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The Jackie Gleason Show is the name of a series of popular American network television shows that starred Jackie Gleason, which ran from 1952 to 1970. Cavalcade of Stars Gleason’s first variety series was aired on the DuMont Television Network under the title Cavalcade of Stars. The show’s first host was Jack Carter, who was followed by Jerry Lester. After Lester quit the show in June 1950 (soon to become the star of NBC’s first late-night series, Broadway Open House), Gleason—who had made his mark on the first television incarnation of The Life of Riley sitcom—stepped into Cavalcade on July 15, 1950, and became an immediate sensation.
The show was broadcast live, in front of a theater audience, and offered the same kind of vaudevillian entertainment common to early-TV revues. Jackie’s guests included New York-based performers of stage and screen, including Bert Wheeler, Smith and Dale, and Vivian Blaine. Production values were decent but not spectacular, owing to DuMont’s humble facilities and a thrifty sponsor (Quality Drugs, representing most of the nation’s neighborhood drug stores).In 1952, CBS president William S. Paley offered Gleason a much higher salary, with which DuMont could not compete. The series was retitled The Jackie Gleason Show and premiered on CBS on September 20, 1952. While much of DuMont’s programming archive was later destroyed after they ceased broadcasting a surprising number of Cavalcade of Stars episodes survive, including several episodes at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. At least 14 of the Jackie Gleason episodes survive at the Paley Center for Media, though the exact number of surviving episodes is unclear. Format
The show typically opened with a monologue from Gleason, followed by sketch comedy involving Gleason and a number of regular performers (including Art Carney) and a musical interlude featuring the June Taylor Dancers. (Taylor was Gleason’s sister-in-law; he married her sister Marilyn in 1975.)Gleason portrayed a number of recurring characters, including: supercilious, mustachioed “playboy” millionaire Reginald Van Gleason III friendly Joe the Bartender loudmouthed braggart Charlie Bratte mild-mannered Fenwick Babbitt
bombastic Rudy the Repairman a put-upon character known only as the Poor Soul, whom Gleason always performed in pantomime.
Gleason also occasionally portrayed Stanley R. Sogg, a late-night movie pitchman for Mother Fletcher’s products (“No-Cal Chicken Fat”), similar to the later Art Fern character played by Johnny Carson in his “Tea Time Movie” skits on The Tonight Show.
The Honeymooners By far the most memorable and popular of Gleason’s characters was blowhard Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden, featured originally in a series of Cavalcade skits known as “The Honeymooners”, with Pert Kelton as his wife Alice, and Art Carney as his upstairs neighbor Ed Norton. These were so popular that in 1955 Gleason suspended the variety format and filmed The Honeymooners as a regular half-hour sitcom (television’s first spin-off), co-starring Carney, Audrey Meadows (who had replaced the blacklisted Kelton after the earlier move to CBS), and Joyce Randolph. Finishing 19th in the ratings, these 39 episodes were subsequently rerun constantly in syndication, often five nights a week, with the cycle repeating every two months for decades. They are probably the most familiar body of work from 1950s television with the possible exception of episodes from I Love Lucy starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. The show’s original variety format and title returned in September 1956 and continued until June 1957. Then, in October 1958, Gleason debuted a half-hour version of The Jackie Gleason Show, with Buddy Hackett as a sidekick, but it was short-lived, cancelled in January 1959. In 1961, Gleason began an ill-fated stint as host of a game show called You’re in the Picture. which lasted only one episode, and was so bad that it led to Gleason offering an on-air apology to his viewers the following week. Committed to filling a quota of episodes, Gleason renamed the series The Jackie Gleason Show and turned it into a short-lived talk show, featuring one-on-one informal interviews with Art Carney, Jayne Mansfield, Bobby Darin, and other friends and celebrities
In 1962, Gleason returned to the tried-and-true variety format with his American Scene Magazine. (The official title of the show was, again, The Jackie Gleason Show.) In its first year, Gleason’s ratings killed the competition: a revived comedy-western-variety program, The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show, on ABC and the legal drama Sam Benedict with Edmond O’Brien on NBC.
