3. The Honeymooners (1955-6)

by John Greco

My parents and I moved to Bensonhurst when I was three days shy of my eleventh birthday. Like the Kramden’s we were a blue collar family and lived in an old apartment house. However, it was in better shape than Ralph and Alice’s two room apartment. For one thing, we had three and a half rooms! We also had a refrigerator instead of an icebox, a better sink and stove, and my Mom eventually got her first clothes washer! Alice, on the other hand, in the first of the classic 39 episodes, complains to Ralph that they have been living in their dingy place for 14 years, and their electric bill was still an embarrassing thirty-nine cents! Cheap even for the mid-1950’s.

Ralph Kramden and company made their first appearance on the now long defunct Dumont Network. The show was called The Cavalcade of Stars, and premiered in 1949. Jackie Gleason made his first appearance as host of the variety show in 1950. A four week stint turned into a steady gig. Among the shows guests were Paul Winchell, Joey Bishop, Morey Amsterdam, Connie Boswell (of The Boswell Sisters), Liberace, Ella Fitzgerald and Billy Daniels. The show also included sketch comedy, one of which was The Honeymooners with Gleason as the blue collar bus driver. Art Carney was picked up to play Ed Norton, Ralph’s best friend and neighbor. Jane Randolph was hired as Norton’s wife, Trixie, and Pert Kelton was Ralph’s wife, Alice. The sketches ranged from ten to twenty minutes long, sandwiched in with the show’s other entertainment.

In 1952, Gleason left the ailing Dumont Network and skipped off to CBS with the premiere of The Jackie Gleason Show. Regulars included the June Taylor Dancers, Sammy Spear and his Orchestra, and Frank Fontaine as Crazy Guggenheim. The show consisted of sketch comedies with Gleason portraying a variety of characters including Reginald Van Gleason, The Poor Soul, Joe the Bartender and, of course, Ralph Krandem in The Honeymooners. At CBS, Audrey Meadows replaced Pert Kelton as Alice. The backstory has it that Meadows auditioned for the Alice role during the original Dumont days, but Gleason felt she was too attractive for the role of a frumpy housewife, and went with the more stout hardcore Kelton. By the time Gleason moved to CBS, Kelton became mixed up in the McCarthy witch hunts. Meadows meanwhile dressed herself down wearing no makeup, dowdy clothes, convincing Gleason she would make a good Alice. Though Meadows’ Alice was a softer version, she gave back to Ralph with some of the show’s best zingers. The earlier Pert Kelton/Alice episodes are only available as kinescopes if at all. The sketches from Gleason’s CBS variety show have been complied on DVD and are available as The Honeymooners Lost Episodes.

In 1955, Gleason was tired of the grind of doing a weekly variety show and decided to turn The Honeymooners into a weekly sitcom. These shows have become known as The Classic 39 Episodes. Surprisingly, the show was only on for one season. The first thing that should grab your attention is the 39 episodes/one season. Today on network television most seasons last no more than twenty or twenty two shows. Thirty-nine episodes is almost two seasons worth today. Cable shows and streaming services generally offer somewhere between seven to thirteen episodes a season or about one-third of The Honeymooners one season output.

The Kamden’s’ lived at 328 Chauncey Street in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. The only problem is there is no Chauncey Street, 328 or any other number, in Bensonhurst. Brooklyn’s Chauncey Street is located in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section. The address though is the actual street address Gleason lived at as a kid. Gleason was a control freak and he commanded every aspect of the show. If he wanted Chauncey Street to be in Bensonhurst, it was in Bensonhurst!

The Honeymooners was not a big hit, generally floating around 19^th in the ratings. What made the program a lasting classic though was the decision to record the show in a process called Electronciam, which shot the show on film and for television via a common lens. This gave the recorded show a higher quality than the then more commonly used Kinescope. Gleason signed on to do two seasons worth of shows, but after one season felt  the quality was starting to suffer and called it quits with the sit-com. By the 1960’s, The Honeymooners was a staple on many late night local stations. In New York, it ran for years on WPIX at eleven o’clock or eleven thirty. Today, the show still gets plenty of play on multiple cable stations and is considered one of the greatest TV sitcoms ever.

