Jackie Gleason Color 1960s shows from Time-Life

Yes, most if not all variety shows were in color by 1966. But some of them must have been erased so you just have B/W kinescopes.

 

I loved Milton Berle's cracks at Jackie(his weight, his drinking-you couldn't do them now!)

 

LOL...no, you would not want to hurt his feeling...we have come so far! : )

 

I'm a fan of most anything "Honeymooners" but man these are expensive and come at a time when I'm trying really hard to stop buying "stuff". So far I have resisted.

 

When I was a little kid in the 1960s, nobody was playing the old Honeymooners shows locally but we did see the color Jackie Gleason Show on CBS Saturday nights. Those were the only Honeymooners sketches I had ever seen, so when local stations started playing the 1950s B&W Dumont Honeymooners shows, I was initially taken aback. But I have to say, those shows are classic and much, much funnier than the later 1960s shows. I think a big reason is that they oversell the jokes, plus Jackie is older and his timing wasn't as good as it was 10-15 years earlier. (I also kind of wince when I see the extremely-tanned Gleason in the color shows, because you know that Ralph Kramden never got out in the sun.)

The color shows did have a bigger budget, which gave them an opportunity to have more sets and more lavish productions, with a crane camera, big musical numbers, some stunts, and so on. But you can't beat the original cast and the original stories.

 

Agreed.

Also, the classic 39 episodes benefit from Kramden's and Norton's relative youth.

The older they got it becomes almost pathetic in a way that they are the same characters as they were in the 50's.
It's like seeing Laurel and Hardy in their later films like Utopia (Atoll K) or Jerry Lewis doing his 1950's shtick when he was 75 or whatever.

And I agree about seeing Ralph with a deep tan and I have a memory of being aware that the color Honeymooners were filmed on a stage in a large auditorium. I seem to remember even as a kid that I could hear the ambience of the room, taking away the illusion of being in Ralph's cramped apartment .

 

And man oh man could you see them SWEAT down in Florida (did Jackie not spring for AC when he was "supervising the entire production"? )

My father loved Gleason and "The Honeymooners", so I was inculcated at an early age - The Classic 39 during the week and the color show on the weekend. Yes, without question the Classic 39 are head and shoulders over the color show, but when something is so great (like the music of Dylan or The Beatles), it's all "good" in one way or another and worth my attention. At least that's my feeling. And even in color, with Carney nearly as overweight as Gleason, I still crack up when Ralph thinks Alice has fallen for an Italian guy named Harry Vaderchi.

 

Yes, my dad was into all things Gleason also, so we religiously watched the color show every week and at the time I enjoyed them.

But like you, (so far anway) I'm not popping for this release so I'm left to wonder out loud how funny they still are at this point ?

 

Funny "enough" If the "Classic 39" were destroyed in a vault fire in 1957, and the lost episodes were actually lost (and stayed that way), I think the 60s Honeymooners would be held in high regard. They just suffer in comparison to, well, perfection. Some of them are, interestingly, dated. Despite the references to Alf Landon and King Farouk (etc.), the "Classic 39" are somewhat timeless. Some of the color skits try to integrate contemporary topics (in the typical "Those wacky kids today", or "How about that women's lib?" TV way) and it really makes them relics.



I haven't done the Netflix physical DVD rental membership in quote some time, but this set would be a perfect candidate for rental, assuming they would stock it (they did have all of the "Color Honeymooners" DVDs).

 

Where and when have you seen the color episodes if you haven't bought this set?

 

There were 4 DVD sets issued. They covered many (but not all) of the color Honeymooners episodes. The new set (not that I've seen it), cleans up the remainder (or most of them - @Benno123 could provide specifics, or perhaps already did upthread).

https://smile.amazon.com/Color-Hone...pID=51ntHIMY8DL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

They are all out of print, apparently, and the ever-rising prices for them shows it.