American Scene was initially taped in New York City; after two seasons, production moved to Miami Beach (1964), on Jackie’s insistence. (This caused some difficulties for Olson, who had several other announcing jobs, including The Match Game, in New York, and Olson commuted frequently back and forth from New York and Miami to do both jobs.) Each week, Gleason would begin his monologue and be surprised by the flamboyant jackets worn by bandleader Sammy Spear. (Beholding Spear’s animal-print blazer, Gleason quipped, “I’ve heard of Tiger Rag, but this is ridiculous!”) Ralph Kramden, Reggie Van Gleason, the Poor Soul, and the rest of Gleason’s comic characters were regular attractions. Frank Fontaine, as bug-eyed, grinning “Crazy” Guggenheim, starred in the Joe the Bartender skits, delighting fans with his nutty speaking voice and goofy laugh, and charmed by his surprisingly mellow singing voice. June Taylor’s chorus girl routines revived for the TV generation the aerial pattern kaleidoscope formations made famous on film by Busby Berkeley.In the fall of 1966, the title once again became simply The Jackie Gleason Show (dropping the American Scene format), and would remain so until its cancellation in 1970. By this point the episodes included well-known guest stars and skits. A component during this period was the musical Honeymooners episodes, which had first been tried on Gleason’s variety show during the 1956-57 season. These were later collected as The Color Honeymooners, with Sheila MacRae and Jane Kean as Alice and Trixie. The regular cast included old sidekick Art Carney; Milton Berle was a frequent guest star. The show was taped at the Miami Beach Auditorium (today called the Jackie Gleason Theatre of the Performing Arts), and Gleason (along with the show’s announcer, Johnny Olson) never tired of promoting the “sun and fun capital of the world” on camera. Hordes of vacationers took Gleason’s advice, boosting Florida’s economy. Later specials were taped at the Olympia Theatre’s Gusman Center across Biscayne Bay, in downtown Miami). The shows began with the television camera in front of a boat speeding toward the shore of Miami Beach, and ended with Gleason bellowing, “Miami Beach audiences are the greatest audiences in the world! G’night, everybody!”–a line often used by Gleason imitators, along with his curtain-call introductions, in particular “Jane Kean!”At the end of the 1968-1969 season, The Jackie Gleason Show still garnered decent ratings, ranking at #25 in the Nielsens, and CBS renewed it for an eighth season. The following year would bring a radical change to the series. In the spring and summer of 1969, Gleason went on a very stringent diet and lost an enormous anount of weight. When the show returned in September 1969, there was much publicity about Gleason’s new slimmer look. In order to gracefully incorporate Gleason’s weight loss into the show, especially in the Honeymooners episodes, it was explained that Ralph Kramden also had gone on a diet and lost weight. However, the ratings began to slip. Coupled with the fact that CBS was concerned with demographics and wanted to change its image with more urban-oriented shows (to attract younger audiences), the network not only canceled Gleason’s series in the spring of 1970, but it also axed such stalwarts as The Red Skelton Hour and Petticoat Junction. Beginning in late December, 1970, CBS began airing selected reruns of The Jackie Gleason Show (featuring only the color Honeymooners episodes) in prime time on Sunday nights at 10:00 P.M. (EST), thereby replacing the short-lived Tim Conway Comedy Hour.Jackie Gleason (February 26, 1916 – June 24, 1987) was an American comedian, actor and musician. He was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy style, especially by his character Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, a situation-comedy television series. His most noted film roles were as Minnesota Fats in the drama film The Hustler (1961) starring Paul Newman, and as Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit movie series.Gleason was born at 364 Chauncey Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New YorkHe grew up nearby at 328 Chauncey Street, an address that he later used as the address for Ralph and Alice Kramden on his show The Honeymooners. Originally named Herbert Walton Gleason, Jr., he was baptized as John Herbert Gleason. His parents, both from Farranree, Cork, Ireland, were Mae (Maisie) (née) Murphy, a subway change-booth attendant, and Herb Gleason, an insurance auditor. Gleason was one of their two children. Gleason’s brother, Clemence, died of spinal meningitis at age 14, and his father abandoned the family He remembered his father as having “beautiful handwriting”, as Herbert Gleason often worked at the family’s kitchen table writing policies in the evenings. The night before his disappearance, Gleason’s father disposed of any family photos he was pictured in; just after noon on December 15, 1925, Herbert Gleason collected his hat, coat and paycheck, leaving the insurance company and his family for good. When it was evident he was not coming back, Mae went to work taking change for the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT). After his father left, young Gleason started hanging around on the streets with a local gang and hustling pool He attended elementary school at P.S. 73 in Brooklyn. He attended but did not graduate from John Adams High School in Queens and Bushwick High School in Brooklyn. Gleason was raised by his mother, who died when he was 19. Gleason became interested in performing after being part of a class play; when he left school he got a job as an MC of a theater. The job paid $4 per night. Other jobs of his included working in a pool hall, stunt diver, and carnival barker. Gleason and his friends made the rounds of the local theaters; he put an act together with one of his friends and the pair performed for Amateur Night at the Halsey Theater, where Gleason replaced his friend, Sammy Birch, as the master of ceremonies. He was also offered the same work two nights a week at the Folly Theater
When his mother died in 1935, young Gleason had nowhere to go and less than 40 cents to his name. The family of his first girlfriend, Julie Dennehy, offered to take him in but Gleason was headstrong and insisted he was going into the heart of the city. His friend, Sammy Birch, made room for him in the hotel room he shared with another comedian. Birch also told him of a one week job in Reading, Pennsylvania that would pay $19; it was more money than Gleason could imagine. The booker advanced him bus fare for the trip against his salary; this was Gleason’s first job as a professional comedian. He had regular work in a variety of small clubs after that.
