Honeymooners question

I did a search for info on availability of the various Honeymooners shows, just looking for some clarification here.

The following are available on DVD or Bluray:

Lost Episodes 1951-1957 (aside from the ones which are "still lost" like the rest of the DuMont ones and a few others)

Classic 39

Miami Honeymooners 1967-70 (except for the episode with Pert Kelton as Alice's mother, and several shorter Honeymooners skits which didn't fill up a whole one-hour show)

Three of the 1970s specials (Second Honeymoon, Valentines, the second Christmas one)

So...what is the deal with the "other" Christmas special? Was that withheld because of some kind of rights issues, element issues, or some other reason? I have the "Second Honeymoon" and "Valentine Special" and they each have a Honeymooners-related skit from some other variety show as an extra. That seems like it would have been a good place to put those "orphaned" 1960s Honeymooners skits, but maybe that idea makes too much sense. (And I'd rather have the whole shows anyway.)

I see on Wikipedia something called "Jackie Gleason Special" with an airdate of December 20, 1970, identified as "lost." (?!?) This is not the "Women's Lib" one, that was a few years later (it's an extra on one of the Color Honeymooners sets). Is the 1970 special the one that was actually a rerun of the 1966 Christmas episode?

So basically that's it as far as "still missing" stuff aside from three Honeymooners skits during the "American Scene Magazine" era, including one which was released via kinescope on a Goodtimes VHS tape, one which aired as a TV Land special, and another one which has not been rerun or released in recent times.

Is that it?

(I just watched the Second Honeymoon for the first time. It's weird seeing a color videotaped Honeymooners show from Miami with the "real" Alice. It's like some kind of alternate reality.)

 

The thought is that the 1977 Christmas special was held back is because a portion of the Burger King jingle is used and due to rights issues that was held back. I believe when the "Second Honeymoon" special was released it included a promo for Christmas SpecialS (plural) then future references dropped the S. I would have to go through my stuff to see if I am remember that correctly or not.

The 1970 special is just a rerun of Gleason's 1966 Poor Soul Christmas show.

The "missing" American Scene Magazine skit is available if you know where to *cough* look. Ditto for the 1960 Honeymooners skit from Gleason's "The Big Sell" TV special. (It's just Ralph and Ed but it still counts!) There is also a "The Incredible World of Ed Norton" show from 1969/1970 that has not been released either. Besides the majority of the DuMont skits and a few from the 1950s CBS years all shows are accounted for, just some have been held back for whatever reason (the shorter 1960s skits).

The 1977 Christmas special is a lot of fun. Gale Gordon plays Ralph's boss (and makes a reference to a former secretary of his named Lucy who was a "real screwball") and overall is more to do with Christmas than the 1978 special is.

 

(I posted this question on my Facebook page, but so far haven't really gotten any answer -- which is understandable, but I figure I might get a better result here, given that people on this forum tend to be into this stuff and pretty knowledgeable.)

I have been on a Honeymooners (Jackie Gleason) kick lately. Just a random question, and hopefully extreme TV geeks will know what I'm talking about (I'm guessing no one else will): After they shot the "Classic 39" via the Electronicam system during the 1955-56 season, why did they then return to using kinescope format for the next season of the Jackie Gleason Show in 1956-57? I get that they figured the "Classic 39" would be repeated for years afterward and the one-hour variety shows wouldn't be...but they had the technology which was markedly superior. Was it more expensive? Was it more complicated because the one-hour shows were done live? (For that matter, did they even have videotape by then?) Inquiring minds want to know.

 

In 1956 Gleason went back to doing a variety show - BION, The Honeymooners had been a major ratings disappointment opposite Perry Como. The briefer "Honeymooners" sketches he went back to doing were not seen as having any rerun value. Even the idea of the "rerun" was not really established yet. If it had been, Desi and Lucy would never have sold I Love Lucy back to CBS around this time.

I presume the Electronicam system was more expensive than simple broadcasting.

IIRC Ampex invented videotape in 1956. The Edsel special w/Sinatra and Crosby from 1957 survives on tape, as does Fred Astaire's color special from 1958.

