Ralph
Kramden [played by
Jackie Gleason]: “Well, let me tell you something, I had some chances, too,
you know, before I married you!”
Alice
Kramden [played by Audrey
Meadows]: “Ha ha!”
Ralph:
“Don't laugh, Alice, there were plenty of girls crazy about me and you know it.
Every time I went down to the beach, they used to crowd around me.”
Alice:
“Sure. Sure, they crowded around you. That didn't mean they were crazy about
you. They just wanted to sit in the shade!”— The
Honeymooners, “Hello Mom,”
Season 1, Episode 10, original air date Dec. 3, 1955, teleplay by Marvin Marx and
Walter Stone, directed by Frank Satenstein
Jackie Gleason, “The Great One,” was born 100 years ago today in Bushwick,
Brooklyn. The set of The Honeymooners was,
in fact, based on his childhood home in the borough’s Chauncey Street.
He had the proverbial Dickensian childhood: an older
brother died when Jackie was three. Six years later, his Irish-American father,
an insurance auditor, left the family for good. His Irish-born mother died when
he was about 19, leaving him penniless. Performing
arts became his path out of misery, as he took jobs, in turn, as a stunt
driver, a carnival barker, as well as working in a pool hall and in touring shows. Sheer talent
helped him triumph, even over his own excesses—the taste for food (ridiculed in
the above quote), women and booze.
He got his first real break in a Broadway musical, Follow the Girls (1944). It might have
been appropriate, then, that he won a Tony as the ne’er-do-well, alcoholic
brother-in-law in another musical, Take
Me Along (1960).
At a time when much of the rest of television was turning its
attention to suburban dads, Gleason found comic gold in a more gritty urban
setting. Bus driver Ralph Kramden's arguments with wife Alice (which, for all his blustering about
sending her “to the moon,” always ended with him shown up as stupid) often
revolved around the kind of things that people who are financially hard-pressed would, such as money. Millions of TV viewers nodded even as they smiled and
laughed.
Outside of The Honeymooners, Gleason
demonstrated his skill as an actor in The
Hustler (1961), in an Oscar-nominated role, and a particular favorite of
mine, his last movie, the comedy-drama Nothing
in Common, in which he played Tom Hanks’ cantankerous father.
1 comment:
As a young boy this was my favorite show.
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