CareerGleason worked his way up to a job at New York’s Club 18, where insulting its patrons was the order of the day. Skater Sonja Henie was greeted by Gleason’s handing her an ice cube and saying, “Okay, now do something.” It was here where Jack Warner first saw Gleason, signing him to a film contract for $250 per weekBy age 24, Gleason was appearing in movies, first at Warner Brothers as Jackie C. Gleason in such films as Navy Blues (1941) with Ann Sheridan and Martha Raye and All Through the Night (1941) with Humphrey Bogart; then at Columbia Pictures for the B military comedy Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1942); and finally, at Twentieth Century-Fox, where Gleason played the Glenn Miller band’s bassist in Orchestra Wives (1942). Gleason also had a small part as the soda shop clerk in Larceny, Inc. (1942) with Edward G. Robinson, and a modest part as “Commissioner” in the 1942 Betty Grable/Harry James musical, Springtime in the Rockies.Gleason, however, did not make a strong impression in Hollywood at first. At the same time, he developed a nightclub act that included both comedy and music. He also became somewhat known for hosting all-night parties at his hotel suite; the hotel soundproofed his suite out of consideration for its other guests. “Anyone who knew Jackie Gleason in the 1940s,” wrote CBS historian Robert Metz, “would tell you The Fat Man would never make it. His pals at Lindy’s watched him spend money as fast as he soaked up the booze.” Gleason’s first recognition as a significant entertainer finally came on Broadway, when he appeared in the hit musical Follow the Girls (1944).While working in films in California, Gleason also spent some time working at former boxer Maxie Rosenbloom’s nightclub called Slapsy Maxie’s on Wilshire. Entering televisionGleason’s big break arrived in 1949, when he landed the role of blunt but softhearted aircraft worker Chester A. Riley for the first television version of the radio hit The Life of Riley. (William Bendix originated the role on radio, but was unable to take the television role at first because of film commitments.) The show received modest ratings but positive reviews; however, Gleason left the show after the first year, with Bendix now able to assume the role on television. The Life of Riley became a television hit in the early 1950s By that time, however, Gleason was long gone from the show, and his nightclub act had begun receiving attention from New York City’s inner circle and the small DuMont Television Network. Gleason was working at Slapsy Maxie’s when the offer was madeGleason was hired to host DuMont’s Cavalcade of Stars variety hour in 1950. The program initially had rotating hosts; the offer first made to Gleason was for two weeks at $750 per week. When Gleason said he did not consider that worth traveling to New York by train for, the offer was extended to four weeks. Gleason then boarded the train back to New York He framed the show with splashy dance numbers, developed sketch characters he would refine over the next decade, and became enough of a presence that CBS wooed and won him over to its network in 1952.Renamed The Jackie Gleason Show, it became the country’s second-highest-rated television show during the 1954–1955 season. Gleason amplified the show with even splashier opening dance numbers, inspired by Busby Berkeley screen dance routines and featuring the precision-choreographed June Taylor Dancers. Following the dance performance, he would do an opening monologue. Then, accompanied by “a little travelin’ music” (“That’s a Plenty”, a Dixieland classic from 1914), he would shuffle toward the wing, clapping his hands inversely and hollering, “And awaaay we go!” The phrase became one of his trademarks along with “How Sweet It Is!”, used in reaction to almost anything at all Theona Bryant, a former Powers Model, became Gleason’s “And awaaay we go,” girl logo. Ray Bloch was Gleason’s first music director, followed by Sammy Spear, who stayed with Gleason through the 1960s; Gleason often kidded both men during his opening monologues. Gleason continued developing comic characters, including the following:Reginald Van Gleason III, the top-hatted millionaire with a taste for both the good life and the wild invention or fantasy. Boisterous, boorish Rudy the Repairman. Gregarious Joe the Bartender, with friendly words for the never-seen Mr. Dennehy, who always entered his bar first. The Poor Soul, a silent character who could and often did come to grief in the least-expected places or show sweet gratitude at things no more complicated than being allowed to share a newspaper on a subway. Rum Dum, a character with a brush-like mustache who often stumbled around as if he were drunk and confused. Fenwick Babbitt, a friendly but addle-headed young man usually depicted working (and invariably failing) at various jobs. Charlie Bratton, a loudmouth who frequently picked on the mild-mannered Clem Finch (portrayed by Art Carney).