 

Two reasons that get cites the most:

1) Gleason felt that the writers were running out of ideas after 39 episodes and didn't want the series to go stale or flat. He cancelled his contract with Buick and went back to the live variety format.

2) The filmed 39 shows, believe it or not, were not reviewed and received well at the time. He was against Perry Como on NBC and was getting beat in the ratings by Como. (Though Como finished 19th and The Honeymooners 20th for the season so Gleason was beat by much.) The lead in was the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show, and even with first TV appearances by Elvis, Johnny Cash (I think), and others it was not a good lead in. Mid season Stage Show and The Honeymooners switched times, with The Kramdens coming on at 8. The filmed series was kind of deemed a failure and Gleason went back to a live variety show in the fall of 1956. When the 39 went into reruns on local channels in 1957 or 1958 that is when the status of classics were given to the episodes.

 

All of that makes sense, thank you. But I am still curious about Electronicam -- what else it was used for, etc. If it was more expensive than kinescopes (which now that I'm thinking about it, it must have been -- Electronicam used 35mm film and kinescopes tended to be 16mm unless I'm mistaken, for one) then it makes sense that the 1956-57 Jackie Gleason Shows were only preserved as kinescopes.

 

I think Electronicam was also used on Captain Video but besides that I am think it was pretty much D.O.A.

Check out this link:. 1955: The DuMont Electronicam - Eyes Of A Generation...Television's Living History »

 

Some more ...

Chuck Pharis Web Page : Here are some original photos from the DuMont Studios!!!! »

 

I have no doubt that it's #2 and the "running out of ideas" excuse is just Gleason saving face and revisionist history.

 

The Great One tries out this Electronifacator thingamawhatsis with some pals:



The three camera setup:

 

How much did those bad boys weigh a piece?

 

You asking about the camera or Gleason?

 

Isn't that amazing ? My wife and I have watched every classic 39 more than any show in TV history (along with the Andy Griffith show) , have the DVD box set and yet, when ME TV runs the episodes on Sunday night we stop everything to watch , even though we know virtually every line and look coming by heart.
I would have thought the show was a ratings smash.

Similarly,we were watching Leave It To Beaver again because it's back on ME TV and when I Googled it Wiki says the show was NEVER in the top 30, yet it lives on and on also.

 

Cameras, LOL!

 

The switch to a musical format for '56-'57 and the whole trip to Europe story line supports the "running out of ideas" notion. And even when "The Honeymooners" were revived in '66, Gleason was content (or felt secure in) using scripts from the "lost" episodes the majority of the time. So despite the greatness of The Classic 39, right to the end (the premieres of "The Bensonhurst Bomber" and "A Man's Pride" being 2 of the last 3), Gleason was probably right that the well was about to run more or less dry.

 

So many of the "Classic 39" were fleshed out or based on earlier skits, there's no reason they couldn't have continued doing that...it's not like they had just come up with 39 original stories.

And I'm not sure what point you're making about the lady three episodes.

 

The first piece of the trip to Europe story line was a rehash of a "lost" skit. The European settings and the travelling (because Ralph & Alice sure didn't travel much in '51-'56, except to Fred's Landing) created fresh avenues for stories and jokes. Yes, they could have rehashed the "lost" material even more (as they did in '66'-70), but there's a limit on how many semi-plausible stories you can come up with for these 4 characters in these limited settings.

My point regarding the last 3 episodes of the Classic 39 is that two of them, which were not even premiered until the end of the "summer replacement" period in September, could be considered two of the best they ever made. So on the surface one might think the writers could have gone on forever producing greatness. But the material that follows tells us otherwise. I can't see Gleason deciding to go "song and dance" if he, or the writers, felt the supply of comedy material wasn't running out. At the end of '56-'57 they even redid "Six Months to Live", which had already been stretched into "A Matter of Life or Death" in the Classic 39 the year before, and ended with the third version of the baseball manager sketch. The well was pretty darn dry.

