For today's stroll you can actually ride the bus..and if the driver looks familiar it might be because it's Ralph Kramden!
THE HONEYMOONERS
Last week one of the networks ran a Honeymooners marathon...and I just thought it might be time we paid them a visit!
Climb on board we are heading to Brooklyn!
Let's start with the cast:
Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden
Art Carney as Ed Norton
Audrey Meadows as Alice Kramden (1952-1961)
Joyce Randolph as Trixie Norton (1952-1961)
Pert Kelton as Alice Kramden (1951-1952)
Sue Ann Langdon as Alice Kramden (1962)
Sheila MacRae as Alice Kramden (1966-1973)
Jane Kean as Trixie Norton (1966-1978)
The Honeymooners was really television’s first spin-off. It first appeared in 1951 as a 12 minute sketch on “The Cavalcade of Stars” with Pert Kelton playing Alice. The Honeymooner sketch was immediately popular and Gleason took it on the road in 1952 for live performances. The grueling schedule proved too much for Pert Kelton.
In 1952 CBS bought the show from Dumont and renamed it the “Jackie Gleason Show.” Audrey Meadows took over as Alice and Joyce Randolph came onboard as Trixie. The “Jackie Gleason Show” was an hour long variety show of which the Honeymoners was but a sketch and which also featured the June Taylor Dancers and the Ray Bloch Orchestra. (Gleason would marry June Taylor’s sister Marilyn in 1975.)
The hour format was tiring and so it was decided in 1955 to spin-off the Honeymooners and fill the other half hour with “Stage Show.” These 39 episodes are the only ones in which the show stood on its own. All were filmed twice weekly before a live audience. The ratings weren’t good and CBS dropped the show to return to a new version of the old variety “Jackie Gleason Show” . Then Gleason did “Jackie Gleason and His American Scene Magazine” which ran from 1962-1966.
In 1966 Gleason moved the show to Miami Beach and dropped the “Magazine format.” Art Carney returned as Ed Norton, first in guest appearances and then permanently. Nether Audrey Meadows nor Joyce Randolph wanted to move to Miami so Sue Ann Langdon had the role of Alice. Supposedly she had conflicts with Carney and was replaced by Sheila MacRae with Jane Kean playing Trixie.
Touchingly, Audrey Meadows did return to film the story, “The Adoption,” on 1/8/1966. And Pert Kelton returned in the story “Rififi – Brooklyn Style” on 3/4/1967 as Mrs. Gibson, Alice’s mother!
Ever wonder where the so called “Lost Episodes” came from? Gleason announced the discovery of these live sketches in 1985. Of varied length and taken from the old kinescopes from 1952-1957, they were packaged into half hours.
The Honeymooners just celebrated it's 60th anniversary in September 2015.
One of these days — pow! Right to the history books!
“The Honeymooners,” the beloved sitcom that introduced America to working-class Brooklyn , celebrates its 60th anniversary.
But for the sole surviving Honeymooner — and the show’s dedicated fans — the legendary comedy never grows old.
“Back then, we never knew for a second that we’d last for all these years, that the show would endure,” Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie, told the Daily News. “People loved it at the time, and it just has gone on and on. Here we are, 60 years later, still talking about it.”
The 90-year-old Detroit native was just 18 when she moved to New York City in 1943. Jackie Gleason cast her in “The Honeymooners”.
There is a statue of Ralph Kramden in New York City appropriately at the Port Authority....the most famous bus driver in the world!
To the moon, Mr. Gleason...you took us to the moon.
