User talk:140.185.55.76

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"using Wiki to advertise"...
Tom: No, not an ad. I put the information there, but I have never been to the Amargosa Hotel. I do not know Marta Becket or anyone connected with the Amargosa Hotel in Death Valley Junction. Even the Amargosa makes only a passing reference to the Red Skelton room 22 in its website: http://www.amargosa-opera-house.com/hotel.html
I never knew anything about Red Skelton's secret retreat at room 22 until I saw the unforgettable documentary Amargosa (2000), a film so haunting I've seen it several times. It tells the true story of Marta Becket who left her life as a New York dancer in 1967 to open her Death Valley theater in the abandoned buildings once used by the 20 Mule Team Borax workers familiar from Death Valley Days.
In the ghost town, Becket had no audience -- so she spent years painting the audience on the walls of the theater until finally real people began coming to see her shows. It makes sense that Ray Bradbury would be one of her fans, since her life experiences read like a Bradbury story.
Skelton was probably interested in her pantomimes and other aspects of her shows. At any rate, Marta Becket's circus paintings in tribute to Skelton seemed to me to be very relevant to Skelton's own clown paintings. When I went in search of something on the Internet about Skelton's interest in Becket and the Amargosa Hotel, I was disappointed to find nothing. So when I finally read John Mulvihill's "Lost Highway Hotel", I was elated. I inserted the quote in the Skelton entry to share it as an obscure yet fascinating bit of Skelton lore. Pepso 23:54, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
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