The Bachelor, a silent character (accompanied by the song “Somebody Loves Me”) doing everyday things in an unusually lazy or makeshift way. In a 1985 interview, Gleason related the connection of some of his characters to his youth in Brooklyn. The Mr. Dennehy that Joe the Bartender greets is a tribute to Gleason’s first love, Julie Dennehy. The character of The Poor Soul was drawn from an assistant manager of an outdoor theater he frequented. By far, Gleason’s most popular character was the blustery bus driver Ralph Kramden. Largely drawn from Gleason’s harsh Brooklyn childhood, these sketches became known as The Honeymooners and customarily centered on Ralph’s incessant get-rich-quick schemes, the tensions between his ambitiousness and his friend Norton’s scatterbrained aid and comfort, and the inevitable clash when his sensible wife Alice tried pulling her husband’s head back down from the clouds. The show also became the birthplace of notable comments invented by Gleason such as “one of these days Alice, pow, right in the kisser”. The Honeymooners came about when Gleason was trying to write a sketch with his show’s writers. Gleason told them he had an idea he had always wanted to work out: a skit with a smart, quiet wife and her very vocal husband. He went on to describe that the couple did have their fights but underneath it all, they both loved each other. Titles for the sketch were tossed around until someone came up with The Honeymooners. The Honeymooners first appeared on Cavalcade of Stars on October 5, 1951, with Carney as Norton and the character actress Pert Kelton as Alice. Darker and fiercer than they later became with Audrey Meadows as Alice, the sketches proved popular with critics and viewers. As Kramden, Gleason played a frustrated bus driver with a battle-ax wife in harrowingly realistic arguments; when Meadows (who was 15 years younger than Kelton) took over the role after Kelton was blacklisted, the tone softened considerably. In fact, early sketches come as something of a shock to some modern critics.When Gleason moved to CBS, Kelton was not part of the move, since her name had turned up in Red Channels, the book that listed and described reputed Communists and/or Communist sympathizers in television and radio. Gleason reluctantly let her leave the cast, with a cover story for the media that she had “heart trouble”. He also turned down Meadows as Kelton’s replacement, at least at first. Meadows wrote in her memoir that she slipped back to audition again and frumped herself up to convince Gleason that she could handle the role of a frustrated but loving working-class wife. Rounding out the cast with an understated but effective role, Joyce Randolph played Trixie Norton. Elaine Stritch had played the role as a tall and attractive blonde in the first sketch, but she was quickly replaced by Randolph.The Honeymooners sketches proved popular enough that Gleason gambled on making it a separate series entirely in 1955. These are the so-called Classic 39 episodes, which finished 19th in the ratings for their only season. However, they were filmed with a new DuMont process, Electronicam; like kinescopes, it preserved the live performance on film, but in an improvement on kinescopes, it resulted in first-generation quality comparable to a motion picture That turned out to be the most prescient move the show made, since — a decade after they first aired — the half-hour Honeymooners in syndicated reruns started to build a loyal and growing audience that made the show a television icon. Its popularity was such that even today, a life-size statue of Jackie Gleason, in full uniform as bus driver Ralph Kramden, stands outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Gleason enjoyed a secondary music career, lending his name to a series of best-selling “mood music” albums with jazz overtones for Capitol Records. Gleason felt there was a ready market for romantic instrumentals. His goal was to make “musical wallpaper that should never be intrusive, but conducive” He recalled seeing Clark Gable play love scenes in movies, and the romance was, in his words, “magnified a thousand percent” by background music. Gleason reasoned, “If Gable needs music, a guy in Brooklyn must be desperate!” Gleason’s first album, Music for Lovers Only, still holds the record for the album staying the longest in the Billboard Top Ten Charts (153 weeks), and his first ten albums all sold over one million copies. Gleason could not read or write music in a conventional sense; he was said to have conceived melodies in his head and described them vocally to assistants. These included the well-remembered themes of both The Jackie Gleason Show (“Melancholy Serenade”) and The Honeymooners (“You’re My Greatest Love”). There has been some controversy over the years as to how much credit Gleason should have received for the finished products; Gleason biographer William A. Henry III wrote in his 1992 book The Great One: The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason that beyond the possible conceptualizing of many of the songs, Gleason had no direct involvement (such as conducting) in the making of these recordings. Red Nichols, a jazz great who had fallen on hard times and led one of the group’s recordings, did not even get session-leader pay