tennis shoes, tilted baseball cap, a grin, and a stack full of newspapers draped over his shoulders.
Then Sammy began to work in clubs and strip joints as a stand-up comic. Skip was an emcee for many gigs across the US - Kansas City, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Buffalo. He would tell risqué jokes and do silly routines. He got locked up in a freezer at a gig, then one time he smoked pot and suffered so badly from hallucinations that he checked into a mental hospital. He became friends with James Dean who he had many fun times with and Dick Roman who gave him his stage name Skip E. Lowe.
Skip traveled from the U.S. across Europe- mainly France and Germany. He was on the bill with best friend Marge Mcglory a singer and impressionist, and the late Josephine Baker. One night all of them in the car together Josephine leaned over to the driver and said, “slow down, I have 12 beautiful, adopted children, and I’d like to see them again.”
In Germany, Skip became so frustrated when he saw there before him were judges who would be taking points on his comedy that he jumped down and broke their pencils saying, "the action's off." Skip lived in Paris for many years and while in Germany he met his love, Wolfgang, a rambunctious model. Skip went to Vietnam afterwords and performed for the troops in special service shows in places such as the front lines of Danang, and Bancroft. In his shows, often on the bill with Margee Mcglory, Skip would do a skit-comedy act and sing his best song, which was “Danny Boy.” The soldiers always loved and demanded his show. Skip said a lot of our soldiers died from being stoned out of their mind. He worked often with Mamie Van Doren, Martha Raye, and opened for the Everly Brothers. Skip suffered a lot of traumas in Vietnam and towards the end of the war had to get away and went to Hong Kong & Australia.
When Skip finally came home after traveling much of the world, Hollywood had changed. No longer a technicolor dream world, but filled with guns, sex, and violence. He had a minor role (his best role) in Black Shampoo, the black version of Shampoo. Skip played a flamboyant hairdresser who makes wispy remarks but takes care of his friends. In one scene his character Archie screeches while being picked up by a man in a gang and dropped on the floor and it's ridiculously funny. Skip left the movies eventually and began to do his own showcases after that. He got interested in public access when he met an agent and created his own talk show, Skip E. Lowe Looks at Hollywood. The longest-running cable show on tv where he dished with the stars of Hollywood. His guests included the likes of Shelley Winters, Mamie Van Doren, Eartha Kitt, Janet Leigh, Susan Strausburg, Tony Curtis, and Cornel Wilde.
His show focused on tight closeups. Skip like a kid would often jump about the topic, interrupt his guest, forget their name, or make silly faces. But he never tried to trip up his guest, he treated them with the upmost respect. He went with the flow of things. Many of the stars he interviewed were those among the footnotes of film history, but Skip was there to conduct at least one interview with them, and he did it well.
Skip died on September 22, 2014. He lived to be 85.
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