Jackie Gleason, the comedian, actor and musician, was born 105 years ago today.
Gleason was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy style, exemplified by his character Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners. Among his notable film roles were Minnesota Fats in the 1961 drama, The Hustler (starring Paul Newman), and Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit series.
Gleason was born at 364 Chauncey Street in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. He grew up nearby — at 358 Chauncey (an address he later used for Ralph and Alice Kramden on The Honeymooners).
His parents were a subway change-booth attendant and an insurance auditor. Gleason remembered his father as having "beautiful handwriting," as Herbert Gleason often worked at the family's kitchen table writing policies in the evenings.
Gleason’s father suddenly abandoned his family. The night before his disappearance, he disposed of any family photos he was pictured in. Just after noon on December 15, 1925, he collected his hat, coat and paycheck, left his insurance company job and disappeared permanently.
When it was evident to the family that he was not coming back, Gleason’s mother, Mae, went to work for the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT).
After his father left, young Gleason began hanging around on the streets with a local gang and hustling pool. He attended elementary school at P.S. 73 in Brooklyn and attended (but did not graduate from) John Adams High School in Queens and Bushwick High School in Brooklyn.
Gleason became interested in performing after being part of a class play. When he left school, he got a job as master of ceremonies at a theater which paid $4 per night. Other jobs he held included working in a pool hall, employment as a stunt diver and a carnival barker.
Gleason and his friends made the rounds of the local theaters. He put an act together with one of his friends, and the pair performed on amateur night at the Halsey Theater (where Gleason replaced his friend, Sammy Birch, as master of ceremonies). He was also offered the same work two nights a week at the Folly Theater.
Gleason worked his way up to a job at New York's Club 18, where insulting its patrons was the order of the day. Skater Sonja Henie was greeted by Gleason's handing her an ice cube and saying, "Okay, now do something." It was here that Jack Warner first saw Gleason, signing him to a film contract for $250 per week.
By age 24, Gleason was appearing in movies: first for Warner Brothers (as Jackie C. Gleason) in such films as Navy Blues (1941) with Ann Sheridan and Martha Raye and All Through the Night (1941) with Humphrey Bogart.
He then worked for Columbia Pictures for the B military comedy Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1942) and finally for Twentieth Century-Fox, where Gleason played Glenn Miller Orchestra bassist, Ben Beck, in Orchestra Wives (1942).
He also had a small part as a soda shop clerk in Larceny, Inc. (1942) with Edward G. Robinson, and a modest part as a commissioner in the 1942 Betty Grable-Harry James musical, Springtime in the Rockies.
Gleason's big break occurred in 1949, when he landed the role of blunt (but softhearted) aircraft worker, Chester A. Riley, for the first television version of the radio comedy The Life of Riley (William Bendix originated the role on radio, but was unable to accept the television role at first because of film commitments).
The show received modest ratings (despite positive reviews) but was cancelled after one year, with Bendix reprising the role in 1953 for a five year series. The Life of Riley became a television hit for Bendix during the mid to late 1950s.
But long before this, Gleason's nightclub act had received attention from New York City's inner circle and the fledgling DuMont Television Network. He was working at Slapsy Maxie's when he was hired to host DuMont's Cavalcade of Stars variety hour in 1950. The program initially had rotating hosts. The offer first made to Gleason was for two weeks at $750 per week.
When he said he did not consider that worth the train trip to New York, the offer was extended to four weeks. Gleason then returned to New York. He framed the show with splashy dance numbers, developed sketch characters he would refine over the next decade, and became enough of a presence that CBS wooed (and won) him over to its network in 1952.
Renamed The Jackie Gleason Show, it became the country's second-highest-rated television show during the 1954–1955 season. Gleason amplified the show with even splashier opening dance numbers, inspired by Busby Berkeley screen dance routines and featuring the precision-choreographed June Taylor Dancers.
Following the dance performance, he would do an opening monologue. Then, accompanied by "a little travelin' music" ("That's a Plenty," a Dixieland classic from 1914), he would shuffle toward the wings, clapping his hands inversely and shouting, "And awaaay we go!"
