The Honeymooners centred on New York City bus driver Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) and his wife Alice Kramden (Audrey Meadows). Ralph often wants a better life and, as a result, comes up with various get-rich-quick schemes. He has something of a temper, although underneath all the bluster he is a soft-hearted man who loves his wife and his best friend. Of the couple. Alice is the level-headed one. She manages their finances. She responds to both Ralph's schemes and his tantrums with sarcasm, and even though Ralph often ignores her advice, she is more often than not right. Ralph's best friend is Ed Norton (Art Carney), a New York City sewer worker. He is rather good-natured and carefree, and often gets involved in Ralph's get-rich-quick schemes. His wife Trixie (Joyce Randolph) was Alice's best friend and tended to dominate Ed at times.
The Honeymooners originated as a series of sketches on the DuMont television show Cavalcade of Stars. Cavalcade of Stars was originally hosted by Jack Carter and then Jerry Lester. It was on July 15, 1950 that Jackie Gleason became the show's host. Jackie Gleason had been the show's host for little more than a year when he and Harry Crane and Joe Bigelow came up with a sketch inspired by the popular radio show The Bickersons. The sketch would centre on a couple who argued, but in the end loved each other deeply. Jackie Gleason wanted the sketch to be a somewhat realistic depiction of a poor married couple living in Brooklyn. Such titles as The Beast, The Couple Next Door, and The Lovers were considered before they settled on The Honeymooners.
The first Honeymooners sketch aired on Cavalcade of the Stars on October 5, 1951. In that first sketch, Jackie Gleason played the role of Ralph Kramden, while Alice was played by Pert Kelton. Art Carney appeared in that sketch, but as a police officer rather than Ed Norton. Eventually, the characters of Ed and Trixie Norton would be added to the sketches. Ed was played by Art Carney from the beginning, but Trixie was originally played by Elaine Stritch. Elaine Stritch was replaced after one appearance because her style of humour was too much like Jackie Gleason's. Joyce Randolph then took over the role. Mr. Gleason had noticed her in a commercial for Clorets.
A bigger cast change in the sketches would be the replacement of Pert Kelton by Audrey Meadows. Pert Kelton and her husband were listed in Red Channels, a document purporting to list alleged Communists and fellow travellers in the entertainment industry. She remained on Cavalcade of Stars for some time after being listed in Red Channels, but she was ultimately removed from the sketches in January 1952. Audrey Meadows had appeared on Broadway in Top Banana and had been a regular on The Bob and Ray Show. When she tried out for the role of Alice, Jackie Gleason initially rejected her because he thought she was "too pretty." She then had a photographer take pictures of her with no makeup, with her hair a mess, wearing an old housecoat. She posed in a kitchen with a frying pan. The photos convinced Jackie Gleason to cast Audrey Meadows as Alice.
In the summer of 1952, Jackie Gleason's contract with DuMont was set to expire. It was then that CBS lured him away from the smaller network with a significantly higher salary. It was on September 20, 1952 that The Jackie Gleason Show debuted on CBS. Given their popularity, it should come as no surprise that The Honeymooners sketches made the transition to the new network. If anything, on The Jackie Gleason Show, the sketches proved even more popular than they had been on Cavalcade of Stars. Running from seven to thirteen minutes in the first season of The Jackie Gleason Show, by the show's second season Honeymooners sketches were running as long as half an hour. By the third season, some episodes of The Jackie Gleason Show were entirely dominated by Honeymooners sketches. Mostly because of The Honeymooners sketches, The Jackie Gleason Show ranked no. 2 in the ratings for the year during its third season, surpassed only by I Love Lucy.
It was the continued popularity of The Honeymooners sketches that led to the classic sitcom. With Jackie Gleason's three-year contract with CBS set to expire, CBS and the Buick division of General Motors offered Jackie Gleason an even bigger contract, reportedly worth $11 million. The contract required Jackie Gleason to produce 78 episodes of the sitcom The Honeymooners over two seasons. There was also an option for a third season of 39 episodes. During the first season, he would receive $65,000 per episode in the first season and then $70,000 per episode in the second, although he was required to pay for all production costs out of that money. Jackie Gleason was not the only one who profited from the deal for a new Honeymooners sitcom. Art Carney received $3,500 per week, while Audrey Meadows received $2000 per week. On top of this, she also insisted on residuals for the series, so that in the end she became rich from the show. Joyce Randolph, who didn't appear in every episode, received $500 per episode.
The Honeymooners was filmed live in front of a studio audience at the DuMont Television Network's Adelphi Theatre in Manhattan. Episodes were filmed with a minimum of rehearsing, as Jackie Gleason thought rehearsals would rob episodes of spontaneity. Episodes were shot using the DuMont Television Network's Electronicam. In the days before videotape, Electronicam was a system that made capturing live performances on film easier. In the end, recordings of The Honeymooners would have better sound and picture quality than other live shows shot using kinescope.
As The Honeymooners portrayed a poor, working-class couple, it featured the most basic of sets. The Kramdens' apartment was sparsely furnished. What is more, it apparently had only two rooms. There was the main room that was used as a living room, dining room, and kitchen, and then the bedroom, which was never seen. Jackie Gleason wanted it to resemble the Chauncey Street apartment in which he had grown up. The Norotns' apartment was similar, although they had a few more amenities. While Ed Norton made the same amount of money as Ralph, he was also notorious for paying things on credit.
