The Honeymooners

Money! Money! Money! The accumulation of financial and social resources was the driving force behind this short lived but great comedy series.

The Honeymooners was the greatest program of television's golden age, better than "I Love Lucy", "Texaco Star Theater", and "Your Show of Shows" . I've seen "I Love Lucy" reruns many times and clips of the other two great programs, and "Jackie Gleason's "Honeymooners" a spin off from his classic variety series is still my favorite.

Gleason's ever popular character Ralph Kramden is one of life's lovable and colorful losers. He's always looking for that get- rich- quick scheme that will pull him as his loving wife Alice (Audrey Meadows) out of the doldrums of East Chauncey Street in Brooklyn, to the Penthouses on Park Avenue. He always means well for himself and his wife Alice, but does foolish things to make a bad situation for him and Alice worse.

During all of his foolish endeavors he recruits his 'ol Pal Norton, as kind of like an insurance policy to subliminally tell Alice, "Hey I wasn't the only fool who thought he could invent No-Cal pizza." Norton (Art Carney) is one goofy dude. He has like a sixth sense when it comes to A) Keeping friendships, B)Doing inappropriate things only to remind Ralph of some of these foolish get rich quick schemes,C)Creating problems for Ralph without knowing what he's doing and D) not saying inappropriate things when the friendship itself is at stake.

Among my favorite episodes when Ralph's get-rich-quick schemes nearly send him and Alice to the moon are "Funny Money", "Better Living Through TV", "Opportunity Knocks, But", "Dial J For Janitor", and the all time classic, "The $99,000 Answer" when Ralph things he's going to win a fortune on a game show. He practices learning music like a madman then falls flat on his face on National TV because he forgot to ask Norton a simple but important question relating to a music writer.

There are also other classic episodes like "TV or Not TV" where Ralph is too frugal to buy Alice a television set, then goes halves with Norton, and eventually becomes obsessed with television. Norton is hilarious during his "Captain Video" monologue.

In "Oh, My Aching Back", Ralph throws his back out bowling, and has to hide the sad fact from Alice that he might fail his employment physical because of it. Hiding Ralph's painful condition from Alice, Norton plays doctor and takes Ralph's temperature. "What's my temperature NORTON!!" exclaims Ralph. "A Hundred and Eleven!!" cries out Norton, not aware that if you put a cigarette lighter to the thermometer it raises the temperature.

In "Please Leave the Premisis", Ralph decides to play hardball with a greedy landlord, and winds up out in the cold. Ralph says he's being brave and defiant like General George Washington, and that there "will be no deserters is his army",meaning he, Alice and Norton have to remain in the cold without utilities. Unfortunately General Cornwallis wins this round over George Washington, and Martha convinces George to pay the rent increase.

Jackie Gleason, Audrey Meadows, Art Carney, and Joyce Randolph (as Norton's wife) had great chemistry together, as Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden really took us to the moon.

Whether it's one of the classic 39 or one of the lost episodes, I always have a blast when I watch this show. It is one of the best shows ever to grace television. Everyone on the show was hilarious whether it was Ralph as the big mouthed, short tempered husband, Ed as the goofy upstairs neighbor or Alice and Trixie as the wives who always tried to keep them in line. It never fails to make me laugh out loud when I watch this show and I'd recommend it to anyone who needs a good laugh.

What a classic comedy and television show....as a kid in the 50s I and my pals and brother and sister and parents would make sure we got the TV turned on at least 5 minutes or so early to watch "The Honeymooners"....could there possibly be a greater acting talent than Jackie Gleason...what role could he not handle....Ralph Kramden, Joe the Bartender, Reginald Van Gleason, the sad soul, and his acting in "The Hustler" with Paul Newman is near genius. He even nearly topped his Ralph Kramden role in the late 70s with Burt Reynolds in "Smokey and the Bandit"....there may never be another comedian like him. My favorite Honeymooners episode is when Ralph is planning to go on a TV show identifying popular and classical songs and has Norton in his apartment on a piano playing lead ins so Ralph can name the song....as a warmup Norton has to play "Suwanee River" to start every new song, much to Ralph's chagrin....guess what? Ralph is asked on the TV show t name that song - "Suwanee River" and cant do it....oh lord, we all laughed so loud at that episode the roof nearly caved in on our house...and the episode when Ralph finds a suitcase full of money on a bus and starts recklessly spending all of it without turning it in....you will split a gut watching that episode too..and then when demanded Alice would sit at the kitchen table and Ralph would start his mamby pamby woe is me facial expressions and try to gesture to Alice with his hand waving....on Lord, this is absolutely comedy at it's absolute best...only other TV comedy that could hold a candle to the Honeymooners was Amos-n-Andy from the early 50s with the Kingfish and Andy Brown. Went to a local store and bought all 39 episodes and tear up watching each one. Sadly today (2008) Joyce Randolph is the only living member of cast...timeless comedy......