The phrase became one of his trademarks, along with "How sweet it is!" (which was used in reaction to almost anything).
By far, Gleason's most popular character was blustery bus driver, Ralph Kramden. Largely drawn from Gleason's harsh Brooklyn childhood, these sketches became known as The Honeymooners and customarily centered on Ralph's many get-rich-quick schemes, his ambition, his scatterbrained sewer-worker neighbor and friend, Ed Norton, and the clashes when sensible wife, Alice, tried pulling her husband's head down from the clouds.
The show also became the birthplace of catchphrases invented by Gleason like his toothless threat, "one of these days Alice, pow! Right in the kisser.“
The Honeymooners originated when Gleason was collaborating on a sketch with his show's writers. He told them he had an idea he had always wanted to work out. A skit with a smart, quiet wife and her very vocal husband. He went on to describe that while the couple had their fights, underneath it all they loved each other. Titles for the sketch were tossed around until someone came up with The Honeymooners.
The Honeymooners first appeared on Cavalcade of Stars on October 5, 1951, with Carney in a guest appearance as a cop (Norton did not appear until a few episodes later) and character actress Pert Kelton as Alice.
Darker and fiercer than they later were with Audrey Meadows as Alice, the sketches proved popular with critics and viewers. As Kramden, Gleason played a frustrated bus driver with a battle-axe of a wife in harrowingly realistic arguments. When Meadows (who was 15 years younger than Kelton) took over the role after Kelton was blacklisted, the tone softened considerably.
Early sketches come as something of a shock to modern critics accustomed to Meadows' Alice.
By 1964, Gleason had moved the production from New York to Miami Beach, Florida, reportedly because he liked year-round access to the golf course at the nearby Inverrary Country Club in Lauderhill (where he built his final home). His closing line became, almost invariably, "As always, the Miami Beach audience is the greatest audience in the world!"
Gleason's comic and acting talents are why Orson Welles nicknamed him "The Great One.”
Gleason disliked rehearsing. With a photographic memory, he read the script once, watched a rehearsal with his co-stars and stand-in, and shot the show later that day. When he made mistakes, he often blamed the cue cards.
Gleason smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. He was also suffering from colon cancer, liver cancer, phlebitis, diabetes and hemorrhoids.
On June 24, 1987, Gleason died at his Florida home.
Here, are some clips of Gleason’s comedy
Jackie Gleason: A Personal Remembrance
It was during the late 1970s and early 80s that I got to know and work with Jackie Gleason in Miami.
Gleason knew of the concept of off-line editing and I had one of the first off-line 3/4-inch U-Matic editing systems at the time in the Miami area. Thus, Gleason hired me to do the off-line editing of the last two episodes of the Honeymooners on 3/4-inch tape.
We quickly ran into a problem. The accuracy of primitive small format editing in those days was plus or minus 30 frames-per-second. Gleason said that wouldn’t work, because his comedy had to be more precise than that. He needed plus or minus two frames a second in order to see if a gag worked or not.
It was not in me to say “no” to Jackie Gleason. So I went to work to figure out a way to do it. No equipment invented at that time could do the level of editing accuracy on U-Matic tape that I needed. (It was to come within a year, but not then.)
To get the edit to within two frames of accuracy, I had to keep trying manually on a hit or miss basis. The edit would have to be random luck. I kept editing the same shot over and over until it got closer to Gleason’s goal. It took hours, days, weeks to finish the job. I was glassy eyed before it was over.
And this, mind you, was a rough cut edit. The on-line editing, done much later, was frame accurate. (And it was far quicker and easier!)
What I learned from working with the Great One is that precise timing is EVERYTHING — in comedy, acting, music and just about anything else. It was a valuable lesson hammered into me that I would always remember.
In the photo above, Gleason and the cast of the Honeymooners in the 1950s in New York. That same set was used years later for the final shows taped on Miami Beach.
