JACKIE GLEASON, superstar of '50s and '60s TV (born in Bushwick, Brooklyn on Feb 26, 1916)

I wonder how many of you know much of anything outside of The Honeymooners; probably for his movie roles in The Hustler, Smokey and the Bandit and that one with Tom Hanks I've never seen.

It's hard to overstate what a big tube star he was, even as part of the Old Guard til his last variety show (the one based in Miami Beach) went off the air; as a kid i saw it weekly in the last 3-4 years, and hence had more exposure to mookieproof's hated Kramden-in-color-with-a-tan mini-musicals.

Like Andrew Sarris, I never really warmed to Ralph; an obnoxious bully. Art Carney and Audrey Meadows made the show.

Apparently Gleason routinely was sloshed while doing Honeymooners, hence you can hear Meadows sometimes leading him into his dialogue. He was a good actor with good material though. Happy Centennial, Great One.

His favorite character:

http://www.jackiegleason.com/reggie.html

aargh, could a mod plz change year in title to 1916.

LOL. Meant nothing in the UK, The Honeymooners was never shown here, so no-one really knows who he is, except maybe as a guy who appeared in 'Smokey and the Bandit'.

Loved Honeymooners as a kid, when it was a huge rerun staple along with I Love Lucy, Gilligan's Island, Bewitched, etc, though I'd have to rewatch some of it to see how I'd respond to Ralph's bullying now. Most of his film work that I've seen, though, has been dreadful: I'm not in the Smokey and the Bandit cult (I don't even find Gleason's racist, homophobic redneck character funny), and The Toy is every bit as awful as its reputed to be. The Hustler doesn't do much for me, either--I may have to give it a rewatch one day--but I love his scenes in it.

Essential Gleason is most definitely before 1970. Perhaps before 1963.

friedkin wanted him for popeye doyle

he was most definitely enamored of pantomime (his Poor Soul character, his cherished flop film Gigot ehere he played a Chaplinesque mute).

It's very rare for my wife to mention buying anything for the kitchen without me responding, "Can it core a apple?" I don't think she's ever even seen The Honeymooners, let alone that episode.

I remember thinking Nothing in Common (the one with Hanks) was pretty good at the time.

gilbert Gottfried did a mini-podcast ep on JG just today for this occasion - https://soundcloud.com/gilbertgottfried

I don't think I've watched a single episode of "The Honeymooners" yet have watched every episode of "The Flintstones" a dozen times each.

wtf

well then you won't be visiting the grave tomw

http://www.florida-backroads-travel.com/images/jackie-gleasons-florida-resting-place-21649807.jpg

Happy 100 !! Time to take some mambo lessons!

Alice serves him tuna for dinner. "Tuna?! What am I...a CAT?!!"

honeymooners is my favorite show ever, tho i've never seen (and don't much want to) any of the post'50s revivals. the aesthetic of the original show -- the iconic credit sequence and gorgeously sad theme music, the incredibly bleak yet somehow cozy setting, the endless play-like bits of dead time where someone is just pacing around or clearing a table while waiting for the next actor to hit their cue -- is so inexpressibly comforting to me. somehow it feels like the type of show that's best appreciated at 1 a.m.

it doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar anymore, tho; i grew up assuming it was one of those shows everyone had watched, but i basically know nobody outside out of my family who's ever seen it. ralph's bullying and violent threats prob make it a hard sell for modern audiences, tho the fact that alice never seems even remotely intimidated by ralph makes it easier to take.

I watched a few Honeymooners reruns as a kid, but they were mostly off-the-air by the time I paid any attention. I knew Gleason mainly through his television variety show, which I found rather dull and repetitive.

I also have a dim memory of being deposited by my parents in our local movie theater to watch Gigot, which they thought would keep me occupied and out of trouble for a couple of hours. It featured Gleason as a social outcast who gives aid to a young girl. Being a child myself, I found it revolting, sentimental trash and it forever soured my view of Gleason's acting ability.

the fact that alice never seems even remotely intimidated by ralph makes it easier to take.

absolutely, it's what's brilliantly conceived about her character and the performance.

the first Alice (Pert Kelton) was blacklisted, y'know.

i got the box set of the "lost" honeymooners episodes (from the jackie gleason show) for christmas, but haven't cracked it open yet -- i think some of her episodes are on there.

