WIKIPEDIA: Jackie Gleason's first big break arrived in 1949, when he landed the role of blunt but softhearted aircraft worker Chester A. Riley for the first television version of the radio hit The Life of Riley. (William Bendix originated the role on radio, but was unable to take the television role at first because of film commitments.) The show received modest ratings but positive reviews; however, Gleason, according to Metz, left the show, thinking he could do better things.
The Life of Riley finally became a television hit in the early 1950s with William Bendix in the role he popularized on radio; this version has been widely rebroadcast. A film-originated program, the original Gleason version survives, but episodes have rarely been aired on cable television. By that time, however, Gleason's nightclub act began receiving attention from New York City's inner circle and the small DuMont Television Network.
"And awaaay we go!"
Gleason was hired to host DuMont's Cavalcade of Stars variety hour in 1950, balancing glitzy entertainment with his comic versatility. 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 their network in 1952 (his show was one of DuMont's few major hits).
Renamed The Jackie Gleason Show, it soon became the country's second-highest-rated television show. 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 did an opening monologue. Then, accompanied by "a little travelin' music" ("That's A-Plenty," a Dixieland chestnut from 1914), he would shuffle toward the wing, clapping his hands inversely and hollering, "And awaaay we go!" The phrase became one of his trademarks and a national catchphrase. Theona Bryant, former Powers Model , became Gleason's "And awaaay we go," girl logo opening to sold out audiences. Ray Bloch was Gleason's first music director, followed by Sammy Spear, who stayed with Gleason through the 1960s; Gleason often kidded both men during his opening monologues.
Gleason continued developing comic characters, including Reginald Van Gleason III, the top-hatted millionaire with a taste for both the good life ("Ummmmmmm-boy! That's good booze!") and the wild invention or fantasy; boisterous, boorish Rudy the Repairman; gregarious Joe the Bartender, with friendly words for the never-seen Mr. Dennehy, who always entered his bar first; and, especially, the Poor Soul, a silent character who could and often did come to grief in the least expected places or show sweet gratitude at things no more complicated than being allowed to share a newspaper on a subway. He also used pantomime in portraying the bumbling Rum Dum, a character with a brush-like mustache who often stumbled around as if he were drunk and confused.
A regular riot: The Honeymoon begins
By far his most popular character was blustery bus driver Ralph Kramden, who lived with his tart but tenderhearted wife, Alice Kramden, in a two-room Brooklyn walkup, one floor below his best friend, sense-challenged New York City sewer worker Ed Norton ("The first time I took the test for the sewer, I flunked. I couldn't even float!") and his likewise tart wife, Trixie. Norton was portrayed from the start by Art Carney.
Possibly inspired by another radio hit, The Bickersons, and largely drawn from Gleason's harsh Brooklyn childhood ("Every neighborhood in Brooklyn had its Ralph Kramdens," he said years later), these sketches became known as The Honeymooners and customarily centered on Ralph's incessant get-rich-quick schemes, the tensions between his ambitiousness and Norton's scatterbrained aid and comfort, and the inevitable clash ("Bang! Zoooooom!"; "One of these days... one of these days... pow! Right in the kisser!; "I'll give you the world of tomorrow, Alice—you're goin' to the moon!") when sensible Alice tried pulling her husband's head back down from the clouds. However, in the later episodes, it was always clear that Kramden's threats were the bluffs of a blowhard; Alice never backed down, and invariably he would hug her at the end of the show, proclaiming, "Baby, you're the greatest!"
The Honeymooners first appeared on Cavalcade of Stars on October 5, 1951, with Carney as Norton (a cop in the first sketch) and spirited character actress Pert Kelton as Alice. Darker and fiercer than they later became with Audrey Meadows as Alice, the sketches proved popular with critics and viewers. As Kramden, Gleason played a frustrated bus driver with a battle-ax wife in harrowingly realistic arguments; when Meadows (who was 19 years younger than Kelton) took over the role after Kelton was blacklisted, the tone softened considerably. In fact, early sketches come as something of a shock to some modern critics.
When Gleason moved to CBS, Kelton was not part of the move, since her name had turned up in Red Channels, the book that listed and described reputed Communists and/or Communist sympathizers in television and radio. Gleason reluctantly let her leave the cast, with a cover story for the media that she had "heart trouble." He also turned down Audrey Meadows as Kelton's replacement, at least at first. 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 (although this story has been disputed repeatedly). Rounding out the cast with an understated but effective role, Joyce Randolph played Trixie Norton. Elaine Stritch had played the role as a tall and attractive blonde in the first sketch, but she was quickly replaced by the plainer-looking Randolph (some critics have speculated that Gleason didn't want Carney's character to have a more attractive wife). Randolph went on to make the character her own, just as Meadows did with Alice.
The Honeymooners sketches proved popular enough that Gleason gambled on making it a separate series entirely in 1955. These are the so-called Classic 39 episodes, although they only became "classic" years after they aired, since the show didn't draw strongly in the ratings at the time. But they were filmed with a new DuMont process, Electronicam, which allowed live television to be preserved on high-quality film. That turned out to be the most prescient move the show made, since—a decade after they first aired—the half-hour Honeymooners in syndicated reruns started to build a loyal and growing audience that made the show a television icon. Its popularity was such that even today, a life-size statue of Jackie Gleason, in full uniform as bus driver Ralph Kramden, stands outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City.
