And away we go:
I loved watching re-runs of The Honeymooners when I was a kid. I appreciated the fact that they were more broke than my family and, like my parents, they met that circumstance with good humor and love. In the classic episode above Ralph sold his prized bowling ball to buy a Christmas present for his beloved wife Alice.
The late comedian Jackie Gleason, when asked his religion, would always say “Bad Catholic”. He was once asked by a Paulist priest to appear on his television program and talk about religion which he did, stating to the priest that Catholicism was strong enough to withstand an advocate even as bad as he was.
He once stunned the audience of a light-hearted talk show in the Seventies by responding to the question what he wanted more than anything else by saying “Eternal Salvation”. The host was taken aback by this and asked him, “Really?” Gleason said he couldn’t understand anyone wanting anything more than that. Gleason and some of the Ten Commandments were not on friendly terms during his life, to say the least, but he received the Last Rites on his deathbed, and I am sure he got what he wanted more than anything else.
'We usually don't step out of character, but tonight, I think it proper that Mr. and Mrs. Kramden and Mr. and Mrs. Norton wish everybody a Merry Christmas'
— Jackie Gleason, 'The Honeymooners,' (1955)🎄 pic.twitter.com/T1h5QXb7ij
— RetroNewsNow (@RetroNewsNow) December 22, 2021
Bonus:
A heart that surpassed his stature.
Thank you Donald for bringing him back to memory. I too remember watching reruns of the honeymooners. I recall shedding a tear or two seeing the best part of humanity unfold on the tiny black and white screen. [Tiny in today’s standard, but back then we were happy to have a semi clear screen. Rabbit ears and all.]
America is missing the spirit of forgiveness and selflessness found in the old dramas and programs of the past.
Too bad.
May God have mercy on his soul.
Those episodes were always fun to watch. Even if you could clearly predict what trouble Ralph was going to get into because of one of his schemes backfiring. Thank you, Don.
He was a true comedic genius Cathy, who didn’t mind playing straight man if if made the show funnier, as he constantly did with Art Carney.
Loved the clip of Gleeson. The late author Walker Percy, when asked by one of his relatives what kind of Catholic he was going to be, replied “probably half-assed”!
Yep, probably true BPS of most of us. Thank God that God has a sense of humor.
He was a satisfactory entertainer and an interesting person all around. He also did something unusual in that built a sketch program around the domestic lives of ordinary people – people living at the 40th or 45th percentile. (IIRC, the inspiration for the set design wasn’t period housing but Gleason’s childhood home in Brooklyn ca. 1927, so the program did something atypical in film or television – portrayed a household as less affluent than similarly situated people would have been as a rule). Never quite understood why he’s considered a ‘comic genius’, though.
The crumminess of the Kramdens’ apartment was explained. Ralph blew his money on stupid get-rich-quick schemes. The Norton’s apartment was directly upstairs, and nicely furnished.
Ed was buying the good life on credit.
The Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1952 ed. reports that at the time, about 40% of all households lacked a telephone, so that element of the setting was consistent with facts on the ground. However, only 13% lacked a refrigerator, so the Kramden’s ice box was somewhat retro. Interestingly, while refrigerators were the mode, only about 9% of all homes had a freezer. (If my memory serves me, telephones were present in half of all homes ca. 1922, so there wasn’t much additional penetration over the succeeding 30 years).
Interesting to see how prevalent were different sorts of appliances. If we place the Kramden’s at the 40th percentile, we’d expect them to have a clock, an iron, a radio, a refrigerator, a toaster, and a washing machine. Given that they were living in New York, however, they might have done without the washing machine; one of the oddities of life in New York has been that people of quite modest means often do not do their own laundry.
IIRC, some of the selections were made in order to provide a certain structure to the dialogue. Gleason supposedly thought that if the Kramdens had children or the Kramdens had a telephone, the comedy would come to revolve around one or the other, and that was something he did not want.
The very first “Honeymooners” sketch on Cavalcade of Stars, broadcast 28 September 1951, w/ Pert Kelton and Jackie Gleason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UElbm_nDKBQ
Good catch Art! That was hard edged and gritty compared to the later episodes.
He was a personal friend of our mutual hero Fulton Sheen. During the 60s on his color show on Saturday nights in his anniversary special he featured the special appearance from Bishop Sheen. it was because of his Catholicism that he delayed getting a divorce for years, even though he was separated, and apparently not faithful. Finally, when the crisis in the Church hit, he went through with divorces, scandalized by the confusion obvious in contemporary clerical teaching.
Dan Cheely:
If all people realized that it is Jesus Christ Whom they love in all others, their lives would be so much easier to live.
Just watched two Christmastime episodes of the Honeymooners yesterday on one of the rerun channels. Still fun after all these years.