Filmed before a live audience, the botched lines and missteps have been preserved forever. It gave the show a sense of watching a live theater production, warts and all. The link to live theater is made even stronger in some episodes, particularly the Christmas show where Gleason and company break the fourth wall parting the closing curtains to wish the audience and those at home a Merry Christmas.

The show is anchored by its four main characters, but it’s all about the blustery Ralph, the bus driver with big ideas, and get rich quick schemes that always fail. In The Golfer, Ralph tells his big boss at the bus company that he is a great golfer. When the boss suggest they get together for a game, Ralph finds himself having to learn how to play golf in two days. This episode has the classic scene where both Ralph and Norton attempt to learn how to play golf from an instruction manual. Ralph reads that you begin by addressing the ball. Norton meanwhile approaches the ball, golf club in hand, and bellows, “Hello, ball!” In A Dog’s Life, after eating a mysterious meat he found in the ice box, not knowing it’s dog food, Ralph attempts to market it. In one of my personal favorite episodes, The $99,000 Dollars Answer, Ralph plans to win a fortune on a game show. He rents a piano, buys a ton of records and sheet music, costing them every penny they have in their bank account as Alice reminds him. During this episode, Norton, his piano player, warm up by always opening with the same few cords of Suwanee River before he segues into a new song. It frustrates Ralph, as every quirk of Norton’s does. After practicing for days and days with Norton at the piano, Ralph knows every song, every composer, as well as the year the song debuted. Finally, on the day of the quiz show, Ralph’s overconfidence and bluster, makes him announce right at the start he is going all the way to The $99,000 Answer. The bluster and confidence, as always, is short lived. His first question is to name the composer of Suwanee River, the tune Norton always used as an intro. It’s the one song that Ralphie Boy doesn’t know the answer. As he runs out of time, his desperate response is “Ed Norton?”

Ralph goes from one mishap, one embarrassment, to another. In the face of one failure after another, his only response was a sweaty brow, a swaggering hand and “hummina, hummina, hummina.” Still, Alice was always there for him no matter what predicament Ralph would get into. His response, “Baby, you’re the greatest!”

Audrey Meadows is a gem as Alice. She not only gives as good as she gets, she always tops Ralph. In The $99,000 Answer, she tells Ralph she would be happy if he wins $600 dollars and quits. He replies that $600 is peanuts, what is he gonna do with peanuts? Alice sharp comeback is “Eat’em just like any other elephant!”

The back and forth between Ralph and Norton has its roots, or at least shades of it, in Laurel and Hardy. Combined, they are dumb and dumber, the fat one and the skinny one, good natured souls with nearly an adult thought between them. The wives are the adults. While Ralph insists he is the boss, the king of his castle, Alice the ever patient wife with the sharp tongue always cuts Ralph down a notch or two. You can easily see the show’s influence in future shows from The Flintstones to The King of Queens.

Finally, while Ralph was always full of bluster, and Alice was always verbally smacking him down, it can be said that beneath the bickering, there was the humanity, the poignancy and the love they had for each other that came shining through.

The end of the one season of classic 39 episodes was not the end of The Honeymooners. In the 1960’s Gleason returned to the variety show format a couple of times. The Honeymooners were always a part of the program. While Art Carney always played Norton (who else could?), the wives changed with Sue Ann Langdon, Shelia McRae and of course Audrey Meadows at different periods playing Alice.  In the early 1960’s, Patricia Wilson played Trixie for a short period, but it was mostly Jane Kean who took over the role. (1)

If the show is dated in any way, it’s Ralph threats of physical violence against Alice when he shakes his fist and screams out, “Someday Alice, Pow! Zoom!  To the moon, Alice.” The thing is, you know he would never follow through. Alice knows this, and we do too. Ralph’s threats are just more bluster and hot air. Underneath, he’s a softie.

Footnotes:

In 1991, Jane Randolph, and Audrey Meadows, made one final appearance as Trixie and Alice in a short lived sitcom called, Hi Honey, I’m Home.

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