Jackie Gleason - Wikipedia. Jackie Gleason. Born.
John Herbert Gleason(1. February 2. 6, 1. 1988 Jackie Gleason~WCBS tv Special The GREAT ONE~ New York City Tv promo Ad FOR SALE. 1988 Jackie Gleason~WCBS tv Special The GREAT ONE~ New York City Tv promo Ad. Jackie Gleason: The Great One. Title: Jackie Gleason: The Great One (TV Movie 1988). Jackie Gleason Movie Reviews & Film Summaries. Brooklyn, New York, U. S. Died. June 2. 4, 1. Lauderhill, Florida, United States. Cause of death. Colorectal cancer. Occupation. Actorcomedianmusicianwriter. Years active. 19. He was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy style, exemplified by his character Ralph Kramden in the television series The Honeymooners. Movie: Jackie Gleason: The Great One (1988) info with movie soundtracks, credited songs, film score albums, reviews, news. Movies & TV; Soundtracks; Composers. Jackie Gleason (aka Jackie C. Jackie Gleason: The Great One (1988) (TV. By filming the episodes with Electronicam, Gleason later could release the series in syndication, building its popularity over the years with new audiences. He also developed The Jackie Gleason Show, which had the second- highest ratings in the country 1. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit series from 1. Burt Reynolds. Early life. On the night of December 1. Gleason's father disposed of any family photos in which he appeared; just after noon on December 1. When it was evident he was not coming back, Mae went to work as a subway attendant for the Brooklyn. 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 that paid $4 per night. Other jobs he held included working in a pool hall, as a stunt driver, and as a carnival barker. He was also offered the same work two nights a week at the Folly Theater. When she died in 1. Jackie had tried to lance), Gleason was 1. The family of his first girlfriend, Julie Dennehy, offered to take him in; Gleason, however, was headstrong and insisted he was going into the heart of the city. Birch also told him of a one- week job in Reading, Pennsylvania, that would pay $1. Gleason could imagine. The booking agent advanced him bus fare for the trip against his salary. This was Gleason's first job as a professional comedian, and he had regular work in a number of small clubs after that. Gleason greeted noted skater Sonja Henie by handing her an ice cube and saying, . Warner first saw Gleason, signing him to a film contract for $2. Gleason) in such films as Navy Blues (1. Ann Sheridan and Martha Raye and All Through the Night (1. Humphrey Bogart, for Columbia Pictures for the B military comedy Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1. Twentieth Century- Fox, where Gleason played Glenn Miller Orchestra bassist Ben Beck in Orchestra Wives (1. He also had a small part as a soda shop clerk in Larceny, Inc. Robinson, and a modest part as an actor's agent in the 1. Betty Grable. At the end of 1. Gleason and Lew Parker led a large cast of entertainers in the road show production of Olsen and Johnson's New 1. Hellzapoppin. His pals at Lindy's watched him spend money as fast as he soaked up the booze. While working in films in California, Gleason also worked at former boxer Maxie Rosenbloom's nightclub (Slapsy Maxie's, on Wilshire Boulevard). Riley for the first television version of the radio comedy The Life of Riley. Bendix reprised the role in 1. He was working at Slapsy Maxie's when he was hired. When he responded it was not worth the train trip to New York, the offer was extended to four weeks. Gleason returned to New York for the show. Following the dance performance, he would do an opening monologue. Then, accompanied by . Ray Bloch was Gleason's first music director, followed by Sammy Spear, who stayed with Gleason through the 1. Gleason often kidded both men during his opening monologues. He continued developing comic characters, including. Reginald Van Gleason III, a top- hatted millionaire with a taste for both the good life and fantasy. Rudy the Repairman, boisterous and boorish. Joe the Bartender, gregarious and with friendly words for the never- seen Mr. Dennehy (always first at the bar)The Poor Soul, a silent character who could (and often did) come to grief in the least- expected places (or demonstrated gratitude at such gifts as being allowed to share a newspaper on a subway)Rum Dum, a character with a brush- like mustache who often stumbled around as though drunk and confused. Fenwick Babbitt, a friendly, addle- headed young man usually depicted working at various jobs and invariably failing. Charlie Bratton, a loudmouth who frequently picked on the mild- mannered Clem Finch (portrayed by Art Carney, a future Honeymooners co- star)The Bachelor, a silent character (accompanied by the song . Dennehy whom Joe the Bartender greets is a tribute to Gleason's first love, Julie Dennehy. The character of The Poor Soul was drawn from an assistant manager of an outdoor theater he frequented. With a photographic memory. When he made mistakes, he often blamed the cue cards. Largely drawn from Gleason's harsh Brooklyn childhood, these sketches became known as