 

Exactly my situation. I had asked the old man about this Honeymooners thing and he dismissed them as 'Gleason's old show. It was in black and white'. I heard about the shows as time passed, and I think maybe by high school I started seeing them in re-runs on uhf stations. I never saw them growing up. When someone in high school said 'hello ball' when we were having golf class in gym, I had no idea where the joke came from. I can't say to this day that I would be interested in buying the classic 39 on dvd, but I can say that I see Gleason back then and I just know that those old color shows were never as funny as those old B&W shows. My old man thought Frank Fontaine was one super talented dude--hysterically funny and a voice as great as Sinatra. The only part of the color shows I thought showed Gleason's heart was the small touch of having 'Mr. Donahee's' glass being empty when the camera zoomed out. A small touch that showed Gleason cared.

 

I have been making my way through the Time-Life set. I haven’t really posted much about it because I am still working my way through. But let me give some background, definites, etc ....

1) The Time-Life set is edited, in some cases heavily. All of the June Taylor Dancers’ numbers are missing from the shows I have watched. The MPI releases of the Color Honeymooners (which presented the shows as The Jackie Gleason Show and, in a couple of cases, original commercials and sponsor bumpers) included the JTD as they opened the show as part of the musical Honeymooners.

2) With this release all of the unreleased Sheila MacRae/Jane Kean-era shows have been released minus the “Incredible World of Ed Norton” skit/pilot from January 1970.

3) The shows I have watched have pretty much featured comics. Gleason comes out, opens the show, comic comes out, they banter, Gleason leaves, comic does act. Other cases he has introduced singers, like Tony Bennett, and they perform. The show with Bennett included his first set but according to an episode guide of the series I have he was supposed to have been in the second half (or he was mentioned as coming up again) but I believe that part was cut. (I would have to go back and watch to be 100% certain but as I click this out on my phone I am 95% certain.)

4) The actual show just feels different than the kinescopes from the 1950s variety show. As someone mentioned the show was done in an auditorium vs. a theater. It just doesn’t seem as intimate or “real” as the original did.

5) The Honeymooners skits just seem to have a strange pacing to the rest of the 60s Honeymooners and, in all actuality, the rest of the Gleason shows. First of all they are just sketches, maybe about 15 minutes each, give or take, and all remakes of earlier skits. This is the first version of “Alice’s Birthday” to be released as the original from DuMont in 1952 and the first CBS remake from 1953 are still lost. The others all have added bits, dialogue, etc. so these are not just pulling an old script but pulling one and padding it out. Gleason and Carney don’t overdo it as much as they sometimes tended to do in the musicals, and MacRae’s Alice is ok - a bit more realistic than in the musicals but still lacking that realistic bite of Audrey Meadows. Kean’s Trixie is pretty much the same when she does appear. These Honeymooners seem like they were taped outside of the other shows and then used as filler. The timing seems a bit off, there’s not as much “playing towards the audience” like in the musicals, and the laughter doesn’t sound live. It doesn’t sound canned but maybe taped and played to the audience and added later?

Am I glad I have the set? Yes, I am. To me, even with its faults (and there are many) I am still glad I bought it. It’s a good document of top comics at the time, and a time when Gleason was King of Miami. I wish more effort would have been put in place to secure music and June Taylor Dancers but I imagine each dancer may have to sign a release and who knows how many, if any, records survive to find each one. Plus, let’s be honest, the big selling point here are the 7 Honeymooners skits. That is the main reason I bought it. Still I am happy to have these in my collection which, I believe, I now have all surviving Honeymooners sketches - minus those that just feature Ed Norton - including some that have not been released but available on the “collectors market.”

The booklet included with the Time-Life set states that the “Passing Politician” Gleason play with Art Carney from September 1966, which was like a mini- movie, must be damaged as it mentions the original videotape cannot be played (or something to that effect). I believe the Paley Center has a copy but it is probably a b/w kinescope as many of the Gleason shows from the 60s are there. Had this been included I would have overlooked the edited JTD numbers as I have been wanting to see that special episode since first hearing about it.