from Gleason. Legendary jazz cornetist/trumpeter Bobby Hackett, who soloed on the albums and was the leader for most, when asked by musician/journalist Harry Currie in Toronto just weeks before Hackett’s death what Gleason really did at the recording sessions, Hackett replied “He brought the cheques.” Nearly all of Gleason’s albums are still available, and have been re-released by Capitol Records onto compact disc. He also took the role of a lead performer in the musical Take Me Along, which ran from 1959 to 1960; he won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical.Return to television Gleason restored his original variety hour, including The Honeymooners, in 1956, winning a Peabody Award for the show in that year. He abandoned the show in 1957 when his ratings for the season came in at #29 and the network “suggested” he needed a break. He returned in 1958 with a half-hour show that featured Buddy Hackett. However, this version of the Gleason show did not catch on. One of the “perks” Gleason received from CBS was his network’s picking up the tab for his Peekskill, New York “Round Rock Hill” mansion Set on top of a hill complete with six acres of grounds, the site for the circular dream home included a guest house and a storage building, which was also round. Gleason planned the home for two years; it was completed in 1959.[21] Gleason sold the home when he permanently relocated to Miami. His next foray into television was with a game show, You’re in the Picture, which survived its disastrous premiere episode only because of Gleason’s now-legendary humorous on-the-air apology in the following week’s time slot. For the rest of the scheduled run, the program became a talk show that was once again named The Jackie Gleason Show.In 1962, he resurrected his variety show with more splashiness and a new hook— a fictitious general-interest magazine called The American Scene Magazine, through whose format Gleason trotted out his old characters in new scenarios. He also added another catchphrase to the American vernacular, first uttered in the 1963 film Papa’s Delicate Condition: “How sweet it is!”
The Jackie Gleason Show: The American Scene Magazine was a hit and continued in this format for four seasons. Each show began with Gleason delivering a monologue and commenting on the loud outfits of band leader Sammy Spear. Then the “magazine” features would be trotted out, from Hollywood gossip (reported by comedienne Barbara Heller) to news flashes (played for laughs with a stock company of second bananas, chorus girls, and midgets). Comedienne Alice Ghostley occasionally appeared as a downtrodden tenement resident, sitting on her front step and listening to boorish boyfriend Gleason for several minutes. After the boyfriend took his leave, the smitten Ghostley would exclaim, “I’m the luckiest girl in the world!” Veteran comics Johnny Morgan, Sid Fields, and Hank Ladd were occasionally seen opposite Gleason in comedy sketches.The final sketch was always set in Joe the Bartender’s saloon, with Joe singing “My Gal Sal” and greeting his regular customer, the unseen Mr. Dennehy (actually the TV audience, with Gleason speaking to the camera). During the sketch, Joe the Bartender would tell Dennehy about an article he read in the fictitious “American Scene” magazine, holding a copy across the bar. It had two covers: one featured the New York skyline and the other palm trees (after the show was moved to Florida in 1964). Then, Joe would bring out Frank Fontaine as Crazy Guggenheim, who would regale Joe with the latest adventures of his neighborhood pals and sometimes showed Joe his current Top Cat comic book. Joe usually asked Crazy to sing, almost always a sentimental ballad sung in a lilting baritone.Gleason also revived The Honeymooners, first with Sue Ane Langdon and then with Sheila MacRae as Alice and with Jane Kean as Trixie By 1964, Gleason had moved the production from New York to Miami Beach, Florida, reportedly because he liked the year-round access to the golf course at the nearby Inverrary Country Club in Lauderhill, Florida, where he built his final home. His closing line became, almost invariably, “As always, the Miami Beach audience is the greatest audience in the world!” In 1966, he finally abandoned the American Scene Magazine format and converted the show into a standard variety hour with guest performers.Gleason kicked off the 1966–67 season with new, color episodes of The Honeymooners. Carney returned as Ed Norton, with MacRae as Alice and Kean as Trixie. The stories were remakes of the 1950s “world tour” episodes, in which Kramden and Norton win a slogan contest and take their wives to international destinations. Each of the nine episodes was a full-scale musical comedy, with Gleason and company performing original songs by Lyn Duddy and Jerry Bresler. Occasionally, the Gleason hour would be devoted to musicals with a single theme (a college comedy, a political satire, etc.), with the stars abandoning their Honeymooners roles for different character roles.This was the format of the show until its cancellation in 1970, except for the 1968–69 season, which had no hour-long Honeymooners episodes. In that season, The Honeymooners was presented only in short sketches.The musicals pushed Gleason back into the Top Five in the TV