(Originally published by the Daily News on June 25, 1987. This story was written by Kay Gardella.)
Jackie Gleason was my generation’s Diamond Jim Brady.
Bigger than life and meticulously dressed – always with a flower in his lapel – he was one of the last of the big spenders.
He loved a good time, could party late as long as a Dixieland band was playing in the background and he could outdrink the best of them.
“But never on show day,” as his sidekick, Art Carney, would say.
As a young writer on the beat, I’d often frequent Toots Shor’s, the place to be seen in those days, but mainly because I knew Gleason would be sitting in the corner with his buddies: the late Bob Considine, sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, Toots, of course, and sometimes even Mickey Mantle or Billy Martin.
For hours they’d trade stories, each trying to top the other, but seldom could any one top Gleason.
One of his favorite yarns was about the time, early in his career, when he worked for so little as a comedian at an Asbury Park club he couldn’t pay his boarding house rent.
To beat the bill, he put on a robe over his clothes and walked through the lobby as though he were headed for a swim. When he returned to pay the bill three years later, he said, they told him they thought he had drowned.
Jim Bacon, author of “How Sweet It Is”, Gleason’s biography, recalled the other day similar story that happened in L.A.’s Villa Capri, a since-closed restaurant then run by Patsy D’Amore, an ex-vaudevillian.
A $5,000 tab
Frank Sinatra introduced Gleason to the place and Jackie soon became a regular patron while he was making the first TV version of “The Life of Riley.”
“Every night was New Year’s Eve,” recalled Bacon. “Gleason would buy drinks for everybody and then sign the bill. By the time the series ran the year, he had a $5,000 tab outstanding.
“Patsy never dunned him for it. ‘He’s a-gonna pay,” he’d say. Then one day, when Gleason returned to the West Coast, he stopped in for a spaghetti dinner. When it was time to pay, he asked Patsy for a pen.
“Patsy thought he was going to sign the tab again, but instead he wrote a check for $6,000. ‘I’m a big tipper,’ he told him.”
For 39 episodes
Gleason was a high liver, and his generosity was legendary. Art Carney once told me how much he owed Gleason, with whom he costarred in “The Honeymooners” for 39 episodes.
‘He gave me complete freedom professionally,” said Carney. “In doing so, he got the best result out of me. He knew I was never after his job or trying to top him. But he appreciated my talents. That’s the way he was with people whom he trusted.”
Carney, who started working with Gleason on the old Dumont “Cavalcade of Stars,” recalled how the three networks were vying for Gleason.
‘I’m taking you with me’
“‘If I go to one of them,’ he told me, ‘I’m taking you with me.’ The salary he named floored me, it was such a generous sum,” he said. “That’s when Gleason signed his $11 million contract with CBS.”
Not long ago, Carney and Gleason were reunited in the CBS-TV production “Izzy and Moe,” a drama set in the Prohibition era. Not their best work, granted, but Carney was happy to have worked with him again.
He had great and accurate insights into his friend, who, he says, was not the “extravert the world though he was. I was closest to him when we were actually working. I’m an introvert and Jackie was very much like me.”
One would not guess this if he were around in the ’60s for Gleason’s famous train ride from California to Florida, which I joined in New York.
Pullman cars were packed with stars and press. A Dixieland band blasted all night as people partied and laughed their way to the Sun Belt. Everything was done on a large scale, the only way The Great One understood.
What few people realized at the time was that Gleason would only travel coast to coast by train. He hated flying. This time he brought everybody along for the ride.
Another thing he hated to do was rehearse. He was notorious for showing up at showtime but always being prepared.
Carney recalled a time when an actor, appearing with them on “The Honeymooners,” wanted to know after a script run-through when the dress rehearsal would be.
“That’s it,” said Carney. “Where’s Gleason?” the actor then asked. “You’ll meet him on the air,” said Art.
Over the years, doing interviews with The Great One, one saw many sides to this multitalented man. My first interview with him took place in the old Versailles, a nightclub, where he took me and his two young daughters, Geraldine and Linda, now grown women, to see Edith Piaf.
One always felt special being in Gleason’s company.
In meetings with him he’d talk about religion and his Catholicism, his interest in the more esoteric perception, music, of course, which he loved, and how he’d get ideas for his writings and compositions.
I remember him explaining that he got the inspiration for his favorite film, “Gigot,” from the sound of the police cars in Paris. An insomniac, Gleason was an avid reader and there was no subject he couldn’t discuss.
An actor, writer, composer, orchestra leader and comedian, he took joy in the accomplishments that stretched his talents, like “Gigot” or his numerous and successful musical albums.
When his first, “Music for Lovers Only,” was recorded, Carney recalls his standing at window of his suite in the Park Sheraton, looking out the window, as the romantic music played on the phonograph. Without turning around, he commented to Carney: “You are listening to my first pair of long pants.”
He had grown up artistically, in his view. In the view of many of us who loved him, both in life and on films and TV, who’ll remember the joy and laughter he brought to us over the years, he’ll always be one of the world’s most creative and generous talents.
And to this writer, he’ll always be Diamond Jim Brady. Wherever he is, he’s picking up the tab.