 

Another observation on this: Not counting the two Sue Ann Langdon as Alice skits from American Scene Magazine in 1962, the first time new Honeymooners material was performed after the 1956-1957 season was the 1969-1970 season when a story arc of Ralph and Ed winning a song writing contest took them on an across the US trip. Even though those sketched performed were new material they were still based on previous storylines. All the shows in 1960s up to that point, minus the two 1962 shows, were all remakes of 1950s "lost" shows with music and songs added.

 

I've mentioned it before in a different thread, but when the show moved to Miami and was filmed in the hotel show room it annoyed me because I could hear the ambience or natural reverb of the big room or whatever we want to call it.
It took me right out of the feeling that they were in the Kramdens small apartment because I could hear their voices bouncing around the big room.

 

Another thing I'm curious about...I bought the big lost episodes box not long after it came out (in 2011) but only recently started "really" watching them from the beginning, starting with the DuMont Cavalcade Of Stars skits (with Pert Kelton as Alice) -- at least the ones that have been archived. And this prompts another question:

Those were all preserved as kinescopes, like the rest of the "lost episodes." And the DuMont era skits were (mostly) not thought to have been saved at all, until well after the "Lost Episodes" showed up on Showtime in the 1980s, right? The first time I remember seeing them in any form was a couple of Disney Channel specials in (IIRC) the early 1990s. Now, I understand them being kinescopes. And I understand some of them being scratchy and/or splicy. But on the very first one ("Bread") I see video dropouts. And the last DuMont one on the set (the second version of "The Ring Salesman") looks like a second or third generation VHS dub. What kind of source material was MPI working with here? And if these were lost for all that time, when would video dubs have been made of them?

Let me be clear that I'm glad they exist at all. I just wonder what the circumstances were of how these were preserved. Did someone dub them to a consumer-level video format years ago and then lose the original kinescopes? Or did MPI not have access to them granted by whoever holds the remaining films? (I seem to recall Worldvision Enterprises being the distributor of those Disney Channel specials, and claiming "ownership" of those shows, even though they are probably legally public domain anyway.)

 

So here is how I understand the DuMont shows that survive were found:

In 1984 when the lost episodes were found the Museum of Broadcasting was working on a tip of one of the writers having kinescopes of DuMont material. That was Snags Werris (spelling?) who had several reels saved, including the first Honeymooners sketch. Apparently Gleason had a couple of shows saved as well. I find it strange that everything pretty much to the end of 1951 survived but very little of the Pert Kelton year survives except for one or two DuMont shows and the Ed Sullivan sketches (which should have been included on the DVD set. Oh well, beggers can't be choosers). I don't know when the Museum of Broadcasting screened these shows but somewhere in my collection I have a newspaper article about it, as well as a signed poster for the event by Joyce Randolph and Art Carney. I will say that this was maybe 1991 or 1992. I am going off memory but it was somewhere around that time.

For whatever reason MPI used video masters for the DuMont shows. I don't know if that is all that exists, if they used what was provided or what. The Disney Channel specials were film sourced, so maybe being such precious gems video masters were provided to MPI instead of 16mm film elements? I wish I knew.

An interesting side note about that DVD set. "The Turkey" sketch from 9/27/1952 was a missing show until around 2009 or 2010. A seller on eBay was selling a 16mm film of that entire episode of The Jackie Gleason Show. I was outbid for it but I do know it went to a private collector. Someone from The Honeymooners Message Board at sitcomsonline.com contacted the buyer and seller and informed them of the show and that is how that sketch was found.

 

Thanks for sharing that. Very interesting stuff!

 

I agree, they had terrible sound in that era. The Miami Beach Convention Center was never intended as any kind of studio, so it did have a ton of reverb and stuff going on. I think it wouldn't be awful for live concerts or a stand-up comic act, but not for TV. I think Gleason just didn't want to go back to NY, and opted to use the biggest available venue that worked for their budget. And don't forget: "The Miami Beach audience is the greatest audience in the world!"

 

You bet! UCLA has the Harry Crane script archives and they have scripts and/or outlines and titles or descriptions of some of the lost DuMont sketches. Many of the first CBS season sketches were remakes of earlier DuMont shows!

 

Thanks for agreeing with me about the sound of those shows. I thought I was a cult of one regarding this.