ratings, but audiences soon began to decline. By its final season, Gleason’s show was no longer in the top 25. In the last original Honeymooners episode aired on CBS, “Operation Protest,” Ralph encounters the youth-protest movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a sign of changing times in television as well as in society.Gleason, who had signed a deal in the 1950s that included a guaranteed $100,000 annual payment for 20 years even if he never went on the air, wanted The Honeymooners to be just a portion of his format, but CBS wanted another season of nothing but The Honeymooners. The network had just canceled mainstay variety shows hosted by Red Skelton and Ed Sullivan because they had become too expensive to produce and attracted, in the executives’ opinion, too old an audience. Gleason simply stopped doing the show by 1970 and finally left CBS when his contract expired. Revival of The Honeymooners Gleason did two Jackie Gleason Show specials for CBS after giving up his regular show in the 1970s, including “Honeymooners segments” and a Reginald Van Gleason III sketch in which the gregarious millionaire was shown as a clinical alcoholic. When the CBS deal expired, Gleason signed with NBC, but ideas reportedly came and went before he ended up doing a series of Honeymooners specials for ABC. Gleason helmed four of these ABC specials during the mid-1970s. Gleason and Carney also made a television movie, Izzy and Moe, which aired on CBS in 1985.In April 1974, Gleason revived several classic characters, including Ralph Kramden, Joe the Bartender, and Reginald Van Gleason III, in a television special with Julie Andrews. In one song-and-dance routine, the two performed “Take Me Along” from Gleason’s Broadway musical. In 1985, three decades after the Classic 39 began filming, Gleason revealed he had carefully preserved kinescopes of his live 1950s programs in a vault for future use—including Honeymooners sketches with Pert Kelton as Alice. These “Lost Episodes,” as they came to be called, were initially previewed at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City, then first aired on the Showtime cable network in 1985, and were later added to the Honeymooners syndication package with the “Classic 39” episodes for broadcast on local TV stations. They were also released on home video.Some of these include earlier versions of exactly the same plotlines later copied for the Classic 39 episodes. One of them, a Christmas holiday episode that was duplicated several years later with Meadows as Alice, delivered every one of Gleason’s best-known characters — Ralph Kramden, the Poor Soul, Rudy the Repairman, Reginald Van Gleason, Fenwick Babbitt, and Joe the Bartender — in and out of the Kramden apartment, the storyline hooking around a wild Christmas party being thrown up the block from the Kramdens’ building by Reginald Van Gleason at Joe the Bartender’s place. Dramatic roles Gleason’s acting was not restricted to comedic roles. He had also earned acclaim for live television drama performances in The Laugh Maker (1953) on CBS’s Studio One; and in William Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life (1958), which appeared as an episode of Playhouse 90, a television anthology series.He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor award for his portrayal of Minnesota Fats in The Hustler (1961). (In his 1985 appearance on The Tonight Show, Gleason told Johnny Carson that he had played pool frequently since childhood, utilizing those experiences in The Hustler.) He was also well-received as a beleaguered boxing manager in the movie version of Rod Serling’s Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). Gleason also played a world-weary Army sergeant, in Soldier in the Rain (1963).He wrote, produced, and starred in Gigot (1962), a notorious box-office disaster, in which he plays a poor, mute janitor who befriends and rescues a prostitute and her small daughter. The film’s script formed the basis for the television film The Wool Cap (2004) starring William H. Macy in the role of the mute janitor; the television film received modestly good reviews. Gleason played the lead in the Otto Preminger all-star flop, Skidoo (1968). In 1969, William Friedkin wanted to cast Gleason as “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection (1971) but between Gigot and Skidoo, the studio refused to offer Gleason the lead in the film, even though he wanted to play it. Instead, Gleason wound up in How to Commit Marriage (1969) with Bob Hope and the movie version of Woody Allen’s play Don’t Drink the Water (1969), both flops.More than a decade passed before Gleason had another hit film. This role was as comedic and cursing Texas sheriff Buford T. Justice in the films Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Smokey and the Bandit II (1980) and Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983). In these films, he co-starred with Burt Reynolds as the Bandit, Sally Field as Carrie (Bandit’s love interest), Jerry Reed as Cledus (Snowman) Snow, Bandit’s truck-driving partner off to bring back beer, clam chowder (II), etc. Former NFL linebacker and actor Mike Henry played his not-so-bright son, Junior Justice. Gleason’s gruff and frustrated demeanor, along with a few classic lines, such as “I’m gonna