One of these days — pow! Right to the history books!
“The Honeymooners,” the beloved sitcom that introduced America to working-class Brooklyn , celebrates its 60th anniversary Thursday.
But for the sole surviving Honeymooner — and the show’s dedicated fans — the legendary comedy never grows old.
“Back then, we never knew for a second that we’d last for all these years, that the show would endure,” Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie, told the Daily News. “People loved it at the time, and it just has gone on and on. Here we are, 60 years later, still talking about it.”
The 90-year-old Detroit native was just 18 when she moved to New York City in 1943. Jackie Gleason cast her in “The Honeymooners” — first a skit on his variety show and later its own half-hour series — after he spotted her in a chewing gum commercial.
The black-and-white sitcom, which featured Gleason as blowhard Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden, aired just 39 original episodes between 1955 and 1956.
“We’re talking about a truly timeless comedy,” said Bob Columbe, co-president of the Royal Association for the Longevity and Preservation of “The Honeymooners,” a now-defunct fan club. “I’ve seen each over literally hundreds of times. I know the joke is coming, and I still laugh.”
The society, shortened to R.A.L.P.H., attracted as many as 26,000 international members, including celebrities Cyndi Lauper and Bruce Springsteen, after it was founded in 1983. It shuttered in 1987, following Gleason’s death.
When it debuted, “The Honeymooners” spoke to working-class Americans who saw their own lives inside the characters’. Decades later, the 1980s fan club resonated with professionals who grew up watching the show and were nostalgic for their childhoods. And even today, new audiences are still laughing at the ageless jokes.
“It appeals to everyone,” Randolph said. “Jackie was everyman. Everybody can get something out of it.”
Spontaneity drove the live show, making the comedy more authentic and the theater more energized.
The four stars — Gleason, Randolph, Audrey Meadows as Alice Kramden and Art Carney as Ed Norton — got the scripts 24 hours before the taping. Gleason, a control-freak who oversaw every aspect of the show, wouldn’t let the actors near the writers, so the scripts’ contents were always a surprise, Randolph said.
On Fridays, the whole cast would get just one rehearsal — Gleason retreated to his dressing room after a single dry run — before the taping in front of a live audience at 8 p.m.
“It was always stressful! We sort of did it like a play,” Randolph said.
The lack of preparation was all part of Gleason’s plan, Peter Crescenti, R.A.L.P.H.’s other co- president, told the Daily News.
“Gleason believed in live entertainment. He knew the value of a live audience laughing. He knew how powerful that kind of energy was. It was much more rewarding for a performer to be preforming in front of a live audience, than it was for them to talk to an empty studio,” he said.
Gleason kept his jokes top-secret: During that single rehearsal, the star would often talk around his lines instead of giving them directly. Only the actors and the writers knew exactly what would go down on stage Friday night.
“He wanted even the camera men to be laughing. Even the crew would be hearing the jokes for the first time,” he said.
Without rigorous rehearsal, goofs were inevitable. But that just added to the show’s charm, Crescenti said.
The four were great adlibbers. In one episode, when a friend knocked over a tray of cookies, Carney blurted out “leave it there, the cat will get it,” a quick improvisation that sent Gleason into a fit of laughter as he repeated the line to Meadows, whose sharp-tongued character scoffed at her blubbering husband.
“You’ve got three-fourths of the cast playing off that single adlib,” Crescenti said. “It was magical — their dynamic, the chemistry. It all just worked.”