The sitcom The Honeymooners was lighter in tone than the original sketches, particularly in their early days. Particularly in the earliest sketches, not only was Ralph Kramden bitter about his station in life, but also about being married. Alice was quarrelsome and abrasive. Once Audrey Meadows was cast as Alice, the sketches became less mean-spirited and more sentimental, evolving into something closer to the sitcom.
Given that the Classic 39 episodes of the sitcom The Honeymooners are not only considered superior to The Honeymooners sketches that came before and after them, but the sitcom The Honeymooners is among the greatest sitcoms of all time, it might seem surprising today that the show's reviews were initially mixed to positive. John R. Callaghan in his October 20, 1955 "Words and Music' column in the Press-Telegram from Long Beach, California stated, "There are those who feel that Gleason dropping his full-hour live variety show in favor of the half-hour Honeymooners on film has lost something...including some viewers." The New York Times described the show as, "...even not likely to worry Frank Sinatra or Dinah Shore." If anything, the trade publication Broadcasting & Telecasting was even more critical, writing, "The Jackie Gleason Show died October 1. Services haven't been held yet, but the body's cooling. Barring some rejuvenation by CBS, it's only a matter of time." TV Guide gave the show a positive review, referring to it as "a rollicking, slapsticky, fast-paced situation comedy..." No less than Steve Allen liked the show, writing in his 1956 book The Funny Men, "The Honeymooners is as wonderfully funny as ever...."
Viewers also seemed to have a mixed reaction to the sitcom version of The Honeymooners. The show started strong in the ratings upon its debut, but slipped in the Nielsens as the season passed. It perhaps did not help that it was scheduled against high-rated The Perry Como Show, which ranked no. 18 for the season. In the end, while The Jackie Gleason Show had ranked no. 2 in the ratings during the previous season, The Honeymooners ranked a still respectable no. 19 for the year. Indeed, the ratings were good enough that the show probably would have had a second season. It was Jackie Gleason, rather than CBS, who brought the show to an end.
After producing "the Classic 39," Jackie Gleason felt that he and his team had run out of original ideas for the show and that he and his writers simply could not keep on producing scripts at the quality that they had. It was then with the 1956-1957 season that Jackie Gleason returned to his hour-long variety show, of which The Honeymooners sketches would continue to be a part.
As to the sitcom, it accomplished something very few single-season shows have ever accomplished. It had a successful run as a syndicated rerun. It aired on WPIX in New York, WFLD in Chicago, KTLA in Los Angeles, KDFI in Dallas, and many other television stations across the United States through the years. It would later air on such cable channels as TBS, TV Land, WGN, and yet others. It currently airs on the digital broadcast networks MeTV and Catchy Comedy.
For many years, while the "Classic 39" were being endlessly repeated on local television stations, new Honeymooners sketches were being produced on Jackie Gleason's shows. Over time the casts in these new sketches would change. It was in 1966 that Sheila McRae took over the role of Alice from Audrey Meadows and Jane Kean took over the role of Trixie from Jane Randolph. It was in 1990 that Audrey Hepburn hosted The Honeymooners Anniversary Special, which featured clips from the show and interviews with Art Carney and Joyce Randolph. Jackie Gleason had died in 1987.
While the sitcom The Honeymooners only had moderate success upon its debut, through repeated airings on television over the years it has since become regarded as a classic. That is not to say that the show has not had some criticism over the years. The show has been criticized for Ralph's lines, "One of these days ... One of these days ... Pow! right in the kisser!" and "To the moon, Alice!," often uttered while he was arguing with Alice. At least since the Eighties, these lines have been viewed as offensive, and even as demonstrating an acceptance of domestic violence. In a 1985 interview with CBS News, Audrey Meadows addressed the lines, mentioning that "He never did touch her. There was no violence there. It was his way of letting off steam, and that's it." At the same time, she admitted that the lines would not work anymore. Some have pointed out that even when Ralph made such threats, Alice never backed down. Quite simply, she knew he would never carry out such threats, as the two loved each other far too much. Indeed, one of Ralph's best-known catchphrases, uttered as he embraced his wife, was, "Baby, you're the greatest."
The Honeymooners has left behind a considerable legacy. DC Comics published 12 issues of Jackie Gleason and The Honeymooners from 1956 to 1958. Warner Bros. produced three animated theatrical shorts parodying The Honeymooners: 'The Honey-Mousers" (1956), "Cheese It, the Cat!" (1957), and "Mice Foolies" (1960). The Hanna-Barbera animated series The Flintstones drew upon The Honeymooners to such a degree that Jackie Gleason later said that he had considered suing Hanna-Barbera, but did not do so because he didn't want to be known as "the guy who yanked Fred Flintstone off the air." The sitcom The King of Queens owed some inspiration to The Honeymooners. It has been parodied on everything from Moonlighting to The Simpsons. In 2005 a feature film based on the show, starring Cedric the Entertainer as Ralph and Mike Epps as Norton, was released.
Since its debut, The Honeymooners has come to be regarded as one of the greatest shows of all time. In 2002, TV Guide ranked it at no. 3 on their list of their "50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time," after Seinfeld and I Love Lucy. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America included it at no. 31 on their list of the 101 Best Written Shows of All Time. IGN included The Honeymooners at no. 71 on their list of the Top 100 TV Shows of All Time. The Honeymooners may not have been a huge success upon its debut, but it has since come to be regarded as one of the greatest all-time shows. People will probably still be watching it 60 years from now.
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