Jackie Gleason is one of the greatest talents in the history of American show business. His comic takes and blowhard act has produced so many professional and amateur imitators that none even has to question who or what you are imitating. Art Carney is one of America's greatest character actors. He created the greatest side-kick anyone ever had, a character with so many quirks you could probably build a show around him. Together they make one of the greatest comedy teams ever.

But what makes this work is Audrey Meadows as Alice. When the Honeymooners first began, Ralph's wife was played by Pert Kelton, a battle ax of an actress who is just the kind of wife Ralph Cramden would wind up with in real life. The original skits were really comic 'fly on the wall' looks at the arguments the loudest neighbors in the neighborhood keep having. They were amusing enough to keep the skits going but there wasn't enough of a counterpoint to Ralph. His battles with Alice resembled Ralph's later battles with Alice's mother, (which Kelton came back, more appropriately, to play in the 60's series).

When Gleason moved to CBS in 1952, Kelton was unavailable for health reasons and Gleason had to find a new Alice. Audrey Meadows, a glamour girl who worked with all the top comedians of television's golden era, decided she wanted the job. The now-famous story is that Jackie turned her down because he couldn't picture Meadows as Ralph Kramden's proletarian wife. Audrey had a friend photograph her in her kitchen just after she woke up and had the photo sent to Jackie, who immediately declared the woman in the picture to be 'his Alice' and demanded to know who the actress was. When he found out, Audrey had the job and 'The Honeymooners' became a TV classic.

Meadows offered something Kelton didn't: a CONTRAST to Ralph, rather than a fellow gladiator. She was not only attractive, (if not allowed to be glamorous), but she was intelligent and non-abrasive, even if she had the strength to stand up to Ralph and give as good as she got in the battles. More than that, it became obvious why Ralph was such a dreamer and a blowhard. How did a guy like him ever get a woman like Alice to love him and marry him?

He spends all his time either promoting himself and trying to be 'The King of the Castle' or scheming to become rich and important. It's the only way he knew to be big enough to deserve Alice. What he didn't know is that Alice offered him that rarity, unconditional love. Ralph didn't have to be a 'big man' to please her. He just had to be Ralph. He finds that out at the end of every episode but forgets it again in time for the next show, because if he didn't, they'd have no plot.

Strengthened by this theme, the writes got more and more ambitious and The Honeymooners did stories of increasingly greater length, eventually taking up the whole show. Ralph Cramden became Gleason's most popular character because he was so human. He had much more dimension that Reggie Van Gleason, The Poor Soul, Charley Bratton or Joe the Bartender, as entertaining as they were. This in turn, led to the Classic 39, which became the flagship for the series and kept 'The Honeymooners' alive for decades after most of the Golden Age of Television had faded from memory.

Poor bus driver Ralph (Gleason), he's got all these little guy dreams in a big guy world. But no matter how many times his big dreams fail, he's ready to try again. Good thing he's got his Alice (Meadows). She's the sensible bedrock holding things together, even in that dumpy little flat where nothing is put between us and the characters of this classic comedy series. In fact, her deadpan face-offs with a bellowing Ralph are real hoots. But she better be a rock because "sanitation engineer" and upstairs neighbor Norton (Carney) falls for every one of Ralph's cockamamie schemes. It doesn't matter how loony they are, good old Ed will go along, a real buddy. Together, the two of them get a ton of laughs out of the kind of unlovely jobs that hold us all together. And shouldn't overlook Trixie (Randolph). She's there to support Alice and keep Ed from spiraling off with Ralph. Maybe there's not many laughs from Trixie, but there is a lot of good solid support. No doubt, it may be the men we laugh at, but it's the women we respect. And if there was ever better chemistry, more underlying pathos, or more laughs in a comedy series of any decade, I haven't seen it. A genuine blue-collar classic from an unlikely white-collar decade.