barbecue yo’ ass in molasses!” after a trucker tore the driver’s door off his parked sheriff’s car, had audiences howling in the theaters, and truly made the first “Bandit” movie a major hit.Years later, when Reynolds was interviewed by Larry King, Reynolds said that he agreed to do the movie only if they would hire Jackie Gleason to play the part of Sheriff Buford T. Justice, which is the name of a real Florida highway patrolman who knew Reynolds’ father. That interview also revealed that director Hal Needham gave Gleason free rein to ad-lib a great deal of his dialog and make suggestions for the film. For example, the scene at the “Choke and Puke” was Gleason’s idea. Reynolds and Needham knew the comic brilliance of Gleason would help make the film a success, and Gleason’s characterization of Sheriff Justice helped them connect the film with mostly blue-collar audiences. In the 1980s, Gleason earned positive reviews playing opposite Laurence Olivier in the HBO dramatic two-man special, Mr. Halpern and Mr. Johnson (1983). He also gave a memorable performance as wealthy businessman U.S. Bates in the comedy The Toy (1982), opposite Richard Pryor. Although the movie itself was critically panned, Gleason and Pryor were praised.Gleason’s comic genius and acting ability are why Orson Welles nicknamed him “The Great One.”Gleason had been seeing a lot of Genevieve Halford, a dancer. They were both working in vaudeville when they met. Genevieve was very marriage-minded while Gleason was not really ready to settle down yet. She told him that they would either get married or she would begin seeing other men. It was no idle threat; when Gleason went onstage one evening at the Club Miami in Newark, New Jersey, Genevieve was seated in the front row with a handsome date. At the end of his show, Gleason went to the table and proposed to Genevieve in front of her date. They were married on September 20, 1936. Genevieve expected a normal husband who would be home when not at work; Gleason fell back into spending his nights out. Separated for the first time in 1941 and reconciled in 1948 the couple had two daughters, Geraldine and Linda Gleason and his wife were informally separated again in 1951. In early 1954, the comedian suffered a broken leg and ankle while on the air of his television show. His injuries were serious enough to sideline him for a few weeks; Gleason’s friends filled in for him while he was on the mend. Gleason’s injury dealt a permanent blow to his already troubled marriage to Genevieve; they were still separated at the time Gleason fell and was hospitalized for his injuries. Genevieve Gleason came to visit him in the hospital but found he already had a visitor: dancer Marilyn Taylor from his television show. The two women confronted each other with the result being Mrs. Gleason filed for a legal separation in April 1954. The couple were divorced in 1970. Marilyn Taylor left show business in 1956. Gleason met his second wife, Beverly McKittrick, a secretary, at a country club in 1968. Ten days after his divorce from Genevieve was final, Gleason and McKittrick were married in a registry ceremony in Ashford, England on July 4, 1970 Marilyn Taylor and Gleason were re-united in 1974, when she moved to the Miami area to be near her sister, June, whose dancers were part of Gleason’s shows for many years. In September 1974, Gleason filed for divorce from McKittrick, who contested, asking for a reconciliation The divorce was granted on November 19, 1975 Now a widow with a young son, Marilyn Taylor and Gleason were married on December 16, 1975; the marriage lasted until his death in 1987. Fear of flying For many years, Gleason would only travel by train; his fear of flying came from an incident at the time where he had only minor movie roles. Gleason would fly to Los Angeles for movie work, then back to New York when his roles were completed. After finishing one of his movies, the comedian boarded a plane for New York. Two of the plane’s engines quit and the flight made a forced landing in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While another plane was readied for the passengers to continue their journey, Gleason decided he had enough and made his way from the airport into the heart of the city. He walked into a hardware store and asked its owner to loan him $200 for his train trip back to New York. The amazed man asked Gleason why he thought anyone would lend a total stranger that amount of money. Gleason explained who he was and his situation; when the store owner learned of Gleason’s movie work, he said he would loan him the money if the local theater had a photo of him on display in his latest film. Since Gleason was not yet a major motion picture star, the publicity shots the theater had were only of those with principal roles in the film. Gleason then proposed that he purchase two movie tickets and that they both see the film, as the hardware store owner would certainly be able to identify him from that. The two men sat in the dark theater for an hour before Gleason came on the screen. Gleason got his loan and boarded the next train back to New York. Returning home, he borrowed $200 to repay the Tulsa hardware store owner. Interest in the paranormal Gleason was a voracious reader of books on the paranormal, including The