The Honeymooners. The show was based on Ralph's many get- rich- quick schemes, his ambition, antics with his best friend and neighbor, scatterbrained sewer worker Ed Norton, and clashes with sensible wife Alice, who typically pulled Ralph's head down from the clouds. Gleason developed catchphrases he used on The Honeymooners, such as threats to Alice: . He said he had an idea he wanted to enlarge: 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. Darker and fiercer than the milder later version with Audrey Meadows as Alice, the sketches proved popular with critics and viewers. As Kramden, Gleason played a frustrated bus driver with a battleaxe of a wife in harrowingly realistic arguments; when Meadows (who was 1. Kelton) took over the role after Kelton was blacklisted, the tone softened considerably. Modern critics accustomed to Meadows' Alice are shocked if they see Kelton's early sketches. Gleason reluctantly let her leave the cast, with a cover story for the media that she had . At first he turned down Meadows as Kelton's replacement. Meadows wrote in her memoir that she slipped back to audition again and frumped herself up to convince Gleason that she could handle the role of a frustrated (but loving) working- class wife. Rounding out the cast, Joyce Randolph played Trixie, Ed Norton's wife. Elaine Stritch had played the role as a tall and attractive blonde in the first sketch, but was quickly replaced by Randolph. Comedy writer Leonard Stern always felt The Honeymooners was more than sketch material and persuaded Gleason to make it into a full hour- long episode. In 1. 95. 5 Gleason gambled on making it a separate series entirely. A decade later, he aired the half- hour Honeymooners in syndicated reruns that began to build a loyal and growing audience, making the show a television icon. Its popularity was such that in 2. Jackie Gleason, in uniform as bus driver Ralph Kramden, was installed outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. Musical work. Gleason believed there was a ready market for romantic instrumentals. His goal was to make . Henry III wrote in his 1. The Great One: The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason, that beyond the possible conceptualizing of many of the song melodies, Gleason had no direct involvement (such as conducting) in making the recordings. Red Nichols, a jazz great who had fallen on hard times and led one of the group's recordings, was not paid as session- leader. Cornetist and trumpeter Bobby Hackett soloed on the albums and was leader for seven of them. Asked late in life by musician. I have seen him conduct a 6. He would immediately stop the music and locate the wrong note. It always amazed the professional musicians how a guy who technically did not know one note from another could do that. And he was never wrong. He won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. Return to television. Gleason planned the design of the house for two years; it was completed in 1. He also added another catchphrase to the American vernacular, first uttered in the 1. Papa's Delicate Condition: . Each show began with Gleason delivering a monologue and commenting on the attention- getting outfits of band leader Sammy Spear. Comedian Alice Ghostley occasionally appeared as a downtrodden tenement resident, sitting on her front step and listening to boorish boyfriend Gleason for several minutes. After the boyfriend took his leave, the smitten Ghostley would exclaim, . Helen Curtis played alongside him as a singer and actress, delighting audiences with her 'Madame Plumpadore' sketches with 'Reginald Van Gleason.'The final sketch was always set in Joe the Bartender's saloon, with Joe singing . Dennehy (the TV audience, as Gleason spoke to the camera in this section). During the sketch, Joe would tell Dennehy about an article he had read in the fictitious . It had two covers: one featured the New York skyline and the other palm trees (after the show moved to Florida in 1. Joe would bring out Frank Fontaine as Crazy Guggenheim, who would regale Joe with the latest adventures of his neighborhood pals and sometimes show Joe his current Top Cat comic book. Joe usually asked Crazy to sing. His closing line became, almost invariably, . Carney returned as Ed Norton, with Mac. Rae as Alice and Kean as Trixie. The sketches were remakes of the 1. Kramden and Norton win a slogan contest and take their wives to international destinations. Each of the nine episodes was a full- scale musical comedy, with Gleason and company performing original songs by Lyn Duddy and Jerry Bresler. Occasionally Gleason would devote the show to musicals with a single theme, such as college comedy or political satire, with the stars abandoning their Honeymooners roles for different character roles. This was the show's format until its cancellation in 1. The musicals pushed Gleason back into the top five in ratings, but audiences soon began to decline. By its final season, Gleason's show was no longer in the top 2. In the last original Honeymooners episode aired on CBS (.
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