My mom has horrible adolescent memories of sharing the house's one TV set with her ogre grandparents so they could watch the Jackie Gleason Show.

along with the immortal "letter to the boss" sketch that later inspired a simpsons episode, right down to specific scenes lifted almost verbatim.

still haven't seen Gleason's terrible game show; he spent the second episode apologizing for the first.

some obv Honeymooners references in The Sopranos as well

When I'm watching The Honeymooners, he's one of my favorite actors in the world. I don't think of him in other contexts. I last saw The Hustler about 16-17 years ago.

the old '50s variety shows have some good stuff in em. The Gleason estate zealously keeps clips off YouTube etc.

Gleason film i've always meant to ck out are Soldier in the Rain (co-starring Steve McQueen) and Requiem for a Heavyweight) from the

...Rod Serling teleplay.

What about all those great albums he put out in the 1950s?

He also starred in the first movie version of Woody Allen's play Don't Drink the Water (1969), which also featured Estelle Parsons as his wife and Ted Bessell (of That Girl). It's not good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7-RNNIbPP0

He apparently threatened Otto Preminger for yelling at Groucho Marx.

http://49.media.tumblr.com/43398eb425c6e0e2b1aa2c911018933d/tumblr_ngpo0ughiU1u5f8joo1_500.gif

#bushwick

https://media.azpm.org/master/image/2012/7/9/spot/hustler_gleason_spot.jpg

I enjoyed his cameo in DeLillo's Underworld attending the 1951 World Series with Frank Sinatra, Toots Shor, and J. Edgar Hoover

think that was the Dodger-Giant playoff series rather than the WS

Aw man, I love Requiem for a Heavyweight, Gleason in a sleazebag role.

http://www.thefightcity.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Jackie-Gleason-Anthony-Quinn1.jpg

quite a pair of mugs... I've only seen the TV original where Keenan Wynn and Jack Palance play those roles.

If you've never seen the variety-show opening routine, it's in this clip I suppose:

http://www.jackiegleason.com/video.html

In the new WTF interview, William Friedkin talks at some length about Jackie Gleason being his first choice for The French Connection.

Today is the 100th birthday of Frank Fontaine, a comedian-singer who played Crazy Guggenheim in JG's "Joe the Bartender" sketch, and this was pretty much his act every week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTm9krDGYhU

A Frank Fontaine album titled Songs I Sing on the Jackie Gleason Show topped the Billboard charts in 1963 for five weeks!

he was big

but not big enough to record Jokes Older Than Your Grandma I Tell on the Jackie Gleason Show

Had coverage today for a collapsed 6/7/8 class (some event going on in the school). Hate those days--the classroom teachers rarely leave enough work, and the mix of students compounds the problem.

It was Jackie Gleason's birthday, so I did what I've doing for 15 years at least, going back to my own classes: showed the golfing clip ("Hellooooo ball!") from The Honeymooners. Kills me every time. The principal dropped in later and saw the JG Wikipedia page still on the Smartboard. She wanted to know why, and when I explained, she said to drop by at recess to talk to me.

I sensed almost immediately what she was going to say, and sure enough, it was concern that I had shown a bang-zoom-to-the-moon-related clip. No, no, I said, I would never show that. (And I wouldn't; 15 years ago, I probably would've without giving it too much thought--I do, over time, catch up with the world.) So that was fine.

I'm of two minds. I do understand that if you had a kid in the room with an abusive background, bang-zoom could possibly be a problem. At the same time, it felt like another reminder that it really is time to walk away for good. Having the line of vigilance extend all the way to Jackie Gleason is stressful, and ultimately it takes the fun out of this for me. I started thinking that I should have shown a Fats Domino clip--his birthday today too--but I wouldn't have been surprised if "Fats" would have been a problem.

That's the one good thing I got out of all this: realizing, for the first time, that Fats Domino and the guy who played Minnesota Fats shared a birthday.