I believe, besides many of the Pert Kelton/DuMont skits still missing, there are just 5 still lost episodes from the Audrey Meadows years. As far as shows that survive but are not available through official means includes:
- a 1952 skit with Pert Kelton performed on Ed Sullivan’s show
- a reunion of sorts of Gleason and Carney on Gleason’s “Big Sell” special in 1960 where Ralph tries to get Ed to join in on his newest scheme
- a 1962 skit with Sue Ann Langdon as Alice and guest star Art Carney where Ralph and Ed try to watch football
- 1970 sketch/pilot “The Incredible World of Ed Norton” which apparently survives but has yet to appear anywhere
- 1977’s Honeymooners Christmas reunion special with Gale Gordon

 

I assume you are talking about the Honeymooners episodes, not the variety shows.

 

Thank you for all this insightful information. It makes me even more interested to see the sketches but I feel like I would have instant buyer’s regret as soon as I had seen them all.

The Norton “pilot” sounds very silly and probably fell flat, but I’m still eager to see it.

 

A biography on Carney from many years ago claims it was a disaster. Yet if you look up newspapers from that time it was much talked about so, in reality, who really knows!

 

Yes, referring to Honeymooners but there are lots of variety episodes just sitting collecting dust. I did fail to mention one Honeymooners show from the 1966-1967 season, “Life Upon the Wicked Stage,” which did air during the Goodlife Network reruns 10-15 years ago but, for whatever reason, was not released in the MPI sets.

 

Another interesting note is that the 1969-1970 season was the first time an original Honeymooners sketch had been done since the American Scene Magazine shows with Sue Ann Langdon as Alice. That 1969-1970 season really seems to be when they characters are more “in tune” with the flower power, especially the last show of the season. That is when Joey Heatherton appears (and the absolute dumbest song about “Love, Love, Love” is performed by her, MacRae, and Kean) yet Maureen O’Hara and Bing Crosby also stop by.

The musical episodes just don’t seem as natural. The 1966 “Adoption” show with Audrey Meadows works as a musical but the color musicals just seem unrealistic and the realism was always important for these characters. The 1957 musical shows, while lacking some realism, just flow better than the color 60s shows. It could be because those shows from ‘57 were done live, or it could be because Audrey and Joyce Randolph are still there ....

 

I think a big part of the difference, as you alluded to, is that Gleason really overdid it in the 60s episodes vs. the 50s. That moment in “A Man’s Pride” when Ralph gets stuck with the check ... I could see Gleason mugging and doubletaking if that was in the 60s.

 

Another example is the reaction in the courtroom when Ed finds out that Trixie’s real name is Thelma. In the 1950s version Art Carney’s reaction is perfect and the audience just adds to it. In the 1960s version Carney, while still funny, just has a tinge of something missing. No idea what but the delivery just doesn’t seem as natural.

 

In New York, the classic 39 have really never been off the air and I grew up watching them in reruns. I vaguely recall the musical episodes from CBS and syndication but I never cared for them. But then again I've never been a fan of show tunes. I'll stick with the 1950s shows, thank you.

Regarding Sue Ane Langdon, how many sketches was she in and where can they be found?

 

Thank you for taking the time to post such a detailed review !

 

Sue Ann Langdon appeared in two sketches, 9/29/62 on the debut episode of the Jackie Gleason American Scene Magazine and again a few weeks later. Those were the last Honeymooners until Audrey Meadows and Art Carney guest starred for the “Adoption” show in 1966. The first one is in the public domain and appeared on some off-label releases while the second one is “out there” but you need to look for it if you know what I mean.

I wish MPI would have released complete 1950s Gleason variety shows. I have 3 or 4 in my collection and they are a lot of fun with the opening, monologues, etc.

 

No problem, I just wish I could have done it sooner!

 

Sue Ann Langdon....**sigh** What a beauty!

Regarding musical performances, I recall Gleason devoting an entire show to the stars of country music circa 1965 or so, my father considered that particular episode appointment television. I don't remember who was on it other than Roy Acuff and his band doing "Wabash Cannonball"....did any of that make this collection?