Urantia Book, parapsychology and UFOs. During the 1950s, he was a semi-regular guest on the paranormal-themed overnight radio show hosted by John Nebel, and wrote the introduction to Donald Bain’s biography of Nebel. After his death, his large book collection was donated to the library of the University of Miami. Photographic Memory Jackie Gleason did not like to rehearse. He had a photographic memory,[46] so he read the script over once, watched a rehearsal with his co-stars and his stand-in, then shot the show later that day. When Gleason would mess up, he often blamed the cue cardsDeathGleason delivered a critically acclaimed performance as an infirm but acerbic and somewhat Archie Bunker-like character in the Tom Hanks comedy-drama Nothing in Common (1986). The film proved to be Gleason’s final film role, as he was suffering from colon cancer, liver cancer, and thrombosed hemorrhoids during production Gleason was a heavy drinker, and smoked five packs of cigarettes a day. In 1986, he was diagnosed with diabetes and phlebitis, but he knew his condition was more serious. According to his biography at tcm.com, Gleason was touring in the lead role of Larry Gelbart’s play Sly Fox in 1978 when he suffered a heart attack, forcing him to leave the show and undergo a triple bypass operation. “I won’t be around much longer,” he told his daughter at dinner one evening after a day of filming Nothing in Common. The entertainer kept his medical problems private, though there had been rumors that he was seriously ill. A year later, on June 24, 1987 Gleason died at his Florida home. After a private funeral Mass at Cathedral of Saint Mary in Miami, Gleason was interred in an outdoor mausoleum at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Cemetery in Miami, Florida. At the base is the inscription of one of his catchphrases: “And Away We Go.”Miami Beach honored Gleason’s contributions to the city and its tourism in 1987 by renaming the Miami Beach Auditorium (where he had done his television show after moving to Florida) as the Jackie Gleason Theater of the Performing Arts. The theater was scheduled to be razed as part of a Convention Center major remodeling project as of May, 2010; it would be replaced by a hotel New York’s Omni Park Hotel, where Gleason maintained a suite from 1953 to 1957, named it “The Jackie Gleason Suite” shortly after his death A city park with racquetball and basketball courts (and a children’s playground) near his home in an Inverrary neighborhood of Lauderhill, Florida was named “Jackie Gleason Park”.Local signs on the Brooklyn Bridge, which indicate to drivers that they are entering Brooklyn, have the Gleason phrase “How Sweet It Is!” as part of the sign. He is also mentioned and seen on the 1955 TV in the 1985 movie Back to the Future when Marty Mcfly watches television in 1955 with his future grandparents. Bus driver related On June 30, 1988, the Sunset Park Bus Depot in Brooklyn was renamed the Jackie Gleason Depot in honor of the native Brooklynite A statue of Gleason as Ralph in his bus driver’s uniform was dedicated in August 2000 in New York City by the cable TV channel TV Land. The statue is located in Manhattan at 40th Street and Eighth Avenue at the entrance of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Its inscription reads “Ralph Kramden: New Yorker, Bus Driver, Dreamer” and it was featured briefly in the film World Trade Center (2006). Another such statue stands at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in North Hollywood, California, showing Gleason in his famous “And away we go!” pose. On television A television movie called Gleason was aired by CBS on October 13, 2002, taking a deeper look into Gleason’s life; it took liberties with some of the Gleason story, but featured his troubled home life, a side of Gleason that few had previously known. The film also showed backstage scenes from his best-known work. Brad Garrett, from Everybody Loves Raymond, portrayed Gleason after Mark Addy had to drop out. Garrett was effectively made up to resemble Gleason in his prime. His height (6?8?, about eight inches taller than Gleason) created some logistical problems on the sets, which had to be specially made so that Garrett did not tower over everyone else. Also, cast members wore platform shoes when standing next to Garrett; the shoes can be seen in one shot being worn by Alice during a Honeymooners sequence. In 2003, after an absence of more than thirty years, the color, musical versions of The Honeymooners from the 1960s Jackie Gleason Show in Miami Beach were returned to television over the Good Life TV (now ALN) cable network. In 2005, a movie version of The Honeymooners appeared in theatres, with a twist: a primarily African-American cast, headed by Cedric the Entertainer. This version, however, bore only a passing resemblance to Gleason’s original series and was widely panned by critics. Actor/playwright Jason Miller, a former son-in-law of Gleason’s, was writing a screenplay based on Gleason’s life that was to star Paul Sorvino. Miller died before completing the project. Gleason’s daughter, Linda Miller (herself an actress), had been married to Miller. Their son is the actor Jason Patric. Sean Cullen played a small role of Gleason in the 2002 made for TV movie Martin and Lewis.